Melisa Rollins: From Hand-Me-Downs to Leadville Champ
Fatty sits down with 2024 Leadville champion (and his daughter) Melisa Rollins to discuss her meteoric rise from riding borrowed bikes to the professional peloton. Joined by fitter Barry Anderson, they dig into the biomechanical challenges of world-class power, the dangers of athletic stoicism, and the chaotic reality of stage racing in Africa.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
00:00:00 Intro: Christmas shopping at Silca
00:01:51 Introducing Melisa Rollins: Pro cyclist and Fatty’s daughter.
00:03:10 The Origin Story: From high school swimmer to falling in love with the bike.
00:07:00 The Leadville Progression: From a 10-hour finish to sub-9
00:09:18 The COVID Transformation: Racing Strava segments and increasing volume.
00:11:00 The Turning Point: LeadBoat success on a 4-year-old bike.
00:15:30 Enter Barry Anderson: Addressing chronic pain and the "Stoic" problem.
00:19:56 Bike Fit Philosophy: Why it's a haircut, not a vasectomy.
00:22:50 The Numbness Saga: Why Melisa couldn’t feel her feet for five years.
00:28:00 The Aha Moment: Connecting pelvic posture to nerve issues.
00:30:04 The Cost of Power: Why elite engines require different biomechanical solutions.
00:33:50 Chemist vs. Cyclist: The transition from working in a lab to full-time racing.
00:39:50 Gravel Burn in Africa: Freezing rain, camping, and "Succumbing to Chaos."
00:48:00 The Shoe Disaster: Melting cycling shoes by the fire and the MacGyver fix.
00:52:45 Looking Ahead: Cape Epic, the 2026 Grand Prix, and targeting Sea Otter.
00:54:30 Finding the Fun.
00:01:51 Introducing Melisa Rollins: Pro cyclist and Fatty’s daughter.
00:03:10 The Origin Story: From high school swimmer to falling in love with the bike.
00:07:00 The Leadville Progression: From a 10-hour finish to sub-9
00:09:18 The COVID Transformation: Racing Strava segments and increasing volume.
00:11:00 The Turning Point: LeadBoat success on a 4-year-old bike.
00:15:30 Enter Barry Anderson: Addressing chronic pain and the "Stoic" problem.
00:19:56 Bike Fit Philosophy: Why it's a haircut, not a vasectomy.
00:22:50 The Numbness Saga: Why Melisa couldn’t feel her feet for five years.
00:28:00 The Aha Moment: Connecting pelvic posture to nerve issues.
00:30:04 The Cost of Power: Why elite engines require different biomechanical solutions.
00:33:50 Chemist vs. Cyclist: The transition from working in a lab to full-time racing.
00:39:50 Gravel Burn in Africa: Freezing rain, camping, and "Succumbing to Chaos."
00:48:00 The Shoe Disaster: Melting cycling shoes by the fire and the MacGyver fix.
00:52:45 Looking Ahead: Cape Epic, the 2026 Grand Prix, and targeting Sea Otter.
00:54:30 Finding the Fun.
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:04 FATTY
This is Marginal Gains, the show that makes a big deal about the little things and how those little things can be a big deal.
00:00:10 FATTY
I'm Fatty, and I am going to do a little bit of boasting about the fact that I have completed all of my bike-related Christmas shopping as of December 6th.
00:00:21 FATTY
I did this mostly by shopping at silca.cc.
00:00:24 FATTY
The cyclists in my life can expect to get the new Silca Electrico Micro, which is bar none the best and most reliable way I know of to fill a tire in the field.
00:00:36 FATTY
The mountain bikers in my friend circle might also find the ultimate shock pump in their stockings.
00:00:42 FATTY
It is easily the best shock pump in the world.
00:00:45 FATTY
Fun fact, I am giving away all my old shock pumps as white elephant gifts.
00:00:51 FATTY
Apologies in advance to anyone who receives those.
00:00:54 FATTY
Be like me, do all your gifts shopping at Silca.cc.
00:00:59 FATTY
And on the off chance that someone is listening to this episode and is wondering what would Fatty like for Christmas, here's a hint.
00:01:06 FATTY
I really, really, really want just one thing.
00:01:09 FATTY
A pair of the Shimano S-Phyre XC903 mountain bike shoes in the incredible camo colorway.
00:01:17 FATTY
Honestly, I do not need them because I already have two pair of the XC903s.
00:01:22 FATTY
You'll be hearing a lot more about sore feet in this episode, and that used to be a huge problem for me.
00:01:29 FATTY
But it is not anymore because Shimano's shoes fully solved the problem for me.
00:01:34 FATTY
Whether for mountain or Rd.
00:01:36 FATTY
Shimano S-Phyre shoes are the only cycling shoes I will wear anymore.
00:01:41 FATTY
Full stop.
00:01:42 FATTY
So yes, I already have two pair, but I really do want the camo version.
00:01:48 FATTY
Check them out yourself at bike.shimano.com.
00:01:51 FATTY
In this episode, I am talking with pro cyclist Melissa Rollins, who took overall second in Leadville this year, won last year, is two-time winner of Shawamagan, a stage winner and overall second in the 2025 Gravel Burn, winner of this year's Steamboat Gravel and Breck Firecracker 50, and is frankly hard
00:02:12 FATTY
It's hard to believe that she has only been pro for a couple of years.
00:02:16 FATTY
And yes, she happens to be my daughter.
00:02:18 FATTY
So I am not even going to remotely try to be objective in this interview.
00:02:27 FATTY
Elisa Rollins is your 2024 lifetime Leadville 100 champion.
00:02:42 FATTY
Melissa, it is great to have you back for the show.
00:02:45 FATTY
This time to talk about you instead of talking about Levi's Gran Fondo, among other things.
00:02:53 MELISA
Yeah, hi, thanks.
00:02:55 MELISA
Thanks for having me.
00:02:56 FATTY
And I feel lucky that we've got you here.
00:02:58 FATTY
You just got back from Arizona.
00:03:00 FATTY
More about that in a second.
00:03:02 FATTY
And tomorrow you're on your way to Australia.
00:03:05 FATTY
As A pro cyclist, you were pretty much always on the move.
00:03:09 FATTY
But you haven't always been.
00:03:11 FATTY
And I kind of want to go to your origin story.
00:03:15 FATTY
Let's talk about what made you fall in love with the bike.
00:03:21 MELISA
I mean, I feel really lucky that I've had you and my mom like always as an example of, you know, showing me what cycling can look like and showing that
00:03:39 MELISA
sport can continue after high school because that was kind of what I always did.
00:03:43 MELISA
I had traditional sports in high school like soccer, I swam, but not a lot of people do those into adulthood.
00:03:52 MELISA
And, I sort of ran into that problem when I went to college and didn't really have a sport outlet anymore.
00:04:00 MELISA
I was sort of missing that piece in my life.
00:04:03 MELISA
And so I sort of looked to you guys to see, I mean, you spent your weekends
00:04:08 MELISA
riding a million miles.
00:04:10 MELISA
I didn't know what any of that meant at the time, but I knew that you spent a lot of time on the weekends riding and you would come back happier for it.
00:04:20 MELISA
And yeah, I mean, I got to watch my mom specifically sort of pour her heart into this since I was, you know, five years old.
00:04:30 MELISA
She was always cycling and I think it
00:04:34 MELISA
made her a better mom because of it.
00:04:36 MELISA
I mean, she was able to do her thing and put herself first when she went out for a bike ride and then she'd come back and she'd pour herself into her kids.
00:04:43 MELISA
So that was really cool to see.
00:04:46 MELISA
And as I sort of got into my own adulthood,
00:04:51 MELISA
I felt myself kind of longing for the same thing.
00:04:54 MELISA
So yeah, I look to you guys and you guys have been so supportive of my journey as a cyclist.
00:05:01 FATTY
Well, I mean, it's obviously kind of phenomenal to watch.
00:05:04 FATTY
I mean, this is not, and we expected you to be a great regional racer.
00:05:10 FATTY
I think that, I mean, you've always been an athlete.
00:05:14 FATTY
I mean, you have swam in state in high school.
00:05:17 FATTY
So it's not like you come from
00:05:20 FATTY
a no talent gene pool.
00:05:24 FATTY
Your mom, obviously, seriously gifted, talented racer, had the single speed record in Leadville for many, many years.
00:05:34 FATTY
So.
00:05:35 MELISA
I mean, I was never the best, though.
00:05:38 MELISA
When I played soccer, I feel like I worked really hard, but I wasn't particularly good.
00:05:43 MELISA
I was never known as the best on the team.
00:05:45 MELISA
When I swam, I
00:05:47 MELISA
Yeah, you're right.
00:05:48 MELISA
I made it to state, only 22 qualify per event, and I was either an alternate or selected as 22nd swimmer for the event that I raced, and I was last.
00:06:02 MELISA
So yeah, I mean, I wasn't a thriving athlete.
00:06:06 MELISA
I loved it, and I found a lot of joy and confidence from the sports that I did, but I wasn't
00:06:15 MELISA
naturally gifted, I wouldn't say.
00:06:18 MELISA
So, yeah.
00:06:20 FATTY
But, and I think that the key part here is you, in every event that you've ever done, you kind of go full force into it.
00:06:32 FATTY
And I think that more than anything is inherited from your mom.
00:06:36 FATTY
I mean, she is not known as the hammer.
00:06:38 FATTY
for no reason.
00:06:40 FATTY
That's fair.
00:06:40 FATTY
So, I mean, you swam in high school.
00:06:43 FATTY
I think you did one Nika race in high school.
00:06:47 FATTY
Mountain biking was not at all your thing until as you described in college.
00:06:52 FATTY
And you kind of hit sort of a sophomore existential crisis and you went to Leadville and you did your first Leadville race.
00:07:02 FATTY
What was your first finish time?
00:07:04 MELISA
It was 10 hours and 12 minutes.
00:07:07 FATTY
A very respectable finish.
00:07:09 FATTY
I mean, that is a, I mean, many, many people would be super excited with that.
00:07:15 FATTY
And you did that on a stock scalpel 2 that I gave you that I had won in a blog-related raffle.
00:07:27 FATTY
And
00:07:28 FATTY
I mean, it's not like you were on ultra premium equipment, but the reason I mentioned the hand-me-down is because that's going to be a little bit of a theme.
00:07:36 FATTY
I want to flash forward to 2019, which is when you got your second, or when you got your first sub 9 finish.
00:07:45 FATTY
And I remember that because you and I finished with our hands raised together.
00:07:49 FATTY
We finished it together.
00:07:50 MELISA
Yeah, isn't that cool?
00:07:51 FATTY
And you were on once again a hand-me-down bike, a five-year-old Ibis ******.
00:07:58 FATTY
Which, I mean, that was long enough ago that Ibis was less politically correct in naming their bikes.
00:08:07 MELISA
Yeah.
00:08:09 MELISA
That's fair.
00:08:09 MELISA
Yeah, I think I sort of hovered around that 10 hour mark for three years.
00:08:13 MELISA
And then when I finished it with you, that was sort of like a pivotal turning point.
00:08:19 MELISA
I started to get faster and I started to get faster quickly.
00:08:22 MELISA
And
00:08:24 MELISA
Yeah, it was cool.
00:08:26 MELISA
I think I caught you in the last 10 miles or something, maybe fewer, like last five miles.
00:08:31 MELISA
I remember I called your name.
00:08:33 MELISA
I saw you up the road.
00:08:35 FATTY
I had just finished climbing the boulevard.
00:08:38 FATTY
So I just hit the pavement when you called my name.
00:08:41 FATTY
So it was in the final mile that I heard you.
00:08:44 FATTY
And so I rode in circles for a minute and then we rode and finished it together.
00:08:49 FATTY
It was incredible.
00:08:50 FATTY
I mean, honestly, in
00:08:54 FATTY
I don't know, the 10,000 times I've done that race, there are a few things that stand out as actual bright memories.
00:09:00 FATTY
That is for sure one of them.
00:09:03 FATTY
How about Melissa Rollins, 23 years young, Salt Lake City, Utah, crushing it out there today?
00:09:08 MELISA
Way to go, Melissa.
00:09:09 MELISA
Look at that hand in hand there.
00:09:12 MELISA
Elden Nelson out of Alpine, Utah.
00:09:15 FATTY
And then COVID.
00:09:18 FATTY
So you.
00:09:21 FATTY
2019 suddenly showing that you were getting faster than there is a year that is essentially for races, a black hole.
00:09:30 FATTY
Nobody knows how anybody was doing, but you were not inactive during that time.
00:09:35 FATTY
And I think that this is kind of important because on one side of COVID, you were racing with normal people like me.
00:09:44 FATTY
And then on the other side of that, when we came back in 20,
00:09:49 FATTY
Was it 21?
00:09:50 MELISA
Yeah, 21.
00:09:51 FATTY
21, we were racing again.
00:09:53 FATTY
Suddenly things had changed.
00:09:54 FATTY
What happened in that two years?
00:09:56 MELISA
Yeah, I had hired a coach during that time and I think I just rode A lot.
00:10:02 MELISA
I remember in 2020, I just rode A lot.
00:10:04 MELISA
I rode all of, I don't know, I mean, like you said, there was no races.
00:10:11 MELISA
So I sort of just like raced Strava.
00:10:14 MELISA
I chose Strava segments and I raced.
00:10:17 MELISA
And
00:10:18 MELISA
I got my first Rd.
00:10:22 MELISA
bike, I think, or my first, it was actually a quasi-road bike.
00:10:28 MELISA
I think it was a cyclocross bike that I put some Rd.
00:10:32 MELISA
tires on and I just spent all my time riding.
00:10:36 MELISA
I think, yeah, I was working a bit.
00:10:39 MELISA
I worked in person in a lab and yeah, I was able to spend a lot of time outside and yeah.
00:10:48 FATTY
And then on the other side of that, you came back, you did the lead boat, which is a essentially and welding of two events, the Leadville 100 and the Steamboat Gravel Race.
00:11:04 FATTY
And you took second in that in the combined time category.
00:11:11 FATTY
And that was enough to get to get some proteins
00:11:16 FATTY
some sponsorship interest.
00:11:19 MELISA
Yeah, Not only was I second in Leadboat, but I was 6th at Leadville that year.
00:11:24 MELISA
And it was kind of the first year that pros really, really started showing up.
00:11:27 MELISA
I was, I mean, I climbed the boulevard and I could see when I was finishing, I could see Katarina Nash just up ahead of me.
00:11:35 MELISA
And so I finished within a minute of her and which would have been 5th and
00:11:42 MELISA
maybe 20 seconds ahead of her was Hannah Otto, who's 4th.
00:11:44 MELISA
And these were girls that I had looked up to as cyclists for a long time.
00:11:49 MELISA
And yeah, like you said before, in 2019, when I was racing that race, I was finishing, you know, an hour plus slower or something.
00:12:03 MELISA
And yeah, I came back two years later and suddenly I was, you know, near the pointy end.
00:12:09 FATTY
And I mean, suddenly it is maybe a word that I want to focus on because since then, your times have increased dramatically.
00:12:20 FATTY
I mean, really dramatically.
00:12:21 FATTY
You've gone from being fast for a normal person to being someone that everyone is afraid of in Leadville, right?
00:12:28 FATTY
It's the, you are, what was your time last year in 2025?
00:12:35 MELISA
It was 6 hours and 59 minutes.
00:12:39 MELISA
so I have taken off 3 hours from my first Leadville, but a lot of that 3 hours came, like you said, in the last couple of years.
00:12:49 MELISA
And so it was a steep trajectory, a steep last few years, which it's actually really interesting that you can sort of look at that
00:13:02 MELISA
my result at Leadville as sort of a scope of my career, because I'm not sure that a lot of people have something like that.
00:13:10 MELISA
I mean, you can sort of look at race results or, yeah, I guess how you're doing, regionally and then nationally and then maybe internationally.
00:13:23 MELISA
But for me, you can actually see linearly
00:13:28 MELISA
every single year at Leadville because I've sort of done it every single year and I have gotten significantly faster almost every time I've done it.
00:13:35 FATTY
Significantly faster.
00:13:37 FATTY
Yeah.
00:13:38 FATTY
I would put I would call that an understatement.
00:13:40 FATTY
But yeah, you and that includes in 2024 a win.
00:13:49 MELISA
Yeah.
00:13:49 FATTY
And that I kind of want to this is just sort of interesting fun fact right on once again a hand-me-down bike.
00:13:59 FATTY
So you won Leadville on a hand-me-down?
00:14:01 MELISA
I won Leadville on a second-hand four-year-old bike.
00:14:08 MELISA
If you saw the cable housing now, you would very would cringe at what it looks like.
00:14:16 FATTY
And that is no shade on Team 2024, now Team 2028.
00:14:22 FATTY
their sponsor, Felt, didn't have a mountain bike at the time.
00:14:25 FATTY
And they were kind of scrambling.
00:14:27 FATTY
It's like you were the only person on the team that mountain biked.
00:14:31 FATTY
And so they were like making phone calls trying to find something for you.
00:14:36 FATTY
2024 and 2025, where the only person who was able to beat you in Leadville last year was Kate Courtney,
00:14:46 FATTY
who beat your record, what would have been your new record by another new record, which is, I mean, if you're going to get beaten, not a bad person or a bad time to have been beaten.
00:15:00 FATTY
You, and we're underscoring that you have really gotten fast, really, really fast.
00:15:06 MELISA
When I finished Leadville this year, knowing that I broke the record, I felt like it was a win, even though it was second.
00:15:13 MELISA
Kate really, really demonstrated what was possible.
00:15:17 MELISA
And I think that actually really has inspired me to believe even more is possible for next year.
00:15:26 FATTY
Love that.
00:15:27 FATTY
And
00:15:29 FATTY
I have been leading up to a point here.
00:15:31 FATTY
Believe it or not, this is not just me being your hype man, although I'm happy to do that for an entire episode of the show.
00:15:39 FATTY
We actually have another guest on this episode, Barry Anderson, a psychologic in, where in Arizona are you, Barry?
00:15:48 FATTY
Welcome, by the way.
00:15:48 BARRY
Thank you.
00:15:49 BARRY
Thanks for having me.
00:15:50 BARRY
We are in Scottsdale, Arizona.
00:15:52 BARRY
It's going to be like 68 degrees here today.
00:15:54 BARRY
So.
00:15:55 FATTY
This is the second time we've had you on the show.
00:15:57 FATTY
You are, I would want to call you a bike fitter, although we already have talked about whether that is an accurate description of what you really do.
00:16:06 FATTY
In this case, though, we're having you on the show because you and Melissa have just spent basically a week together working on bike fit, bike position, and so forth.
00:16:19 FATTY
And
00:16:20 FATTY
I think that has a lot to do with how fast Melissa has gotten fast, that her drive, her ambition, her dedication to training have all facilitated this incredibly powerful engine.
00:16:38 FATTY
maybe outstripping the fit, the way that she rides on the bike, and resulting in a lot of pain.
00:16:45 FATTY
Is that a fair assessment, Melissa?
00:16:47 MELISA
Yeah, yep.
00:16:48 MELISA
I feel like I've been dealing with a lot over the last, yeah, five years.
00:16:53 FATTY
Where do you hurt?
00:16:54 MELISA
Well, hurt is an interesting word for it because, so my feet go numb when I ride in any kind of like traditional cleat position.
00:17:04 MELISA
And
00:17:06 MELISA
So my feet are number one problem at all times.
00:17:09 MELISA
And #2 problem is that I have a chronic saddle sores.
00:17:13 MELISA
And we're not just talking like 1 sometimes or like 1 bad one.
00:17:18 MELISA
I have like 12 and it's, they're not in any sort of like spot.
00:17:23 MELISA
They are in all the spots.
00:17:24 MELISA
And yeah, so I first reached out to Barry last year in sort of pursuit of trying to solve this because
00:17:34 MELISA
I mean, and I'm not saying that I've just like powered through it, which I kind of have, but I have asked for help from a lot of different people and just haven't really gotten anywhere with any of them.
00:17:48 MELISA
And so, yeah, I mean, Sophia recommended that I chat with Barry and I feel like I'm learning so much about myself every time I go to see him.
00:17:59 MELISA
which I hadn't known before.
00:18:01 MELISA
And it's not that I didn't see anyone good before because all the fitters that I saw before were great and they really helped me to the best of their ability.
00:18:09 MELISA
But I think what I'm dealing with, the numbness, it's not standard.
00:18:14 MELISA
And I think people kind of give up on that.
00:18:18 MELISA
So yeah, it's been really nice to, you know, spend a week going back and forth with Barry and him telling me, you know, I'm not going to give up until you tell me to.
00:18:29 MELISA
So that's, I mean, it seems like sort of the right fit for my scenario at the moment.
00:18:36 FATTY
And I want to sort of step back for a second, let the two of you talk.
00:18:40 FATTY
What is it like to, Barry, from your perspective, work with an athlete for a full week on trying to get fit and what, you know, what the steps are and, you know, is a week enough?
00:18:52 FATTY
And Melissa, from your perspective,
00:18:54 FATTY
to try to solve what is, I won't say career limiting, but certainly career inhibiting issue for you.
00:19:05 BARRY
Well, for me, I will jump in.
00:19:07 BARRY
For me, it's why I do this.
00:19:10 BARRY
I am not here for myself.
00:19:13 BARRY
I am here for the athletes.
00:19:14 BARRY
And it doesn't matter whether it's someone with a world-class engine like Melissa or if it is a first-timer looking to just thinking about buying their first gravel bike.
00:19:25 BARRY
it's super important for a bike fitter to be focused on the athlete.
00:19:30 BARRY
I also, I learned from mistakes that I went through.
00:19:35 BARRY
And when I got my very first bike fit, I was 17 or 18, and the guy who gave it to me didn't touch my fit again for another,
00:19:44 BARRY
So he never touched it again.
00:19:45 BARRY
I raced for him for four or five years on the exact same fit I had.
00:19:49 BARRY
And I think I'd probably changed a little bit between 17 and 22, 23.
00:19:54 BARRY
But that's just the way we used to view bike fit.
00:19:56 BARRY
And the owner here, he has a saying that we used to view bike fit as a vasectomy.
00:20:04 BARRY
You got it done and it was over.
00:20:06 BARRY
And really, it's more like a haircut.
00:20:09 BARRY
You have to go in because you're changing all the time.
00:20:12 BARRY
And you have to go in and have that updated. With the exciting thing about working with Melissa is that we, over the last two years, we've kind of learned how to talk to each other. And I think a lot of the discomfort she was going through, a lot of times she felt that she wasn't supposed to complain, that she's not supposed to be the problem.
00:20:41 BARRY
And the reality is that she was never the problem. And the solutions that we are finally coming to now are very counterintuitive, very counterintuitive and pretty exciting for me because I get to learn new things. But I am so excited for Melissa's year coming up. I am just like giddy inside. I think she's going to have an amazing season.
00:21:06 FATTY
I think that's lesson one, right? Put away your inner stoic. I think a lot of us who are cyclists and especially endurance cyclists, the stoicism being quiet and just, you know, put, you know, compartmentalizing pain is like part of the deal. And it sounds like, I mean, that is fine. Sometimes whatever it takes to get through the day. But when you're working with a fitter, then you need to open up that box.
00:21:34 MELISA
Yeah, I actually am remembering now just linking this back to the original conversation about my trajectory from Leadville. I remember that year that I finished with you in 2019
00:21:45 MELISA
was kind of the first year that my foot problems started happening, but I never addressed it. And instead of addressing it, I just rode full force after. I remember taking my shoes off after the race and being like, wow, that felt really bad. And I had to walk around like on the insides of my feet for the next like 2 days. And, you know, instead of being like, wow, I should probably ask someone about that, I was like, well, I guess.
00:22:14 MELISA
Maybe some time off will help, and then I'll go back to doing exactly what I was doing before.
00:22:18 FATTY
Sure, your blessing and your curse, right? That you are tough enough that you can...
00:22:24 FATTY
basically put aside whatever is bothering you and power through it. The curse is it's not like it's going to get better because you're able to do that. And it's actually having the conversation. So how, I mean, how does a week-long interaction like this, what is, what did that look like? I'd love to hear more.
00:22:44 MELISA
Yeah, I think I came, I came with a specific thing that I wanted to address, which was my feet. And
00:22:54 MELISA
like I said, over the last five years or so, since that day in Leadville, when I took my shoes off and I couldn't touch the ground with the outsides of my feet, I have been on this quest to figure out why that's happening. And I've probably gone through, you know, 25 different pairs of shoes. I've seen a lot of different fitters. Nobody really understands. I've like put every wedge, every
00:23:22 MELISA
I've moved Makli into every position possible. And yeah, I finally actually, I actually was training through a lot of numbness in my feet. And had my races been an hour or something, I think I could have still been performing well. But in 2024, I was dealing with
00:23:48 MELISA
tons of numbness for the first six or seven months of the year. I think I changed shoes. Oh, it had to have been 15 times. And I had custom orthotics made. This was like, I think this was prior to when I met you, Barry. So this was all kind of just me and just
00:24:09 MELISA
sort of trying and trying and trying and believing every single day I would make a change in my fit some way and I'd go out with hope every single day and every single day I'd come home with devastation. But it was the hope that kept me training and I trained well and I would take, I would do my intervals and I'd take my shoes off in between. So I was strong. I was really, really strong. But the results in races, they were not there.
00:24:37 MELISA
I kept trying, kept trying, kept trying, kept believing. And this is 2024. This is last year, three weeks before Leadville. I don't know how this even happened, but I found a pair of shoes and I put my cleats all the way back almost into my arch. And I moved up to Leadville for three weeks and then I won Leadville because the numbness was gone.
00:25:03 MELISA
So fast forward another year and a half, I had seen Barry in that time, but the feet were a non-issue to me anymore because I thought I had found a solution and I sort of was protective. I was like, I don't even know if I told you the first time I saw you about my feet.
00:25:19 MELISA
I think I was just like, don't touch those. I have something.
00:25:24 BARRY
You've mentioned that it had been an issue in the past. The first time we talked, we were talking about saddle issues mostly.
00:25:29 MELISA
Yeah, so which, you know, if you know anything about fit, that foot issues and saddle issues often go hand in hand. So I didn't allow you to look at my shoes and we sort of just.
00:25:43 BARRY
And as a result, I was convinced the problem, I was convinced the problem was in the shoes.
00:25:48 BARRY
I was convinced. And guess who was wrong? I was wrong.
00:25:52 MELISA
The issue with the shoes that I didn't mention is that these shoes are really narrow. I don't have a narrow foot, but they're really narrow. And not only are they narrow, but they're also small. They're a little bit too small for my big foot and a little bit narrow. So like I said, I'd show them to Barry. Barry was a little worried about how narrow and small they were, but I was like, don't touch them.
00:26:16 MELISA
And then six months later, after hours and hours of training, I send Barry an email and I'm like, remember the foot thing? so it's an issue again. And I think that was when you first had said, maybe we need to look at some wider shoes. And I was like, little do you know, I've tried wider shoes. I've tried every kind of shoe. But yeah, I'll try it.
00:26:44 MELISA
Which I think part of this is that I didn't really have someone who was static through all of this. I mean, this is sort of a journey and it's chronological. And what I was missing was somebody that I could talk to who understands the body, understands bike fit, understands the needs and demands of a cyclist. Like I'm not just going to stop because my feet hurt. We have to figure out how to manage the foot pain so I can still go.
00:27:13 MELISA
What I learned over time was that Barry was this person for me. And I mean, it's taken me a while, but I feel like, especially this last week when I was there for, I mean, seven days, I think I saw you five times or something. I really leaned into that. And I think we really got somewhere with it.
00:27:31 BARRY
It's a big deal. And when you're dealing with a chronic problem, sometimes the solutions are, there's three or four things feeding into it. And
00:27:43 BARRY
We have to spend time together. We have to go through that. We were actually working on something else when I had my aha moment about your feet. We were talking about pelvic posture and about rotating and about firing glutes and iliac artery flow and things like that. And you were practicing this posture and you leaned forward on the bike and you stopped me and you said, I'm not thinking about my feet.
00:28:13 BARRY
And you said, whenever I get out on the bike and I'm not thinking about my feet, it's going to be a good day. And I got super excited inside, but I tried not to show you. And as soon as you left that day, I ran back and grabbed the, I started tracing the nerves that are involved in that pelvic tilt and they go exactly to where you get your numbness. And I was like, yes,
00:28:39 BARRY
Yes, we just took a big step in the right direction. But I held back because we needed to test it. And she went down to Tucson and we tested it and we failed. And it didn't work. But we didn't give up.
00:28:57 BARRY
up. And that was the key is we kept going forward. And it's still in process. We're still working on it. But I think we discovered some important things. And it was just because we started learning how to communicate with each other. Melissa is Melissa and I am me. And I do math in my head for a living. And she is not a math problem.
00:29:22 MELISA
Well, thank you.
00:29:26 FATTY
So there is so much here. Learning to communicate and what to communicate about, I think is #1 here. And probably a lot of marginal gains listeners are going, wow, so the one hour I spent with a fitter to deal with whatever contact point problems I have may not have been enough. Communication, another biggie.
00:29:51 FATTY
I think that the fact that this is a week-long experiment, I guess, is the right word, or one of the right words for this. What is the, I guess, what is the takeaway? What can our listeners use from this?
00:30:04 BARRY
If I'm going to speak on behalf of the cyclists out there, I think a big problem, number one, is here in the United States, we do not develop athletes.
00:30:18 BARRY
We do not teach them how to sit on bikes. We do not teach them how to pedal. We do not teach them how to ride in groups. If you want to be a bike racer, we throw you into crits. And that's the absolute worst place you should learn how to race a bike. With Melissa, she developed world-class power and world-class engine in a very short period of time, essentially on her own, with no one to bounce this stuff off of.
00:30:47 BARRY
If she was.
00:30:48 MELISA
With a very weird posture.
00:30:51 BARRY
If she was, if you were in Ireland, you would have been identified, right? If you were in France, you would have been identified. You would have been, your engine would have been noticed. And these issues would have been, you know, worked on from the time you were 14, 15, 16 years old. And
00:31:11 BARRY
What happened with you is you just got really strong, really fast. And so all of your connective tissue, all your feet and your hips and everything had to adapt to a lifetime of training in three to four years, which is really hard on the human body. You also push down harder than just about any other cyclist in the world. I mean, you're a top 2%, you know, power athlete. And
00:31:43 BARRY
I can work with an amateur athlete who has the same symptoms and it's way easier to fix because they're just simply not pushing down as hard as you do. And they definitely don't do the volume that you do. And they definitely aren't willing to live in the pain cave for as long as you are. So fixing the exact same issues with an amateur athlete might only take two or three hours because they don't physically stress their bodies out as much.
00:32:11 FATTY
Do most of the pros, because I know you work with a lot of pros, you don't have to name any others. Malise is generous enough to just sort of be an open book. But do most pros have significant chronic pain, either in a contact point or just elsewhere, as a byproduct of being so dedicated to such an intense sport?
00:32:34 BARRY
There is absolutely a part of cycling that is rooted in suffering.
00:32:42 BARRY
There is. And the athletes who are unable to separate the okay type of suffering from the not okay type of suffering are the ones who develop those issues. Most people, when they, when their feet go numb to the point that they can't walk when they get off the bike, they're not going to get on the bike in the beginning, right? They would have hung up, they would have hung it up.
00:33:07 BARRY
Every athlete I work with has something on the bike that bothers them every single time. Part of it's that it's a perfectly symmetrical closed chain. You are locked on the bike and you can't get out of your own way. And none of us, none of us are perfectly symmetrical. So there's always going to be this issue. And the stronger you are and the more time you spend in that saddle, the bigger a deal it becomes.
00:33:31 FATTY
Barry, I feel like this is probably
00:33:34 FATTY
the first of maybe more conversations that we ought to have about cycling and pain and getting either past it or through it. Thanks so much for joining.
00:33:45 BARRY
Thank you very much for having me.
00:33:46 FATTY
Let's talk about being a pro. How long have you been a pro where being a cyclist is your exclusive employment?
00:33:55 MELISA
Yeah, since last...
00:33:58 MELISA
April, I think. So a little over a year and a half.
00:34:01 FATTY
A year and a half. Okay, how is that different from being a pro cyclist and a professional with an office job?
00:34:12 MELISA
Yeah, I formerly worked in a lab, so I was a chemist, which is not something that you can bring on the road with you. So that required me to be at home in Salt Lake City,
00:34:24 MELISA
for seven days a week. Well, seven days in a row, and then I would get seven days off. So my schedule was interesting and sort of allowed me to race really big races because I worked a 70-hour work week, and then I got seven days off. So I was able to travel. But what
00:34:47 MELISA
I mean, it sounds luxurious, right? For the travel and for the ability to, make it to a race and dedicate a week to recon and all the things that you need, getting somewhere and getting adjusted to the time zone and all of these things instead of
00:35:08 MELISA
the traditional 9 to 5, Monday through Friday, where you're sort of like, if you're a pro working, you kind of have to fly in last second and then you don't really get the recon and all that. So I did have some perks for sure, but what I sort of really realized was that I was unable to recover. I was traveling in and out from
00:35:30 MELISA
work to these races, and then I'd do the race, and then Sunday I would come back, and then I'd have to start seven days of 10 plus hour shifts immediately. And I mean, not only do you not really get to sit around, you aren't able to cook good food, the training part always was a squeeze, and I sort of did fewer hours in training overall.
00:35:56 MELISA
when I wasn't at work, it was like preparing so that I could ride out of my car during lunch, which was nice. Like I had flexibility within my work to be able to ride at any time of the day. I just took a lunch break, clocked out, came back, clocked backed in and all of that. But yeah, I mean, it really added up and it was completely unsustainable.
00:36:18 FATTY
And that was really my question is,
00:36:21 FATTY
Is it possible, I mean, you've lived on both sides of this, where you were trying to be a pro cyclist and a day job worker, and you've been an exclusively professional cyclist. Do you think it is possible to do both like that? I mean, and be at the top of the field?
00:36:41 MELISA
Genuinely.
00:36:43 FATTY
I mean, you did once, right? I mean, the first time you took second in the Grand Prix, you were still working a day job, right?
00:36:50 MELISA
For half the year. Yeah, I was.
00:36:53 FATTY
For half of it.
00:36:54 MELISA
I think, yeah, I mean, I really only took time off. This was last year. It was also the year that I won Leadville. I ended my job in April, mostly so that I could, you know, dedicate
00:37:09 MELISA
four weeks to Leadville so that I could acclimate because I couldn't think of another way to really dedicate that time.
00:37:16 FATTY
Yeah, you were taking a big swing there, right? I mean, it is a big jump to say, I quit so that I can do this thing.
00:37:25 FATTY
that I get paid only if I win. It's that is not a that is not a small bet to make on one.
00:37:35 MELISA
When I quit the lab, I was definitely not making any sort of salary that was going to be able to support me at all. So I actually was pulling from my savings for that time.
00:37:53 FATTY
So what would you say to
00:37:55 FATTY
women who are, or men, I don't think gender matters in this case, fast neo pros who are trying to make the decision, can I make a living at this?
00:38:09 FATTY
Is the only way to successfully be a pro to make a leap into the chasm, sort of like what you did? Or is it possible to have a foot on both sides of that line?
00:38:22 MELISA
I think, I mean, I didn't just make a leap. I like with no...
00:38:28 MELISA
thought into it. I didn't, I mean, I had reason to believe that it was possible that I could be a winner. I think that if you can be a professional athlete and a professional worker at the same time and also be in the mix at all times or sort of present in the races, I think you can benefit from making the leap. But
00:38:54 MELISA
I told myself I'd give myself one year to see if it was possible and to see if I could really pursue it. I mean, luckily for me, it resulted in a really nice contract. And I don't think that it always does. I mean, I could have had a puncture at Leadville and been, or I mean, I could have had any kind of mechanical at Leadville and not one.
00:39:23 MELISA
and not even been top 10 and maybe I wouldn't be here. Maybe I wouldn't be a full-time pro anymore.
00:39:31 FATTY
Let's talk about now, or actually let's talk about the very near past, gravel burn. That is something that you just came back from, kind of a whirlwind summer where you had Leadville followed by Shawamagin, followed by Big and Little Sugar, followed by a trip to Africa. Of course,
00:39:53 FATTY
there is a tendency for people to follow the established races, and gravel burn may become one, but it certainly wasn't on a lot of folks' radar. But it was a pretty interesting race for you. Tell us a couple of the highlights from that.
00:40:08 MELISA
I don't actually typically add in a lot of other events outside of the Lifetime Grand Prix.
00:40:13 MELISA
I think that the series is really demanding, and I think that if you want to perform well at the races, you kind of have to
00:40:20 MELISA
be sort of critical in when you build your schedule, but I knew that I had gravel burn at the end of the year.
00:40:30 MELISA
I didn't prepare for it in the way that I would normally prepare for a seven-day stage race in a different country.
00:40:39 MELISA
I definitely
00:40:41 MELISA
was preparing for Little and Big Sugar, the doubleheader weekend, and I celebrated a little too hard at the gravel rave post, Big Sugar, but it, which I do not regret.
00:40:57 MELISA
It was super fun and a really nice and partial almost end to the season.
00:41:04 MELISA
Yeah.
00:41:05 MELISA
Then I made my way to Africa and
00:41:09 MELISA
because of sort of the nature of adding it in at the very end of the season, I sort of went in with an open mind.
00:41:17 MELISA
And knowing myself, I know that I somehow pull things off really well when I'm less than prepared.
00:41:29 FATTY
It's where that toughness we keep talking about comes into play.
00:41:34 FATTY
You do have the ability to lock in and go for it.
00:41:39 FATTY
I mean, that is your gift is what I would say.
00:41:42 MELISA
I think I prepare a lot day-to-day so that I can sort of succumb to chaos when it when it arises in races, because I think every race is chaotic in its own way.
00:41:57 MELISA
And
00:41:58 MELISA
So I like to lean into that a bit.
00:42:01 MELISA
And that's what gravel burn was for me.
00:42:03 MELISA
When I arrived.
00:42:04 FATTY
You need a t-shirt, succumb to chaos.
00:42:08 FATTY
That's your new tagline.
00:42:09 FATTY
I love it.
00:42:10 MELISA
No, it really was.
00:42:11 MELISA
I really can't describe a more chaotic week of racing, at least for me.
00:42:18 MELISA
I, yeah, oh my goodness.
00:42:21 MELISA
I arrived to Africa and
00:42:23 MELISA
immediately changed my travel plans from flying directly into George to taking a little holiday and spending time with a new friend that I met on the plane, which was another Grand Prix racer, Haley Prix, and she offered to show me around Cape Town because she lives there and we happened to be on the same flight from Bentonville.
00:42:46 MELISA
So that's how I started my week instead of
00:42:48 MELISA
what was originally planned in my itinerary.
00:42:51 MELISA
I instead got to go see some penguins.
00:42:54 MELISA
I rode the most beautiful ride over Chapman's Peak with Haley and got to have a amazing baked good from a local shop.
00:43:06 MELISA
And I got to walk around a really, really big mall.
00:43:10 MELISA
And yeah, and then I made my way with Haley and her family to the race start.
00:43:17 MELISA
And yeah, that's how I started.
00:43:20 MELISA
And I learned during this time that you could only have one bag for the whole seven days.
00:43:27 MELISA
And I didn't have a very big bag.
00:43:29 MELISA
So, and on top of that, I also learned I would be camping in a tent and I needed a sleeping bag, which I also didn't have.
00:43:39 MELISA
I learned that we would be showering in public showers and I would need flip-flops, didn't have those.
00:43:48 MELISA
So you succumbed to the chaos.
00:43:53 MELISA
I succumbed to the chaos and you know what?
00:43:56 MELISA
I arrived day one just as ready as everyone else was for three inches of rain and a hilltop finish.
00:44:07 FATTY
I kind of want to do short version of this, but you wound up in second place overall, which is pretty extraordinary considering a small but deep field.
00:44:20 MELISA
Yeah, this was probably one of the deepest fields I've ever raced in.
00:44:23 MELISA
I've never really raced internationally, at least not in gravel.
00:44:27 MELISA
And so I didn't really know what to expect.
00:44:30 MELISA
I knew that I was
00:44:31 MELISA
pretty fit from getting ready for Big and Little Sugar, but like I said, being fit for a one day race is a lot different than being fit for seven days of, four to five hours of racing on super, super rough terrain and also trying to sleep in a tent.
00:44:53 FATTY
How did that go?
00:44:54 FATTY
I have thought about that and thought about it actually while you were there, that the most difficult thing about racing for me is the sleep component.
00:45:04 FATTY
I mean, recovery is so critical and in a multi-day, in a stage race, sleep is a problem no matter what, even if you're in a nice hotel room and you're in a tent.
00:45:17 FATTY
I mean, how did that go?
00:45:19 FATTY
Were you able to get more than a couple hours of sleep at a time or any sleep at all?
00:45:25 MELISA
I will not lie.
00:45:27 MELISA
The first, like I was alluding to, the hilltop finish on the first stage.
00:45:33 MELISA
We were, it was like 40 degrees Fahrenheit and, or maybe a loss, and raining the entire time.
00:45:40 MELISA
And I think at one point it was kind of snowing, a little bit of flurries.
00:45:44 MELISA
And when I finished,
00:45:47 MELISA
I, for some reason, I didn't sign myself up for the event and I wasn't getting emails from the event.
00:45:56 MELISA
And in the emails, you were given your assigned tent.
00:46:00 MELISA
And so when I went to the finish line, they were like, okay, your tent is in your emails.
00:46:06 MELISA
And I was like, I don't know where that is.
00:46:08 MELISA
And I could not find anyone who did.
00:46:12 MELISA
And I was absolutely.
00:46:14 FATTY
You're just wandering around knocking on tent doors.
00:46:17 FATTY
Can you knock on a tent door?
00:46:19 MELISA
No, I wasn't.
00:46:20 MELISA
I wasn't doing that because I was completely frozen.
00:46:23 MELISA
And I couldn't feel my hands or feet.
00:46:26 MELISA
I was underneath the, there's a main tent with the meals and
00:46:33 MELISA
I was so cold that I wrapped myself up in one of those safety blankets, and I was like convulsing, shivering, because I was so cold.
00:46:45 MELISA
And so I was recovering really well for the next day.
00:46:50 MELISA
But yeah, I mean, everyone was nice, but there was just like a lot going on.
00:46:54 MELISA
Obviously, they hadn't anticipated such a cold finish, and a lot of people were in the same sort of freezing boat as me.
00:47:03 MELISA
And eventually, I think after maybe an hour or two of me doing that, they finally found someone who found someone who found someone who knew where my tent was.
00:47:13 MELISA
And I made my way to the tent and I was like, okay, we're just taking this one step at a time.
00:47:21 MELISA
The chaos is just, we're just living in the chaos.
00:47:24 MELISA
And I get to the shower and it's cold.
00:47:27 MELISA
And that
00:47:29 MELISA
Almost undid me.
00:47:30 FATTY
It was like, that's it.
00:47:34 FATTY
That it is the straw that broke the camel's back or almost.
00:47:38 FATTY
It sounds like you had one more straw and they didn't throw that and you kept on going.
00:47:42 MELISA
Well, I mean, I must have had a few more straws because I made it back to my tent after my freezing cold shower.
00:47:50 MELISA
And I think I don't remember what happened between that time and dinner, but I like
00:47:57 MELISA
I fell asleep or something.
00:47:59 MELISA
And then, I decided I needed, I was like so focused on really wanting some dry shoes for the next day because we knew that it was going to be like 30 degrees Fahrenheit to start and frozen overnight.
00:48:17 MELISA
And I really, really, really didn't want cold feet because after this last conversation you heard, we know that I'm obsessed with my feet.
00:48:25 MELISA
So I took a gamble and I put my shoes near the fire and I watched them really, really closely for a little while.
00:48:34 MELISA
And then I gained confidence and I walked away and I went to the bathroom.
00:48:37 MELISA
I came back and they were melted.
00:48:42 MELISA
So my lifeline of shoes and people were so nice.
00:48:46 MELISA
They were like, oh, you melted your shoes.
00:48:48 MELISA
You can borrow them.
00:48:49 MELISA
My extra pair.
00:48:51 MELISA
And I was like,
00:48:54 MELISA
What you don't know is that I'd rather wear these.
00:48:58 FATTY
Ride barefoot.
00:49:01 FATTY
I'll ride in my Crocs.
00:49:05 FATTY
No, and I believe you got some good help from a famous cyclist on that.
00:49:15 MELISA
Oh my gosh, yeah.
00:49:16 MELISA
I asked around a lot and I ended up at Lachlan Martin's
00:49:23 MELISA
RV, who he, funny enough, had done, he said that he had done exactly the same thing, melted the exact, because he also wears the same shoes that I was in.
00:49:35 MELISA
And he said that he had done exactly the same thing and he had cut out the toe box.
00:49:42 MELISA
And this was on like a cross country sort of
00:49:50 MELISA
thing and he cut off the toe box and duct taped over or something like that.
00:49:54 MELISA
And luckily it didn't come to that, but we had his mechanic there with me as well, or with him as well, and they had some ideas.
00:50:04 MELISA
Yeah, his mechanic and also Pete Stenton as mechanic, Big Tall Wayne.
00:50:09 MELISA
Yeah, they went to work on my shoes and they got them rideable and I was so thankful.
00:50:15 FATTY
I love that all of these big names in cycling.
00:50:19 FATTY
We're still absolutely happy to pitch in and solve this mess.
00:50:25 MELISA
Yeah, it ended up working out.
00:50:27 MELISA
And actually, yeah, the day after we sort of cut them apart and from the inside and got them ridable again, I actually, oh, I was so stoked the next day, I won the stage.
00:50:43 MELISA
And I, when I finished, I was like, the first thing I thought was, my gosh, I can't wait to tell them.
00:50:52 MELISA
But they helped me do.
00:50:53 FATTY
That is so great.
00:50:54 MELISA
So yeah, it was really cool.
00:50:57 MELISA
So that was really fun.
00:50:58 MELISA
The racing itself was really awesome.
00:51:01 MELISA
The terrain was really rough.
00:51:03 MELISA
The roads were incredibly corrugated.
00:51:06 MELISA
I have never been shaken so much.
00:51:10 MELISA
in an event in my whole life.
00:51:13 MELISA
I think that wide tires were really, really important out there.
00:51:17 MELISA
And the racing was super fun, dynamic.
00:51:22 MELISA
It came to sprint finish.
00:51:23 MELISA
A few of the stages and time gaps were pretty small, but also a lot of things because of the roughness of the terrain.
00:51:34 MELISA
It did a lot on people's equipment.
00:51:36 MELISA
And
00:51:38 MELISA
So it sort of shook things up all the time in the GC.
00:51:41 MELISA
And I went into the last day in second place and knew that any shake-up could happen, and it did.
00:51:51 MELISA
And the Ashley Moman-Pacio, who had been leading for the last, or how many, almost all the stages after
00:52:03 MELISA
catastrophic flat from Axel Dubo-Provo, who had been leading it as well, like who had lost 10 minutes.
00:52:12 MELISA
We're talking like really big gaps and really catastrophic events happening out there.
00:52:17 MELISA
Ashley had flatted on the last stage and I knew there was a chance that I could win, but then I also flatted.
00:52:27 MELISA
And amazingly and honestly, deservingly, Excel pulled out an incredible win and won the whole thing.
00:52:35 MELISA
And I fought.
00:52:37 MELISA
to the nail and was able to hold on to second by 8 seconds.
00:52:42 FATTY
So from what I understand, you have not had enough of stage racing in Africa?
00:52:47 MELISA
Yeah, I got asked to join for Cape Epic.
00:52:52 MELISA
And so I will be there in March.
00:52:55 FATTY
Cape Epic 2026.
00:52:57 FATTY
And of course, you're going to be doing Grand Prix 2026, right?
00:53:00 MELISA
Yeah, that's right.
00:53:01 MELISA
Yep.
00:53:02 FATTY
How are any
00:53:04 FATTY
Any plans on how you might approach that just on an overall strategy that might be different from last year?
00:53:13 FATTY
Is there a drop race that you're intentionally going to have or is it just go for it and see if you can win every single race or what?
00:53:21 MELISA
That's a really good question.
00:53:22 MELISA
I think what I've learned is that I like new challenges and I like to sort of throw myself into something that I feel like I haven't previously been good at.
00:53:33 MELISA
And for me, in the Grand Prix, at least, it's always been Sea Otter.
00:53:37 MELISA
That's kind of always been my race.
00:53:40 MELISA
I haven't come out in the spring very strong previously.
00:53:44 MELISA
And with Cape Epic, I think that it might set me up to be really strong in the spring.
00:53:48 MELISA
So I think for me, I like to, I mean, for the last few years, I've just focused on each race because it's really hard
00:53:57 MELISA
to focus on the series as a whole, especially with how much can go wrong, how much can go right, what, I mean, there's a lot out of your control.
00:54:04 MELISA
And so, and I learned in 2024 that one good, one good result can make your whole year.
00:54:12 MELISA
So if you can sort of
00:54:14 MELISA
pour yourself into just one.
00:54:16 MELISA
I think that's not necessarily a bad thing.
00:54:19 MELISA
And yeah, I'm excited to sort of pivot and have sea otter be maybe that goal for me next year.
00:54:27 FATTY
Love it.
00:54:28 FATTY
Final question.
00:54:29 FATTY
As you are training and eating and recovering for a living, is it still possible to enjoy bikes?
00:54:37 MELISA
Sometimes.
00:54:39 MELISA
I definitely get the feeling every time I go to Leadville, it reminds me, and I think that's why Leadville is so special to me is because it reminds me of where I've come.
00:54:48 MELISA
And it reminds me of a time when I didn't do this as a job and when it could be fun.
00:54:53 MELISA
And yeah, I think, yes, it can be fun.
00:54:58 MELISA
Is it always fun?
00:54:59 MELISA
No.
00:55:00 FATTY
And when is it fun?
00:55:01 MELISA
I specifically try to have a few days where I
00:55:08 MELISA
focus on doing a ride that is fun for me, which doesn't go along with training.
00:55:13 MELISA
It usually involves a ride that has a hike, a bike section in it, maybe a descent that I'm uncomfortable riding, maybe something that other people would traditionally not think is fun.
00:55:25 MELISA
But yeah, for me, I just like to add in a few rides that remind me of that.
00:55:30 FATTY
What's the last fun ride you had?
00:55:33 MELISA
Oh, I...
00:55:35 MELISA
In just before I went up to Leadville last July, my good friend Sarah and I rode up to the high point of Snowbird on ski roads and we rode down the most horrific riverbed of Baby Head Rocks.
00:55:57 MELISA
It was like we had to walk most of it.
00:56:01 MELISA
was not recommended for Rd.
00:56:03 MELISA
shoes.
00:56:04 FATTY
Oh, this was on, these were on Rd.
00:56:07 FATTY
shoes.
00:56:08 FATTY
You're hard on your shoes.
00:56:11 MELISA
No, I'm just saying like traditionally you can kind of get away with that.
00:56:16 MELISA
on your mountain bike, but not this time.
00:56:18 MELISA
And it was fun.
00:56:20 MELISA
It reminded me of days when there was no pressure and I was just out there to ride for fun.
00:56:27 MELISA
And I think it brings me back to those days whenever I do a backcountry ride like that.
00:56:31 MELISA
We're just out here for fun.
00:56:33 MELISA
There's no racing, there's no speed, there's just like having fun with your friends, doing something that's a little bit uncomfortable.
00:56:42 MELISA
And you get to finish it off with some nice memories and like a pizza.
00:56:49 FATTY
That sounds like every ride I do.
00:56:54 FATTY
Melissa, it has been a pleasure having you on Marginal Gains at Good Luck in 2026.
00:57:01 MELISA
Thank you.
00:57:06 FATTY
Big thanks also to Barry Anderson of Psychologic for dropping in.
00:57:10 FATTY
Listeners, Hadia and Josh will be back on the mic very soon, joining me for an Ask Josh Anything episode.
00:57:17 FATTY
I've got a great set of questions I'm looking forward to ambushing Josh with, but we can always use more.
00:57:23 FATTY
Use our marginal gains hotline, 317-343-4506.
00:57:28 FATTY
To do so, you can text, you can call.
00:57:31 FATTY
You can also go old school and comment at marginalgainspodcast.cc.
00:57:36 FATTY
Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you soon on Marginal Gains.
00:00:04 FATTY
This is Marginal Gains, the show that makes a big deal about the little things and how those little things can be a big deal.
00:00:10 FATTY
I'm Fatty, and I am going to do a little bit of boasting about the fact that I have completed all of my bike-related Christmas shopping as of December 6th.
00:00:21 FATTY
I did this mostly by shopping at silca.cc.
00:00:24 FATTY
The cyclists in my life can expect to get the new Silca Electrico Micro, which is bar none the best and most reliable way I know of to fill a tire in the field.
00:00:36 FATTY
The mountain bikers in my friend circle might also find the ultimate shock pump in their stockings.
00:00:42 FATTY
It is easily the best shock pump in the world.
00:00:45 FATTY
Fun fact, I am giving away all my old shock pumps as white elephant gifts.
00:00:51 FATTY
Apologies in advance to anyone who receives those.
00:00:54 FATTY
Be like me, do all your gifts shopping at Silca.cc.
00:00:59 FATTY
And on the off chance that someone is listening to this episode and is wondering what would Fatty like for Christmas, here's a hint.
00:01:06 FATTY
I really, really, really want just one thing.
00:01:09 FATTY
A pair of the Shimano S-Phyre XC903 mountain bike shoes in the incredible camo colorway.
00:01:17 FATTY
Honestly, I do not need them because I already have two pair of the XC903s.
00:01:22 FATTY
You'll be hearing a lot more about sore feet in this episode, and that used to be a huge problem for me.
00:01:29 FATTY
But it is not anymore because Shimano's shoes fully solved the problem for me.
00:01:34 FATTY
Whether for mountain or Rd.
00:01:36 FATTY
Shimano S-Phyre shoes are the only cycling shoes I will wear anymore.
00:01:41 FATTY
Full stop.
00:01:42 FATTY
So yes, I already have two pair, but I really do want the camo version.
00:01:48 FATTY
Check them out yourself at bike.shimano.com.
00:01:51 FATTY
In this episode, I am talking with pro cyclist Melissa Rollins, who took overall second in Leadville this year, won last year, is two-time winner of Shawamagan, a stage winner and overall second in the 2025 Gravel Burn, winner of this year's Steamboat Gravel and Breck Firecracker 50, and is frankly hard
00:02:12 FATTY
It's hard to believe that she has only been pro for a couple of years.
00:02:16 FATTY
And yes, she happens to be my daughter.
00:02:18 FATTY
So I am not even going to remotely try to be objective in this interview.
00:02:27 FATTY
Elisa Rollins is your 2024 lifetime Leadville 100 champion.
00:02:42 FATTY
Melissa, it is great to have you back for the show.
00:02:45 FATTY
This time to talk about you instead of talking about Levi's Gran Fondo, among other things.
00:02:53 MELISA
Yeah, hi, thanks.
00:02:55 MELISA
Thanks for having me.
00:02:56 FATTY
And I feel lucky that we've got you here.
00:02:58 FATTY
You just got back from Arizona.
00:03:00 FATTY
More about that in a second.
00:03:02 FATTY
And tomorrow you're on your way to Australia.
00:03:05 FATTY
As A pro cyclist, you were pretty much always on the move.
00:03:09 FATTY
But you haven't always been.
00:03:11 FATTY
And I kind of want to go to your origin story.
00:03:15 FATTY
Let's talk about what made you fall in love with the bike.
00:03:21 MELISA
I mean, I feel really lucky that I've had you and my mom like always as an example of, you know, showing me what cycling can look like and showing that
00:03:39 MELISA
sport can continue after high school because that was kind of what I always did.
00:03:43 MELISA
I had traditional sports in high school like soccer, I swam, but not a lot of people do those into adulthood.
00:03:52 MELISA
And, I sort of ran into that problem when I went to college and didn't really have a sport outlet anymore.
00:04:00 MELISA
I was sort of missing that piece in my life.
00:04:03 MELISA
And so I sort of looked to you guys to see, I mean, you spent your weekends
00:04:08 MELISA
riding a million miles.
00:04:10 MELISA
I didn't know what any of that meant at the time, but I knew that you spent a lot of time on the weekends riding and you would come back happier for it.
00:04:20 MELISA
And yeah, I mean, I got to watch my mom specifically sort of pour her heart into this since I was, you know, five years old.
00:04:30 MELISA
She was always cycling and I think it
00:04:34 MELISA
made her a better mom because of it.
00:04:36 MELISA
I mean, she was able to do her thing and put herself first when she went out for a bike ride and then she'd come back and she'd pour herself into her kids.
00:04:43 MELISA
So that was really cool to see.
00:04:46 MELISA
And as I sort of got into my own adulthood,
00:04:51 MELISA
I felt myself kind of longing for the same thing.
00:04:54 MELISA
So yeah, I look to you guys and you guys have been so supportive of my journey as a cyclist.
00:05:01 FATTY
Well, I mean, it's obviously kind of phenomenal to watch.
00:05:04 FATTY
I mean, this is not, and we expected you to be a great regional racer.
00:05:10 FATTY
I think that, I mean, you've always been an athlete.
00:05:14 FATTY
I mean, you have swam in state in high school.
00:05:17 FATTY
So it's not like you come from
00:05:20 FATTY
a no talent gene pool.
00:05:24 FATTY
Your mom, obviously, seriously gifted, talented racer, had the single speed record in Leadville for many, many years.
00:05:34 FATTY
So.
00:05:35 MELISA
I mean, I was never the best, though.
00:05:38 MELISA
When I played soccer, I feel like I worked really hard, but I wasn't particularly good.
00:05:43 MELISA
I was never known as the best on the team.
00:05:45 MELISA
When I swam, I
00:05:47 MELISA
Yeah, you're right.
00:05:48 MELISA
I made it to state, only 22 qualify per event, and I was either an alternate or selected as 22nd swimmer for the event that I raced, and I was last.
00:06:02 MELISA
So yeah, I mean, I wasn't a thriving athlete.
00:06:06 MELISA
I loved it, and I found a lot of joy and confidence from the sports that I did, but I wasn't
00:06:15 MELISA
naturally gifted, I wouldn't say.
00:06:18 MELISA
So, yeah.
00:06:20 FATTY
But, and I think that the key part here is you, in every event that you've ever done, you kind of go full force into it.
00:06:32 FATTY
And I think that more than anything is inherited from your mom.
00:06:36 FATTY
I mean, she is not known as the hammer.
00:06:38 FATTY
for no reason.
00:06:40 FATTY
That's fair.
00:06:40 FATTY
So, I mean, you swam in high school.
00:06:43 FATTY
I think you did one Nika race in high school.
00:06:47 FATTY
Mountain biking was not at all your thing until as you described in college.
00:06:52 FATTY
And you kind of hit sort of a sophomore existential crisis and you went to Leadville and you did your first Leadville race.
00:07:02 FATTY
What was your first finish time?
00:07:04 MELISA
It was 10 hours and 12 minutes.
00:07:07 FATTY
A very respectable finish.
00:07:09 FATTY
I mean, that is a, I mean, many, many people would be super excited with that.
00:07:15 FATTY
And you did that on a stock scalpel 2 that I gave you that I had won in a blog-related raffle.
00:07:27 FATTY
And
00:07:28 FATTY
I mean, it's not like you were on ultra premium equipment, but the reason I mentioned the hand-me-down is because that's going to be a little bit of a theme.
00:07:36 FATTY
I want to flash forward to 2019, which is when you got your second, or when you got your first sub 9 finish.
00:07:45 FATTY
And I remember that because you and I finished with our hands raised together.
00:07:49 FATTY
We finished it together.
00:07:50 MELISA
Yeah, isn't that cool?
00:07:51 FATTY
And you were on once again a hand-me-down bike, a five-year-old Ibis ******.
00:07:58 FATTY
Which, I mean, that was long enough ago that Ibis was less politically correct in naming their bikes.
00:08:07 MELISA
Yeah.
00:08:09 MELISA
That's fair.
00:08:09 MELISA
Yeah, I think I sort of hovered around that 10 hour mark for three years.
00:08:13 MELISA
And then when I finished it with you, that was sort of like a pivotal turning point.
00:08:19 MELISA
I started to get faster and I started to get faster quickly.
00:08:22 MELISA
And
00:08:24 MELISA
Yeah, it was cool.
00:08:26 MELISA
I think I caught you in the last 10 miles or something, maybe fewer, like last five miles.
00:08:31 MELISA
I remember I called your name.
00:08:33 MELISA
I saw you up the road.
00:08:35 FATTY
I had just finished climbing the boulevard.
00:08:38 FATTY
So I just hit the pavement when you called my name.
00:08:41 FATTY
So it was in the final mile that I heard you.
00:08:44 FATTY
And so I rode in circles for a minute and then we rode and finished it together.
00:08:49 FATTY
It was incredible.
00:08:50 FATTY
I mean, honestly, in
00:08:54 FATTY
I don't know, the 10,000 times I've done that race, there are a few things that stand out as actual bright memories.
00:09:00 FATTY
That is for sure one of them.
00:09:03 FATTY
How about Melissa Rollins, 23 years young, Salt Lake City, Utah, crushing it out there today?
00:09:08 MELISA
Way to go, Melissa.
00:09:09 MELISA
Look at that hand in hand there.
00:09:12 MELISA
Elden Nelson out of Alpine, Utah.
00:09:15 FATTY
And then COVID.
00:09:18 FATTY
So you.
00:09:21 FATTY
2019 suddenly showing that you were getting faster than there is a year that is essentially for races, a black hole.
00:09:30 FATTY
Nobody knows how anybody was doing, but you were not inactive during that time.
00:09:35 FATTY
And I think that this is kind of important because on one side of COVID, you were racing with normal people like me.
00:09:44 FATTY
And then on the other side of that, when we came back in 20,
00:09:49 FATTY
Was it 21?
00:09:50 MELISA
Yeah, 21.
00:09:51 FATTY
21, we were racing again.
00:09:53 FATTY
Suddenly things had changed.
00:09:54 FATTY
What happened in that two years?
00:09:56 MELISA
Yeah, I had hired a coach during that time and I think I just rode A lot.
00:10:02 MELISA
I remember in 2020, I just rode A lot.
00:10:04 MELISA
I rode all of, I don't know, I mean, like you said, there was no races.
00:10:11 MELISA
So I sort of just like raced Strava.
00:10:14 MELISA
I chose Strava segments and I raced.
00:10:17 MELISA
And
00:10:18 MELISA
I got my first Rd.
00:10:22 MELISA
bike, I think, or my first, it was actually a quasi-road bike.
00:10:28 MELISA
I think it was a cyclocross bike that I put some Rd.
00:10:32 MELISA
tires on and I just spent all my time riding.
00:10:36 MELISA
I think, yeah, I was working a bit.
00:10:39 MELISA
I worked in person in a lab and yeah, I was able to spend a lot of time outside and yeah.
00:10:48 FATTY
And then on the other side of that, you came back, you did the lead boat, which is a essentially and welding of two events, the Leadville 100 and the Steamboat Gravel Race.
00:11:04 FATTY
And you took second in that in the combined time category.
00:11:11 FATTY
And that was enough to get to get some proteins
00:11:16 FATTY
some sponsorship interest.
00:11:19 MELISA
Yeah, Not only was I second in Leadboat, but I was 6th at Leadville that year.
00:11:24 MELISA
And it was kind of the first year that pros really, really started showing up.
00:11:27 MELISA
I was, I mean, I climbed the boulevard and I could see when I was finishing, I could see Katarina Nash just up ahead of me.
00:11:35 MELISA
And so I finished within a minute of her and which would have been 5th and
00:11:42 MELISA
maybe 20 seconds ahead of her was Hannah Otto, who's 4th.
00:11:44 MELISA
And these were girls that I had looked up to as cyclists for a long time.
00:11:49 MELISA
And yeah, like you said before, in 2019, when I was racing that race, I was finishing, you know, an hour plus slower or something.
00:12:03 MELISA
And yeah, I came back two years later and suddenly I was, you know, near the pointy end.
00:12:09 FATTY
And I mean, suddenly it is maybe a word that I want to focus on because since then, your times have increased dramatically.
00:12:20 FATTY
I mean, really dramatically.
00:12:21 FATTY
You've gone from being fast for a normal person to being someone that everyone is afraid of in Leadville, right?
00:12:28 FATTY
It's the, you are, what was your time last year in 2025?
00:12:35 MELISA
It was 6 hours and 59 minutes.
00:12:39 MELISA
so I have taken off 3 hours from my first Leadville, but a lot of that 3 hours came, like you said, in the last couple of years.
00:12:49 MELISA
And so it was a steep trajectory, a steep last few years, which it's actually really interesting that you can sort of look at that
00:13:02 MELISA
my result at Leadville as sort of a scope of my career, because I'm not sure that a lot of people have something like that.
00:13:10 MELISA
I mean, you can sort of look at race results or, yeah, I guess how you're doing, regionally and then nationally and then maybe internationally.
00:13:23 MELISA
But for me, you can actually see linearly
00:13:28 MELISA
every single year at Leadville because I've sort of done it every single year and I have gotten significantly faster almost every time I've done it.
00:13:35 FATTY
Significantly faster.
00:13:37 FATTY
Yeah.
00:13:38 FATTY
I would put I would call that an understatement.
00:13:40 FATTY
But yeah, you and that includes in 2024 a win.
00:13:49 MELISA
Yeah.
00:13:49 FATTY
And that I kind of want to this is just sort of interesting fun fact right on once again a hand-me-down bike.
00:13:59 FATTY
So you won Leadville on a hand-me-down?
00:14:01 MELISA
I won Leadville on a second-hand four-year-old bike.
00:14:08 MELISA
If you saw the cable housing now, you would very would cringe at what it looks like.
00:14:16 FATTY
And that is no shade on Team 2024, now Team 2028.
00:14:22 FATTY
their sponsor, Felt, didn't have a mountain bike at the time.
00:14:25 FATTY
And they were kind of scrambling.
00:14:27 FATTY
It's like you were the only person on the team that mountain biked.
00:14:31 FATTY
And so they were like making phone calls trying to find something for you.
00:14:36 FATTY
2024 and 2025, where the only person who was able to beat you in Leadville last year was Kate Courtney,
00:14:46 FATTY
who beat your record, what would have been your new record by another new record, which is, I mean, if you're going to get beaten, not a bad person or a bad time to have been beaten.
00:15:00 FATTY
You, and we're underscoring that you have really gotten fast, really, really fast.
00:15:06 MELISA
When I finished Leadville this year, knowing that I broke the record, I felt like it was a win, even though it was second.
00:15:13 MELISA
Kate really, really demonstrated what was possible.
00:15:17 MELISA
And I think that actually really has inspired me to believe even more is possible for next year.
00:15:26 FATTY
Love that.
00:15:27 FATTY
And
00:15:29 FATTY
I have been leading up to a point here.
00:15:31 FATTY
Believe it or not, this is not just me being your hype man, although I'm happy to do that for an entire episode of the show.
00:15:39 FATTY
We actually have another guest on this episode, Barry Anderson, a psychologic in, where in Arizona are you, Barry?
00:15:48 FATTY
Welcome, by the way.
00:15:48 BARRY
Thank you.
00:15:49 BARRY
Thanks for having me.
00:15:50 BARRY
We are in Scottsdale, Arizona.
00:15:52 BARRY
It's going to be like 68 degrees here today.
00:15:54 BARRY
So.
00:15:55 FATTY
This is the second time we've had you on the show.
00:15:57 FATTY
You are, I would want to call you a bike fitter, although we already have talked about whether that is an accurate description of what you really do.
00:16:06 FATTY
In this case, though, we're having you on the show because you and Melissa have just spent basically a week together working on bike fit, bike position, and so forth.
00:16:19 FATTY
And
00:16:20 FATTY
I think that has a lot to do with how fast Melissa has gotten fast, that her drive, her ambition, her dedication to training have all facilitated this incredibly powerful engine.
00:16:38 FATTY
maybe outstripping the fit, the way that she rides on the bike, and resulting in a lot of pain.
00:16:45 FATTY
Is that a fair assessment, Melissa?
00:16:47 MELISA
Yeah, yep.
00:16:48 MELISA
I feel like I've been dealing with a lot over the last, yeah, five years.
00:16:53 FATTY
Where do you hurt?
00:16:54 MELISA
Well, hurt is an interesting word for it because, so my feet go numb when I ride in any kind of like traditional cleat position.
00:17:04 MELISA
And
00:17:06 MELISA
So my feet are number one problem at all times.
00:17:09 MELISA
And #2 problem is that I have a chronic saddle sores.
00:17:13 MELISA
And we're not just talking like 1 sometimes or like 1 bad one.
00:17:18 MELISA
I have like 12 and it's, they're not in any sort of like spot.
00:17:23 MELISA
They are in all the spots.
00:17:24 MELISA
And yeah, so I first reached out to Barry last year in sort of pursuit of trying to solve this because
00:17:34 MELISA
I mean, and I'm not saying that I've just like powered through it, which I kind of have, but I have asked for help from a lot of different people and just haven't really gotten anywhere with any of them.
00:17:48 MELISA
And so, yeah, I mean, Sophia recommended that I chat with Barry and I feel like I'm learning so much about myself every time I go to see him.
00:17:59 MELISA
which I hadn't known before.
00:18:01 MELISA
And it's not that I didn't see anyone good before because all the fitters that I saw before were great and they really helped me to the best of their ability.
00:18:09 MELISA
But I think what I'm dealing with, the numbness, it's not standard.
00:18:14 MELISA
And I think people kind of give up on that.
00:18:18 MELISA
So yeah, it's been really nice to, you know, spend a week going back and forth with Barry and him telling me, you know, I'm not going to give up until you tell me to.
00:18:29 MELISA
So that's, I mean, it seems like sort of the right fit for my scenario at the moment.
00:18:36 FATTY
And I want to sort of step back for a second, let the two of you talk.
00:18:40 FATTY
What is it like to, Barry, from your perspective, work with an athlete for a full week on trying to get fit and what, you know, what the steps are and, you know, is a week enough?
00:18:52 FATTY
And Melissa, from your perspective,
00:18:54 FATTY
to try to solve what is, I won't say career limiting, but certainly career inhibiting issue for you.
00:19:05 BARRY
Well, for me, I will jump in.
00:19:07 BARRY
For me, it's why I do this.
00:19:10 BARRY
I am not here for myself.
00:19:13 BARRY
I am here for the athletes.
00:19:14 BARRY
And it doesn't matter whether it's someone with a world-class engine like Melissa or if it is a first-timer looking to just thinking about buying their first gravel bike.
00:19:25 BARRY
it's super important for a bike fitter to be focused on the athlete.
00:19:30 BARRY
I also, I learned from mistakes that I went through.
00:19:35 BARRY
And when I got my very first bike fit, I was 17 or 18, and the guy who gave it to me didn't touch my fit again for another,
00:19:44 BARRY
So he never touched it again.
00:19:45 BARRY
I raced for him for four or five years on the exact same fit I had.
00:19:49 BARRY
And I think I'd probably changed a little bit between 17 and 22, 23.
00:19:54 BARRY
But that's just the way we used to view bike fit.
00:19:56 BARRY
And the owner here, he has a saying that we used to view bike fit as a vasectomy.
00:20:04 BARRY
You got it done and it was over.
00:20:06 BARRY
And really, it's more like a haircut.
00:20:09 BARRY
You have to go in because you're changing all the time.
00:20:12 BARRY
And you have to go in and have that updated. With the exciting thing about working with Melissa is that we, over the last two years, we've kind of learned how to talk to each other. And I think a lot of the discomfort she was going through, a lot of times she felt that she wasn't supposed to complain, that she's not supposed to be the problem.
00:20:41 BARRY
And the reality is that she was never the problem. And the solutions that we are finally coming to now are very counterintuitive, very counterintuitive and pretty exciting for me because I get to learn new things. But I am so excited for Melissa's year coming up. I am just like giddy inside. I think she's going to have an amazing season.
00:21:06 FATTY
I think that's lesson one, right? Put away your inner stoic. I think a lot of us who are cyclists and especially endurance cyclists, the stoicism being quiet and just, you know, put, you know, compartmentalizing pain is like part of the deal. And it sounds like, I mean, that is fine. Sometimes whatever it takes to get through the day. But when you're working with a fitter, then you need to open up that box.
00:21:34 MELISA
Yeah, I actually am remembering now just linking this back to the original conversation about my trajectory from Leadville. I remember that year that I finished with you in 2019
00:21:45 MELISA
was kind of the first year that my foot problems started happening, but I never addressed it. And instead of addressing it, I just rode full force after. I remember taking my shoes off after the race and being like, wow, that felt really bad. And I had to walk around like on the insides of my feet for the next like 2 days. And, you know, instead of being like, wow, I should probably ask someone about that, I was like, well, I guess.
00:22:14 MELISA
Maybe some time off will help, and then I'll go back to doing exactly what I was doing before.
00:22:18 FATTY
Sure, your blessing and your curse, right? That you are tough enough that you can...
00:22:24 FATTY
basically put aside whatever is bothering you and power through it. The curse is it's not like it's going to get better because you're able to do that. And it's actually having the conversation. So how, I mean, how does a week-long interaction like this, what is, what did that look like? I'd love to hear more.
00:22:44 MELISA
Yeah, I think I came, I came with a specific thing that I wanted to address, which was my feet. And
00:22:54 MELISA
like I said, over the last five years or so, since that day in Leadville, when I took my shoes off and I couldn't touch the ground with the outsides of my feet, I have been on this quest to figure out why that's happening. And I've probably gone through, you know, 25 different pairs of shoes. I've seen a lot of different fitters. Nobody really understands. I've like put every wedge, every
00:23:22 MELISA
I've moved Makli into every position possible. And yeah, I finally actually, I actually was training through a lot of numbness in my feet. And had my races been an hour or something, I think I could have still been performing well. But in 2024, I was dealing with
00:23:48 MELISA
tons of numbness for the first six or seven months of the year. I think I changed shoes. Oh, it had to have been 15 times. And I had custom orthotics made. This was like, I think this was prior to when I met you, Barry. So this was all kind of just me and just
00:24:09 MELISA
sort of trying and trying and trying and believing every single day I would make a change in my fit some way and I'd go out with hope every single day and every single day I'd come home with devastation. But it was the hope that kept me training and I trained well and I would take, I would do my intervals and I'd take my shoes off in between. So I was strong. I was really, really strong. But the results in races, they were not there.
00:24:37 MELISA
I kept trying, kept trying, kept trying, kept believing. And this is 2024. This is last year, three weeks before Leadville. I don't know how this even happened, but I found a pair of shoes and I put my cleats all the way back almost into my arch. And I moved up to Leadville for three weeks and then I won Leadville because the numbness was gone.
00:25:03 MELISA
So fast forward another year and a half, I had seen Barry in that time, but the feet were a non-issue to me anymore because I thought I had found a solution and I sort of was protective. I was like, I don't even know if I told you the first time I saw you about my feet.
00:25:19 MELISA
I think I was just like, don't touch those. I have something.
00:25:24 BARRY
You've mentioned that it had been an issue in the past. The first time we talked, we were talking about saddle issues mostly.
00:25:29 MELISA
Yeah, so which, you know, if you know anything about fit, that foot issues and saddle issues often go hand in hand. So I didn't allow you to look at my shoes and we sort of just.
00:25:43 BARRY
And as a result, I was convinced the problem, I was convinced the problem was in the shoes.
00:25:48 BARRY
I was convinced. And guess who was wrong? I was wrong.
00:25:52 MELISA
The issue with the shoes that I didn't mention is that these shoes are really narrow. I don't have a narrow foot, but they're really narrow. And not only are they narrow, but they're also small. They're a little bit too small for my big foot and a little bit narrow. So like I said, I'd show them to Barry. Barry was a little worried about how narrow and small they were, but I was like, don't touch them.
00:26:16 MELISA
And then six months later, after hours and hours of training, I send Barry an email and I'm like, remember the foot thing? so it's an issue again. And I think that was when you first had said, maybe we need to look at some wider shoes. And I was like, little do you know, I've tried wider shoes. I've tried every kind of shoe. But yeah, I'll try it.
00:26:44 MELISA
Which I think part of this is that I didn't really have someone who was static through all of this. I mean, this is sort of a journey and it's chronological. And what I was missing was somebody that I could talk to who understands the body, understands bike fit, understands the needs and demands of a cyclist. Like I'm not just going to stop because my feet hurt. We have to figure out how to manage the foot pain so I can still go.
00:27:13 MELISA
What I learned over time was that Barry was this person for me. And I mean, it's taken me a while, but I feel like, especially this last week when I was there for, I mean, seven days, I think I saw you five times or something. I really leaned into that. And I think we really got somewhere with it.
00:27:31 BARRY
It's a big deal. And when you're dealing with a chronic problem, sometimes the solutions are, there's three or four things feeding into it. And
00:27:43 BARRY
We have to spend time together. We have to go through that. We were actually working on something else when I had my aha moment about your feet. We were talking about pelvic posture and about rotating and about firing glutes and iliac artery flow and things like that. And you were practicing this posture and you leaned forward on the bike and you stopped me and you said, I'm not thinking about my feet.
00:28:13 BARRY
And you said, whenever I get out on the bike and I'm not thinking about my feet, it's going to be a good day. And I got super excited inside, but I tried not to show you. And as soon as you left that day, I ran back and grabbed the, I started tracing the nerves that are involved in that pelvic tilt and they go exactly to where you get your numbness. And I was like, yes,
00:28:39 BARRY
Yes, we just took a big step in the right direction. But I held back because we needed to test it. And she went down to Tucson and we tested it and we failed. And it didn't work. But we didn't give up.
00:28:57 BARRY
up. And that was the key is we kept going forward. And it's still in process. We're still working on it. But I think we discovered some important things. And it was just because we started learning how to communicate with each other. Melissa is Melissa and I am me. And I do math in my head for a living. And she is not a math problem.
00:29:22 MELISA
Well, thank you.
00:29:26 FATTY
So there is so much here. Learning to communicate and what to communicate about, I think is #1 here. And probably a lot of marginal gains listeners are going, wow, so the one hour I spent with a fitter to deal with whatever contact point problems I have may not have been enough. Communication, another biggie.
00:29:51 FATTY
I think that the fact that this is a week-long experiment, I guess, is the right word, or one of the right words for this. What is the, I guess, what is the takeaway? What can our listeners use from this?
00:30:04 BARRY
If I'm going to speak on behalf of the cyclists out there, I think a big problem, number one, is here in the United States, we do not develop athletes.
00:30:18 BARRY
We do not teach them how to sit on bikes. We do not teach them how to pedal. We do not teach them how to ride in groups. If you want to be a bike racer, we throw you into crits. And that's the absolute worst place you should learn how to race a bike. With Melissa, she developed world-class power and world-class engine in a very short period of time, essentially on her own, with no one to bounce this stuff off of.
00:30:47 BARRY
If she was.
00:30:48 MELISA
With a very weird posture.
00:30:51 BARRY
If she was, if you were in Ireland, you would have been identified, right? If you were in France, you would have been identified. You would have been, your engine would have been noticed. And these issues would have been, you know, worked on from the time you were 14, 15, 16 years old. And
00:31:11 BARRY
What happened with you is you just got really strong, really fast. And so all of your connective tissue, all your feet and your hips and everything had to adapt to a lifetime of training in three to four years, which is really hard on the human body. You also push down harder than just about any other cyclist in the world. I mean, you're a top 2%, you know, power athlete. And
00:31:43 BARRY
I can work with an amateur athlete who has the same symptoms and it's way easier to fix because they're just simply not pushing down as hard as you do. And they definitely don't do the volume that you do. And they definitely aren't willing to live in the pain cave for as long as you are. So fixing the exact same issues with an amateur athlete might only take two or three hours because they don't physically stress their bodies out as much.
00:32:11 FATTY
Do most of the pros, because I know you work with a lot of pros, you don't have to name any others. Malise is generous enough to just sort of be an open book. But do most pros have significant chronic pain, either in a contact point or just elsewhere, as a byproduct of being so dedicated to such an intense sport?
00:32:34 BARRY
There is absolutely a part of cycling that is rooted in suffering.
00:32:42 BARRY
There is. And the athletes who are unable to separate the okay type of suffering from the not okay type of suffering are the ones who develop those issues. Most people, when they, when their feet go numb to the point that they can't walk when they get off the bike, they're not going to get on the bike in the beginning, right? They would have hung up, they would have hung it up.
00:33:07 BARRY
Every athlete I work with has something on the bike that bothers them every single time. Part of it's that it's a perfectly symmetrical closed chain. You are locked on the bike and you can't get out of your own way. And none of us, none of us are perfectly symmetrical. So there's always going to be this issue. And the stronger you are and the more time you spend in that saddle, the bigger a deal it becomes.
00:33:31 FATTY
Barry, I feel like this is probably
00:33:34 FATTY
the first of maybe more conversations that we ought to have about cycling and pain and getting either past it or through it. Thanks so much for joining.
00:33:45 BARRY
Thank you very much for having me.
00:33:46 FATTY
Let's talk about being a pro. How long have you been a pro where being a cyclist is your exclusive employment?
00:33:55 MELISA
Yeah, since last...
00:33:58 MELISA
April, I think. So a little over a year and a half.
00:34:01 FATTY
A year and a half. Okay, how is that different from being a pro cyclist and a professional with an office job?
00:34:12 MELISA
Yeah, I formerly worked in a lab, so I was a chemist, which is not something that you can bring on the road with you. So that required me to be at home in Salt Lake City,
00:34:24 MELISA
for seven days a week. Well, seven days in a row, and then I would get seven days off. So my schedule was interesting and sort of allowed me to race really big races because I worked a 70-hour work week, and then I got seven days off. So I was able to travel. But what
00:34:47 MELISA
I mean, it sounds luxurious, right? For the travel and for the ability to, make it to a race and dedicate a week to recon and all the things that you need, getting somewhere and getting adjusted to the time zone and all of these things instead of
00:35:08 MELISA
the traditional 9 to 5, Monday through Friday, where you're sort of like, if you're a pro working, you kind of have to fly in last second and then you don't really get the recon and all that. So I did have some perks for sure, but what I sort of really realized was that I was unable to recover. I was traveling in and out from
00:35:30 MELISA
work to these races, and then I'd do the race, and then Sunday I would come back, and then I'd have to start seven days of 10 plus hour shifts immediately. And I mean, not only do you not really get to sit around, you aren't able to cook good food, the training part always was a squeeze, and I sort of did fewer hours in training overall.
00:35:56 MELISA
when I wasn't at work, it was like preparing so that I could ride out of my car during lunch, which was nice. Like I had flexibility within my work to be able to ride at any time of the day. I just took a lunch break, clocked out, came back, clocked backed in and all of that. But yeah, I mean, it really added up and it was completely unsustainable.
00:36:18 FATTY
And that was really my question is,
00:36:21 FATTY
Is it possible, I mean, you've lived on both sides of this, where you were trying to be a pro cyclist and a day job worker, and you've been an exclusively professional cyclist. Do you think it is possible to do both like that? I mean, and be at the top of the field?
00:36:41 MELISA
Genuinely.
00:36:43 FATTY
I mean, you did once, right? I mean, the first time you took second in the Grand Prix, you were still working a day job, right?
00:36:50 MELISA
For half the year. Yeah, I was.
00:36:53 FATTY
For half of it.
00:36:54 MELISA
I think, yeah, I mean, I really only took time off. This was last year. It was also the year that I won Leadville. I ended my job in April, mostly so that I could, you know, dedicate
00:37:09 MELISA
four weeks to Leadville so that I could acclimate because I couldn't think of another way to really dedicate that time.
00:37:16 FATTY
Yeah, you were taking a big swing there, right? I mean, it is a big jump to say, I quit so that I can do this thing.
00:37:25 FATTY
that I get paid only if I win. It's that is not a that is not a small bet to make on one.
00:37:35 MELISA
When I quit the lab, I was definitely not making any sort of salary that was going to be able to support me at all. So I actually was pulling from my savings for that time.
00:37:53 FATTY
So what would you say to
00:37:55 FATTY
women who are, or men, I don't think gender matters in this case, fast neo pros who are trying to make the decision, can I make a living at this?
00:38:09 FATTY
Is the only way to successfully be a pro to make a leap into the chasm, sort of like what you did? Or is it possible to have a foot on both sides of that line?
00:38:22 MELISA
I think, I mean, I didn't just make a leap. I like with no...
00:38:28 MELISA
thought into it. I didn't, I mean, I had reason to believe that it was possible that I could be a winner. I think that if you can be a professional athlete and a professional worker at the same time and also be in the mix at all times or sort of present in the races, I think you can benefit from making the leap. But
00:38:54 MELISA
I told myself I'd give myself one year to see if it was possible and to see if I could really pursue it. I mean, luckily for me, it resulted in a really nice contract. And I don't think that it always does. I mean, I could have had a puncture at Leadville and been, or I mean, I could have had any kind of mechanical at Leadville and not one.
00:39:23 MELISA
and not even been top 10 and maybe I wouldn't be here. Maybe I wouldn't be a full-time pro anymore.
00:39:31 FATTY
Let's talk about now, or actually let's talk about the very near past, gravel burn. That is something that you just came back from, kind of a whirlwind summer where you had Leadville followed by Shawamagin, followed by Big and Little Sugar, followed by a trip to Africa. Of course,
00:39:53 FATTY
there is a tendency for people to follow the established races, and gravel burn may become one, but it certainly wasn't on a lot of folks' radar. But it was a pretty interesting race for you. Tell us a couple of the highlights from that.
00:40:08 MELISA
I don't actually typically add in a lot of other events outside of the Lifetime Grand Prix.
00:40:13 MELISA
I think that the series is really demanding, and I think that if you want to perform well at the races, you kind of have to
00:40:20 MELISA
be sort of critical in when you build your schedule, but I knew that I had gravel burn at the end of the year.
00:40:30 MELISA
I didn't prepare for it in the way that I would normally prepare for a seven-day stage race in a different country.
00:40:39 MELISA
I definitely
00:40:41 MELISA
was preparing for Little and Big Sugar, the doubleheader weekend, and I celebrated a little too hard at the gravel rave post, Big Sugar, but it, which I do not regret.
00:40:57 MELISA
It was super fun and a really nice and partial almost end to the season.
00:41:04 MELISA
Yeah.
00:41:05 MELISA
Then I made my way to Africa and
00:41:09 MELISA
because of sort of the nature of adding it in at the very end of the season, I sort of went in with an open mind.
00:41:17 MELISA
And knowing myself, I know that I somehow pull things off really well when I'm less than prepared.
00:41:29 FATTY
It's where that toughness we keep talking about comes into play.
00:41:34 FATTY
You do have the ability to lock in and go for it.
00:41:39 FATTY
I mean, that is your gift is what I would say.
00:41:42 MELISA
I think I prepare a lot day-to-day so that I can sort of succumb to chaos when it when it arises in races, because I think every race is chaotic in its own way.
00:41:57 MELISA
And
00:41:58 MELISA
So I like to lean into that a bit.
00:42:01 MELISA
And that's what gravel burn was for me.
00:42:03 MELISA
When I arrived.
00:42:04 FATTY
You need a t-shirt, succumb to chaos.
00:42:08 FATTY
That's your new tagline.
00:42:09 FATTY
I love it.
00:42:10 MELISA
No, it really was.
00:42:11 MELISA
I really can't describe a more chaotic week of racing, at least for me.
00:42:18 MELISA
I, yeah, oh my goodness.
00:42:21 MELISA
I arrived to Africa and
00:42:23 MELISA
immediately changed my travel plans from flying directly into George to taking a little holiday and spending time with a new friend that I met on the plane, which was another Grand Prix racer, Haley Prix, and she offered to show me around Cape Town because she lives there and we happened to be on the same flight from Bentonville.
00:42:46 MELISA
So that's how I started my week instead of
00:42:48 MELISA
what was originally planned in my itinerary.
00:42:51 MELISA
I instead got to go see some penguins.
00:42:54 MELISA
I rode the most beautiful ride over Chapman's Peak with Haley and got to have a amazing baked good from a local shop.
00:43:06 MELISA
And I got to walk around a really, really big mall.
00:43:10 MELISA
And yeah, and then I made my way with Haley and her family to the race start.
00:43:17 MELISA
And yeah, that's how I started.
00:43:20 MELISA
And I learned during this time that you could only have one bag for the whole seven days.
00:43:27 MELISA
And I didn't have a very big bag.
00:43:29 MELISA
So, and on top of that, I also learned I would be camping in a tent and I needed a sleeping bag, which I also didn't have.
00:43:39 MELISA
I learned that we would be showering in public showers and I would need flip-flops, didn't have those.
00:43:48 MELISA
So you succumbed to the chaos.
00:43:53 MELISA
I succumbed to the chaos and you know what?
00:43:56 MELISA
I arrived day one just as ready as everyone else was for three inches of rain and a hilltop finish.
00:44:07 FATTY
I kind of want to do short version of this, but you wound up in second place overall, which is pretty extraordinary considering a small but deep field.
00:44:20 MELISA
Yeah, this was probably one of the deepest fields I've ever raced in.
00:44:23 MELISA
I've never really raced internationally, at least not in gravel.
00:44:27 MELISA
And so I didn't really know what to expect.
00:44:30 MELISA
I knew that I was
00:44:31 MELISA
pretty fit from getting ready for Big and Little Sugar, but like I said, being fit for a one day race is a lot different than being fit for seven days of, four to five hours of racing on super, super rough terrain and also trying to sleep in a tent.
00:44:53 FATTY
How did that go?
00:44:54 FATTY
I have thought about that and thought about it actually while you were there, that the most difficult thing about racing for me is the sleep component.
00:45:04 FATTY
I mean, recovery is so critical and in a multi-day, in a stage race, sleep is a problem no matter what, even if you're in a nice hotel room and you're in a tent.
00:45:17 FATTY
I mean, how did that go?
00:45:19 FATTY
Were you able to get more than a couple hours of sleep at a time or any sleep at all?
00:45:25 MELISA
I will not lie.
00:45:27 MELISA
The first, like I was alluding to, the hilltop finish on the first stage.
00:45:33 MELISA
We were, it was like 40 degrees Fahrenheit and, or maybe a loss, and raining the entire time.
00:45:40 MELISA
And I think at one point it was kind of snowing, a little bit of flurries.
00:45:44 MELISA
And when I finished,
00:45:47 MELISA
I, for some reason, I didn't sign myself up for the event and I wasn't getting emails from the event.
00:45:56 MELISA
And in the emails, you were given your assigned tent.
00:46:00 MELISA
And so when I went to the finish line, they were like, okay, your tent is in your emails.
00:46:06 MELISA
And I was like, I don't know where that is.
00:46:08 MELISA
And I could not find anyone who did.
00:46:12 MELISA
And I was absolutely.
00:46:14 FATTY
You're just wandering around knocking on tent doors.
00:46:17 FATTY
Can you knock on a tent door?
00:46:19 MELISA
No, I wasn't.
00:46:20 MELISA
I wasn't doing that because I was completely frozen.
00:46:23 MELISA
And I couldn't feel my hands or feet.
00:46:26 MELISA
I was underneath the, there's a main tent with the meals and
00:46:33 MELISA
I was so cold that I wrapped myself up in one of those safety blankets, and I was like convulsing, shivering, because I was so cold.
00:46:45 MELISA
And so I was recovering really well for the next day.
00:46:50 MELISA
But yeah, I mean, everyone was nice, but there was just like a lot going on.
00:46:54 MELISA
Obviously, they hadn't anticipated such a cold finish, and a lot of people were in the same sort of freezing boat as me.
00:47:03 MELISA
And eventually, I think after maybe an hour or two of me doing that, they finally found someone who found someone who found someone who knew where my tent was.
00:47:13 MELISA
And I made my way to the tent and I was like, okay, we're just taking this one step at a time.
00:47:21 MELISA
The chaos is just, we're just living in the chaos.
00:47:24 MELISA
And I get to the shower and it's cold.
00:47:27 MELISA
And that
00:47:29 MELISA
Almost undid me.
00:47:30 FATTY
It was like, that's it.
00:47:34 FATTY
That it is the straw that broke the camel's back or almost.
00:47:38 FATTY
It sounds like you had one more straw and they didn't throw that and you kept on going.
00:47:42 MELISA
Well, I mean, I must have had a few more straws because I made it back to my tent after my freezing cold shower.
00:47:50 MELISA
And I think I don't remember what happened between that time and dinner, but I like
00:47:57 MELISA
I fell asleep or something.
00:47:59 MELISA
And then, I decided I needed, I was like so focused on really wanting some dry shoes for the next day because we knew that it was going to be like 30 degrees Fahrenheit to start and frozen overnight.
00:48:17 MELISA
And I really, really, really didn't want cold feet because after this last conversation you heard, we know that I'm obsessed with my feet.
00:48:25 MELISA
So I took a gamble and I put my shoes near the fire and I watched them really, really closely for a little while.
00:48:34 MELISA
And then I gained confidence and I walked away and I went to the bathroom.
00:48:37 MELISA
I came back and they were melted.
00:48:42 MELISA
So my lifeline of shoes and people were so nice.
00:48:46 MELISA
They were like, oh, you melted your shoes.
00:48:48 MELISA
You can borrow them.
00:48:49 MELISA
My extra pair.
00:48:51 MELISA
And I was like,
00:48:54 MELISA
What you don't know is that I'd rather wear these.
00:48:58 FATTY
Ride barefoot.
00:49:01 FATTY
I'll ride in my Crocs.
00:49:05 FATTY
No, and I believe you got some good help from a famous cyclist on that.
00:49:15 MELISA
Oh my gosh, yeah.
00:49:16 MELISA
I asked around a lot and I ended up at Lachlan Martin's
00:49:23 MELISA
RV, who he, funny enough, had done, he said that he had done exactly the same thing, melted the exact, because he also wears the same shoes that I was in.
00:49:35 MELISA
And he said that he had done exactly the same thing and he had cut out the toe box.
00:49:42 MELISA
And this was on like a cross country sort of
00:49:50 MELISA
thing and he cut off the toe box and duct taped over or something like that.
00:49:54 MELISA
And luckily it didn't come to that, but we had his mechanic there with me as well, or with him as well, and they had some ideas.
00:50:04 MELISA
Yeah, his mechanic and also Pete Stenton as mechanic, Big Tall Wayne.
00:50:09 MELISA
Yeah, they went to work on my shoes and they got them rideable and I was so thankful.
00:50:15 FATTY
I love that all of these big names in cycling.
00:50:19 FATTY
We're still absolutely happy to pitch in and solve this mess.
00:50:25 MELISA
Yeah, it ended up working out.
00:50:27 MELISA
And actually, yeah, the day after we sort of cut them apart and from the inside and got them ridable again, I actually, oh, I was so stoked the next day, I won the stage.
00:50:43 MELISA
And I, when I finished, I was like, the first thing I thought was, my gosh, I can't wait to tell them.
00:50:52 MELISA
But they helped me do.
00:50:53 FATTY
That is so great.
00:50:54 MELISA
So yeah, it was really cool.
00:50:57 MELISA
So that was really fun.
00:50:58 MELISA
The racing itself was really awesome.
00:51:01 MELISA
The terrain was really rough.
00:51:03 MELISA
The roads were incredibly corrugated.
00:51:06 MELISA
I have never been shaken so much.
00:51:10 MELISA
in an event in my whole life.
00:51:13 MELISA
I think that wide tires were really, really important out there.
00:51:17 MELISA
And the racing was super fun, dynamic.
00:51:22 MELISA
It came to sprint finish.
00:51:23 MELISA
A few of the stages and time gaps were pretty small, but also a lot of things because of the roughness of the terrain.
00:51:34 MELISA
It did a lot on people's equipment.
00:51:36 MELISA
And
00:51:38 MELISA
So it sort of shook things up all the time in the GC.
00:51:41 MELISA
And I went into the last day in second place and knew that any shake-up could happen, and it did.
00:51:51 MELISA
And the Ashley Moman-Pacio, who had been leading for the last, or how many, almost all the stages after
00:52:03 MELISA
catastrophic flat from Axel Dubo-Provo, who had been leading it as well, like who had lost 10 minutes.
00:52:12 MELISA
We're talking like really big gaps and really catastrophic events happening out there.
00:52:17 MELISA
Ashley had flatted on the last stage and I knew there was a chance that I could win, but then I also flatted.
00:52:27 MELISA
And amazingly and honestly, deservingly, Excel pulled out an incredible win and won the whole thing.
00:52:35 MELISA
And I fought.
00:52:37 MELISA
to the nail and was able to hold on to second by 8 seconds.
00:52:42 FATTY
So from what I understand, you have not had enough of stage racing in Africa?
00:52:47 MELISA
Yeah, I got asked to join for Cape Epic.
00:52:52 MELISA
And so I will be there in March.
00:52:55 FATTY
Cape Epic 2026.
00:52:57 FATTY
And of course, you're going to be doing Grand Prix 2026, right?
00:53:00 MELISA
Yeah, that's right.
00:53:01 MELISA
Yep.
00:53:02 FATTY
How are any
00:53:04 FATTY
Any plans on how you might approach that just on an overall strategy that might be different from last year?
00:53:13 FATTY
Is there a drop race that you're intentionally going to have or is it just go for it and see if you can win every single race or what?
00:53:21 MELISA
That's a really good question.
00:53:22 MELISA
I think what I've learned is that I like new challenges and I like to sort of throw myself into something that I feel like I haven't previously been good at.
00:53:33 MELISA
And for me, in the Grand Prix, at least, it's always been Sea Otter.
00:53:37 MELISA
That's kind of always been my race.
00:53:40 MELISA
I haven't come out in the spring very strong previously.
00:53:44 MELISA
And with Cape Epic, I think that it might set me up to be really strong in the spring.
00:53:48 MELISA
So I think for me, I like to, I mean, for the last few years, I've just focused on each race because it's really hard
00:53:57 MELISA
to focus on the series as a whole, especially with how much can go wrong, how much can go right, what, I mean, there's a lot out of your control.
00:54:04 MELISA
And so, and I learned in 2024 that one good, one good result can make your whole year.
00:54:12 MELISA
So if you can sort of
00:54:14 MELISA
pour yourself into just one.
00:54:16 MELISA
I think that's not necessarily a bad thing.
00:54:19 MELISA
And yeah, I'm excited to sort of pivot and have sea otter be maybe that goal for me next year.
00:54:27 FATTY
Love it.
00:54:28 FATTY
Final question.
00:54:29 FATTY
As you are training and eating and recovering for a living, is it still possible to enjoy bikes?
00:54:37 MELISA
Sometimes.
00:54:39 MELISA
I definitely get the feeling every time I go to Leadville, it reminds me, and I think that's why Leadville is so special to me is because it reminds me of where I've come.
00:54:48 MELISA
And it reminds me of a time when I didn't do this as a job and when it could be fun.
00:54:53 MELISA
And yeah, I think, yes, it can be fun.
00:54:58 MELISA
Is it always fun?
00:54:59 MELISA
No.
00:55:00 FATTY
And when is it fun?
00:55:01 MELISA
I specifically try to have a few days where I
00:55:08 MELISA
focus on doing a ride that is fun for me, which doesn't go along with training.
00:55:13 MELISA
It usually involves a ride that has a hike, a bike section in it, maybe a descent that I'm uncomfortable riding, maybe something that other people would traditionally not think is fun.
00:55:25 MELISA
But yeah, for me, I just like to add in a few rides that remind me of that.
00:55:30 FATTY
What's the last fun ride you had?
00:55:33 MELISA
Oh, I...
00:55:35 MELISA
In just before I went up to Leadville last July, my good friend Sarah and I rode up to the high point of Snowbird on ski roads and we rode down the most horrific riverbed of Baby Head Rocks.
00:55:57 MELISA
It was like we had to walk most of it.
00:56:01 MELISA
was not recommended for Rd.
00:56:03 MELISA
shoes.
00:56:04 FATTY
Oh, this was on, these were on Rd.
00:56:07 FATTY
shoes.
00:56:08 FATTY
You're hard on your shoes.
00:56:11 MELISA
No, I'm just saying like traditionally you can kind of get away with that.
00:56:16 MELISA
on your mountain bike, but not this time.
00:56:18 MELISA
And it was fun.
00:56:20 MELISA
It reminded me of days when there was no pressure and I was just out there to ride for fun.
00:56:27 MELISA
And I think it brings me back to those days whenever I do a backcountry ride like that.
00:56:31 MELISA
We're just out here for fun.
00:56:33 MELISA
There's no racing, there's no speed, there's just like having fun with your friends, doing something that's a little bit uncomfortable.
00:56:42 MELISA
And you get to finish it off with some nice memories and like a pizza.
00:56:49 FATTY
That sounds like every ride I do.
00:56:54 FATTY
Melissa, it has been a pleasure having you on Marginal Gains at Good Luck in 2026.
00:57:01 MELISA
Thank you.
00:57:06 FATTY
Big thanks also to Barry Anderson of Psychologic for dropping in.
00:57:10 FATTY
Listeners, Hadia and Josh will be back on the mic very soon, joining me for an Ask Josh Anything episode.
00:57:17 FATTY
I've got a great set of questions I'm looking forward to ambushing Josh with, but we can always use more.
00:57:23 FATTY
Use our marginal gains hotline, 317-343-4506.
00:57:28 FATTY
To do so, you can text, you can call.
00:57:31 FATTY
You can also go old school and comment at marginalgainspodcast.cc.
00:57:36 FATTY
Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you soon on Marginal Gains.
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