About MTBCast

gdr_start064MTBCast was born in 2005 out of my interest in mountain biking, podcasting, and the Great Divide  Mountain BIke Race. After finding only a couple of podcasts out there dedicated to off-road cycling and living in the Southeast with a thriving cycling community I decided to jump into podcasting.

During this time I had been following the Great Divide Race as well. At the time there were only a handful of people attempting the ride from Port of Rooseville, MT to Antelope Well, NM self-supported. Volunteers were transcribing voicemails to the internet so people could follow along and get updates on the progress of the racers and the race. I had the idea that it would be great to have that audio and make it available online, in a podcast with some commentary.

I reached out to GDR organizer Mike Curiak who at the time was about to head off on vacation. He was a little apprehensive, it seemed, not knowing why anyone would want to hear the voicemails that were a) from places where telephone audio wasn’t the best and b) from racers who were exhausted and probably not speaking very clearly. I was convinced that this was exactly what people wanted to hear. “Well, I’m going on vacation so we’ll talk about it when I get back,” Mike said.

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Mike had noted that he was providing the racers with calling cards to use to call in and leavevoicemails. While he was gone, I went to work setting up a toll-free system that would email me the voicemails. This had the benefit of costing the riders and organizers nothing, racers not having to carry a card, and getting the audio in a nice package. Mike returned, approved, and the endurance audio coverage portion of MTBCast was born.

The focus in the early years was on racing the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route (GDR and Tour Divide) and mountain biking news and advocacy. We’ve expanded the race coverage with the Colorado Trail Race, Arizona Trail Race, Huracan 300 and others .

Today the focus is much the same, though endurance racing is probably the key focus. The idea with this re-birth of MTBCast is to return to some of the news and focus more on advocacy as well. The hope is to dedicate several shows throughout the year to advocacy, speaking to trail builders, trail advocates, and others who are out there making sure we have places to ride!

So MTBCast is here and ready to pick up the pace again. Let us know what you think!