Kait Boyle is an elite adventure cyclist who bikes over mountains, across deserts, and through canyons. Early on in her cycling career, Kait found her niche, falling in love with races in the 24 hour 300 mile range. In 2018, a serious accident turned Kait's life upside down and changed her perspective on the path she's carved.
Kait Boyle is an elite adventure cyclist who bikes over mountains, across deserts, and through canyons. Early on in her cycling career, Kait found her niche, falling in love with races in the 24 hour 300 mile range. In 2018, a serious accident turned Kait's life upside down and changed her perspective on the path she's carved.
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Kait Boyle:
There's just something about riding in the backcountry on trail that is so mentally engaging. It really brings you to the present because you can't just zone out. You have to be paying attention and figuring out how you're going to clear a section or what that climb looks like or tune into your body. And so it's just a way of moving in a landscape that really brings me into myself and right into the place.
Shelby Stanger:
Kait Boyle is an elite adventure cyclist who bikes over mountains, across deserts, and through canyons. She competes in some pretty tough backcountry races where she rides solo carrying only an overnight pack, water, and her navigation system. Early on in her cycling career, Kait found her niche, falling in love with races in the 24 hour 300 mile range. She even won the 24 hour World Championship and holds titles and records in multiple other endurance bike races. In 2018, a serious accident turned Kait's life upside down and changed her perspective on the path she's carved. This episode is different from what you're used to hearing. It actually reminds me of some of our older episodes of Wild Ideas Worth Living. Kait has such an emotional story that we wanted to let her share in her own words as much as possible. For this reason, it's a little longer and there are some moments where I get a little choked up. I'm Shelby Stanger and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living. An REI Co-op Studios production brought to you by Capital One.
Kait Boyle, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living. We're excited to chat with you.
Kait Boyle:
Thanks Shelby. I'm psyched to be here.
Shelby Stanger:
You're friends with a few previous Wild Ideas guests, Lael Wilcox and Rebecca Rusch, who was an early guest. You're a backcountry endurance mountain biker. Can you just break down what that means for those of us who don't totally know? Because it sounds like a really big amazing thing.
Kait Boyle:
Yeah. Backcountry endurance mountain biking is just riding for a long time, whether it's a full day or multiple days overnight in more remote places.
Shelby Stanger:
And are you staying overnight?
Kait Boyle:
Yeah, I mean, I think the beautiful thing about backcountry mountain biking is it can be pretty accessible. You could go on a backcountry ride that's just a few hours because backcountry is really just farther from support where you need to be more self-sufficient. So I can go on a backcountry ride from home, but you can also go on these backcountry endurance rides that are multiple days and you can stay overnight. You could be staying at huts or you could be camping and carrying all the stuff that you need, which would be bikepacking.
Shelby Stanger:
You live in an area where this sounds amazing to do this in, near Idaho. Wow.
Kait Boyle:
Yeah, for some of the year, a lot of the year there's a lot of snow, so you're either on a fat bike or skis, but there's kind of four glorious months in the Tetons for mountain biking.
Shelby Stanger:
Amazing, amazing. How did you get into this?
Kait Boyle:
I got into this kind of through a side way or a different way. I started with a career in outdoor education, so I have an undergraduate degree in wilderness leadership and then a master's in place-based expeditionary environmental education. So very niche.
Shelby Stanger:
Yeah, but I think a lot of listeners of this show would really like to study that in school.
Kait Boyle:
Yeah, it's amazing and it's interesting because it doesn't necessarily give you a lot of specific career doors, but it gives you a lot of tools to really follow your heart and create a career that's the life that you want to live, and that's what led me to being able to make a career out of being a professional backcountry mountain biker are the skills that I learned through wilderness leadership and adventure education.
Shelby Stanger:
So back up. How did you first decide to study this?
Kait Boyle:
Yeah. Well, when I was 17, so I graduated high school a year early, not because I was particularly smart, mostly because I just figured out how to be done with what I needed to do. I'm smart. And my dad was like, "Well, if you're not going to be in school this year, you need to do something that is educational or growth oriented." And he suggested an Outward Bound or NOLS course.
And so I found a month long mountaineering course in Patagonia and that made me want to study environmental studies. And I just, in the earlier years of college, first at the University of Vermont, I just found myself drawn to all the outdoor recreation oriented courses like avalanche education course in the Sawtooths and ice climbing in the White Mountains. And one of those instructors looked at me one day and was like, "You know, you would do really well at Prescott College. It's very experiential education based, field based." And I looked into it and I transferred and realized that I could have a degree and a career based on teaching leadership skills and connecting people to the natural world and helping them believe in themselves through the power of adventures in the outdoors.
Shelby Stanger:
Well, that's like my whole deal. I love this, but I didn't know you could actually study this. This is incredible. So Prescott College is a place, I'm guessing, in Arizona?
Kait Boyle:
Yeah, it's in Arizona. It's a very small liberal arts school and it's in Prescott, which is in the Central Highlands at like 5,000 feet and in the Ponderosa Pines and from being a student there and then teaching as first adjunct and then associate faculty, I spent over 12 years based out of Prescott. But the semesters are set up in a way where you take one course and you leave town and go to the place that helps facilitate that subject.
So for many Januarys over the course of 10 years, I'd come up to the Tetons with 10 or 12 students and a co-instructor, and we would go into the Tetons and we would teach and deliver avalanche level one course while traveling on skis in the winter, staying in yurts and snow camping, and also teaching and experiencing firsthand winter ecology. And I found mountain biking during that career. I broke my ankle rock climbing as a lot of rock climbers do, and you can ride a bike way before you can do other things. And so I got on a bike and I realized pretty quickly that I would be able to go really far. And so I rode the Great Divide mountain bike route from Mexico to Canada that first year, and that opened up this whole other way of traveling that really suited my body and my heart. And that has led into then this domino effect of opportunities.
About a year after I rode that Great Divide mountain bike route, there was a new faculty member at Prescott College in the earth science department named Kurt Refsnider who was a geologist and a professional bikepacker. And he had just recently won the Tour Divide Race and the Arizona Trail race, and he proposed a geology through bikepacking course to Prescott. And the other faculty there were like, "Oh, well we love this. However, you don't have any experience taking people into the backcountry, so you need a co-instructor." And I was the only one of the adventure education faculty who had ever been bikepacking before. So they paired me with him and we taught geology through bikepacking for three years and getting to take students on four different bikepacking trips while I'm teaching the bikepacking and adventure education curriculum and Kurt's teaching geology and students are riding their bikes on the rocks, camping among them, repairing sliced tires, it's really amazing. And even now 10 years later, I still get to see those students out in the world and seeing how they're applying that education.
Shelby Stanger:
So how did you get into competing?
Kait Boyle:
Yeah, so I got into ultra endurance bike racing because I had been teaching that geology through bikepacking course, and had started going on personal trips with my friend Kurt Refsnider, who was at that point, and I guess still is very much at the top of ultra endurance bikepack racing. Meanwhile, I was going on these trips with him in the Alps and in Patagonia on bikes and teaching these courses. And of course there are differences between men and women and ultimately when it came down to it as expedition partners, I was like, "Well, we are equal. We both have our strengths in this." But that made me really wonder, "If he can go and win these races, well, what could I do?" It is hard to imagine that it would be wildly different of an outcome. And at the same time, and 10 years ago and still, but especially 10 years ago, the women's fields were just tiny.
There would be two women who would start one of these races, and there were a couple of them like Eszter Horanyi who were crushing and winning in the women's field. And they were up there in the top 10, sometimes top 5 with the men. And I just found myself wondering, "Well, what can I do?" And sometime probably around 2015 or 2016, I had been backpacking for a while and I wanted to try ultra endurance racing, and I went out and raced the Arizona Trail 300, which is 300 miles of the Arizona Trail, which is about 800 miles total, that's really the best for mountain biking. It's very continuous single track for that landscape, and it is really remote. You're in the Sonoran Desert. You go up over Mount Lemon and you have these views as far as the eye can see of just undeveloped desert.
And 300 miles on a mountain bike takes a pretty long time. For that race, typically the fastest guys and some women finish in around 50 hours and it takes a lot of people upwards of five days. And so on the second day of this race, I had, at that point gone up over Mount Lemon, which is just north of Tucson, into this vast stretch of very slow and tedious trail in and out of all these little drainages. And I hadn't seen another person that day and it was maybe like 90 degrees. And I was riding along and I saw a Gila monster, which are these very large reptiles that are unique to the Sonoran Desert. And they're really crazy looking, like they're orange with black stripes and spots, and they're pretty big.
They're not a little lizard. And so I saw one of those and I was like, "Oh my God, that's amazing." And it was riding pretty affected by dehydration and some heat, but it was just like, all of a sudden this stretch that typically takes eight hours and suddenly that eight hours just felt like I was floating through the desert, winding my way through the creosote bushes, which are a plant very common in the Mojave and Sonoran deserts. And when it rains, they have a very distinct smell. If you have ever been in those deserts after it rains, the smell you smell is the creosote bush. And the Latin name for that is larrea tridentata. And it hadn't rained, but I could smell them pretty strongly and they were blooming. And suddenly for a while, anytime I would brush up against one, I would just sing, "Larrea tridentata."
And it was, I think at this point, maybe a little fueled by the whole hot, dehydrated, the sleep deprived, really by myself, but it just had this amazing feeling where I was like, "I am just so happy being right here right now." And the finish line doesn't mean anything at this moment. I just am having the time of my life riding my bike by myself in the desert. And sometimes I've struggled in racing because I don't feel super competitive with other people, but I have had the best results when I have been most motivated seeing what I'm capable of that day, what is possible.
Shelby Stanger:
Let's stop being so humble. You won the 24 Hour World Championship.
Kait Boyle:
Yeah, I did.
Shelby Stanger:
So you were the best in the world at this.
Kait Boyle:
Yeah, on that day.
Shelby Stanger:
Okay, humbleness, you're allowed to brag on this podcast. We're giving you permission. That's really cool. What year was that?
Kait Boyle:
So a lot of things really clicked in 2018. I had started these races in about 2015 or 2016 and would go have a good pretty strong one, and always felt like, "I feel like there's more in there. I don't quite think I've really dialed this." And I'd go try again and then maybe have something not work for whatever reason, whether it was physical or mental or just bad luck. And finally, in 2018, things really started to click, and part of it was just creating some space, like teaching a little bit less in the field, really giving myself the time to recover. And so in 2018, I went to the 24 Hours in Old Pueblo, which I had raced and won before racing 16 laps. And in 2018, I decided I wanted to do 18 laps, which was over 300 miles on a mountain bike in 24 hours.
And that earned me a invitation to the 24 hour World Championships and the support to get there in Scotland later that year. So then a few months later, I went to Scotland to race 24 Hour World Championships, and it was really the ideal race for someone with a background in adventure education because it was like 45 to 50 degrees and raining the entire time, which will often be a challenge for a lot of cyclists, because I mean, that's not really the weather that most people think of as ideal for riding your bike. And it ultimately was kind of the ideal ultra endurance race because it was a mix of your physical ability, your tactical race strategy, and then your just ability to grit your teeth and stay positive and enjoy the ride in really shitty conditions and take care of yourself really well. And so I finished that a couple laps ahead of the rest of the women's field, and was the Elite 24 Hour World Champion,
Shelby Stanger:
I don't understand, do you stay up this entire 24 hours? You don't sleep, do you?
Kait Boyle:
Yeah, no, you don't sleep for that 24 hours.
Shelby Stanger:
What got you through mentally?
Kait Boyle:
I came up with this mantra before the race once I was over there, and the mantra was, "Wet isn't a mindset, but happiness is." And so thinking about how you can't control the weather, but you can reframe your mindset around it. I was also reminded by my sports psychologist at the time, she was like, "Well, it seems appropriate. You're going to Scotland. You should have a Scottish experience. This is what you signed up for." And so I think remembering that feeling of this is what I chose, and not only did I choose it, but I get to do this. And now it's such a fond memory. I'm like, "Wow, that was amazing. And also, when else would I ever ride my bike for 24 hours and 45 degrees in rain and get to see somehow Scotland start to flash flood?" Yeah, I'll never forget it because it was so unique.
Shelby Stanger:
What was it like to win?
Kait Boyle:
It was overwhelming. I had put so much work into it from starting almost a year prior. And I think that because I was coming from Arizona and at that point I wasn't making a living as a mountain biker, and I don't think I was on people's radars as the person who was going to win because I didn't have a national title in 24 hour racing. I had won this race in the desert, and I think that Scotland is wildly polar opposite from Arizona. And so I think it was easy to be kind of this unanticipated person.
And then the other thing with 24 hour racing, at least for me, is that it takes incredible patience. And this is probably why I'm drawn to it because I'm not actually a very patient person, but it always starts off, and for me to pace well, I can't start off winning because I'm probably going too hard if I am. And so it's usually been around halfway, 12 hours in, and so it's 12 hours of being patient and just trusting that everyone's going to slow down and then I will pass them. And it's always happened. And every single time, despite that, there's just this doubt for 12 hours. You're like, "Is it going to happen? Maybe that person's really strong and they're just going to keep going at really fast pace."
Shelby Stanger:
For 12 hours?
Kait Boyle:
12 hours where you just wait.
Shelby Stanger:
I can't imagine doubting myself for 12 hours-
Kait Boyle:
Totally.
Shelby Stanger:
... wondering if I was going to maybe win. The furthest, I used to race the 800, and if you start out, my goal was just to stay ahead the whole time.
Kait Boyle:
Probably a really good strategy for that distance. But then there's this feeling where after the halfway mark where you actually are then gaining and then passing and then putting a lot of time into people because you've paced yourself so well, when that actually comes down to the last lap and then you're like, "Oh my God, all I have to do is just not crash. That is the only thing." And there's just this feeling of just elation and just feeling so proud of yourself for drawing on that and knowing that it wasn't luck or it wasn't a fluke. It was just really good strategy.
Shelby Stanger:
So cool. So what sort of skills did your outdoor education wilderness leadership teach you that you then took to this race and used to win?
Kait Boyle:
Yeah, I mean, okay, so a few things. One is just the tolerance for uncertainty. And so it's just like that feeling of being like there's so many things that you don't know. And so focusing on the things you can control and then letting go of the things you can't control or having a plan for them.
And then another one is just self-care. It's really basic, but I think in our American modern world, it's really easy to just have the things that we need at hand. We can just go to the refrigerator when we need or the store or whatever, and we can regulate our climate, we can add layers. We don't really have to think about self-care as much, but in an expeditionary setting, we teach self-care as a way to be accountable for yourself and just be ready to do your part in achieving the group goal. And in bike racing, it's really simple except that there aren't other people that you're impacting. It's just your own goal. And I think for people who are out racing endurance races or tackling big backcountry multi-day rides, a huge part of the success is just the self-care.
Shelby Stanger:
When we come back, Kait walks us through a car accident that took her out of the competition circuit for years and how the event and her recovery has changed her mindset about riding.
Kait Boyle discovered adventure cycling through a career in outdoor education, and she excelled at competitions. Shortly after skyrocketing to the podium and setting multiple course records, Kait started to picture a new life for herself as a professional cyclist. She signed up for more races and continued to train her body and her mind to deal with the stress of being a competitive athlete. You mentioned having a sports psychologist. Did you always have one? Was that part of school?
Kait Boyle:
No, I didn't. In around 2016 when I was in this very trial and error path of bike racing, I just kept feeling like I wasn't quite finding my potential, and I really wanted to see what was possible. But the mental side is so huge, and I think with endurance sports, the more time you're out there, the more time you are with your head, especially with these more solo endeavors where you're time trialing something by yourself or you just naturally get spread out and don't see someone for another day. The motivation has to be intrinsic and you have to have strategies for just continuing to get the best out of yourself without that external competition. And so I started working with a sports psychologist who I worked with for a really long time all the way up through really big traumatic injuries from a car accident.
Shelby Stanger:
Can I ask about this traumatic car accident? Was that during biking? From biking?
Kait Boyle:
Not from biking. This was five years ago. So in 2018, we had 24 Hours of the Old Pueblo, huge success, course record, had the Arizona Trail 300, huge success, course record, became world champion in 24 hour racing, huge success. And came home from Scotland at the end of October and was at the top of the world. I was like 30 or 31, and it was just like, "This is amazing. I have cracked ultra endurance cycling. I'm going to go start winning outright and setting overall records on these things." And was really excited. Took my off season in November and got on my bike at the end of December and started to train and was here in the Tetons where I was starting to try to figure out if I could support myself financially as a professional cyclist. And on Christmas Eve, I was driving from the one grocery store here in Driggs to a friend's house for a Christmas Eve potluck, and it had been raining, and then the roads apparently froze, and I lost control of my truck on the highway going about 40 miles an hour.
And while spinning out of control, I was T-boned in the driver's side door from the oncoming car to really no fault of their own. They were just trying to avoid me and my truck was out of control, and I was fully conscious the whole time, the windshield was exploded, the car was crushed in on me, and I had this burning sensation in my pelvis and I couldn't feel my legs. I was like, "Wow, well, from what I know from wilderness medicine, this could mean that I'm paralyzed, and if I'm paralyzed, then that means I'm probably not riding a bike or walking in the way that I know those things to mean." And then I also had this thought and I was like, "Well, that's a really easy thing to freak out about and totally lose it." And I just thought of bike racing and I was like, "Wow, I have one choice right now, and that is to control my mindset around this. And so I'm just going to focus on my breath, because I am breathing."
And so I just focused on my breath and after a few hours, they got me out of my car, like a paramedic this tiny little woman, she crawled through the broken window, hooked me up to morphine, got me out of the car, still had no idea if I was paralyzed, still could definitely not move and could not feel my legs. And it turns out I had ruptured my bladder and I had to go into emergency trauma surgery that night. And then in the morning on Christmas day, I learned that I had shattered my pelvis and my sacrum and my fibula, which is very minor in the grand scheme of things. My bladder was going to be fine. It was going to actually heal on its own despite now having a 12 inch incision down my abdomen.
And this wonderful orthopedic surgeon came in and at that point, Will, my boyfriend at the time, who is now my husband and my parents who had, they had all just met for the first time ever at the airport on Christmas, and they were there with me and my surgeon walked in and he was like, "Well, you're going to have a full recovery." I was like, "Like I can race 24 hour races again? And ultras?" And he looked at me like I was crazy, he was like, "Well, I don't see why not." And I think that, one, I don't think anyone ever asked him that before. And I was just like, "Okay." And that was all I needed to be told was just like, and it didn't really matter if that was true or not. It was just like the chance to try and that was the beginning of a very long journey to heal.
Shelby Stanger:
Kait, this story makes me cry.
Kait Boyle:
Yeah, me too.
Shelby Stanger:
That's really heavy. Good for you for... One, good doctor.
Kait Boyle:
He's amazing.
Shelby Stanger:
He could have said something else and that would've changed everything. I'm guessing this completely changed your life.
Kait Boyle:
Oh yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
Do you want to talk about that?
Kait Boyle:
Yeah, totally.
Shelby Stanger:
That's a really heavy experience to go through, and I think that's kind of all of our biggest fears as athletes, not being able to do the thing we love the most, but also you were probably in a lot of pain.
Kait Boyle:
Yeah. Yeah. It's easy to forget about the pain part. I think that our bodies are wired to forget about that.
Shelby Stanger:
That's good. Okay, so we won't talk about the pain you had, but yeah.
Kait Boyle:
No, but we can because we also, that's also what therapists are for because you need to process it to actually move through it. The timing of this conversation is fortuitous because my pelvis was healed through an external fixator, which is, if you picture a towel rack screwed into your pelvis from the outside, that's what I had.
Shelby Stanger:
Wow.
Kait Boyle:
And so rather than internal plates, they clamp your pelvis together by drilling from the outside through into your hip bones and then just providing external pressure and it's a slower recovery, but in the longterm, you don't have hardware in your pelvis to deal with. And so I had this external fixator, which is crazy to live with because you look like a very broken person, and you can't lay on your stomach, you can't lay on your side.
Shelby Stanger:
Oh, because it's like, outside of you, and you have to walk with it.
Kait Boyle:
Oh, yeah. It literally looks, I'll send you pictures.
Shelby Stanger:
You look like a robot.
Kait Boyle:
But yeah. Yes. And I was in a wheelchair with that and had a catheter and all that. And my sports psychologist, Kristen, for bike races with these mantras, I'd write that on tape and put it on my handlebars. And so most of the time of the 12 weeks in the ex fix, most of the time was spent laying down, and when you're laying down and you have this towel rack coming out of the hips, you spent a lot of time just seeing this external fixator.
And so I pretty immediately was like, "Oh, I can put mantras on this." And Will, at one point, wrote this little mantra. He wrote, "An opportunity to live into." And I remember at the time being like, "How is this an opportunity? I am so broken. I'm the level broken that a hundred years ago people died from, I'm the level broken that doctors keep looking at me and being like, wow, it's amazing you didn't die." And just this weekend was like, I was home alone and deep cleaning the house, and I found my external fixator and found the "Opportunity to live into." is still stuck on there and it was like, "Wow, Will was right." It really has totally changed this direction and purpose for me in a way that I never would've chosen because it would be such a scary thing, but also in a way that now I'm like, "Oh, well yeah, I would never change that because it's just an amazing thing to actually live through."
Shelby Stanger:
I imagine the recovery was really long, but then how did you decide what's next and what did it lead you to?
Kait Boyle:
Oh yeah, that was the other thing. I was on the phone with Will when this happened and he was on speakerphone and the phone flew out the window of the car. I don't know how, I think in a way it was probably more traumatic for him because he didn't know if I was alive. He could hear the ambulance, he could hear people walking around. He was visiting family for Christmas in Mississippi, and he had to call a friend to drive to the scene of the accident to be like, "Oh, yeah, she's alive." Which is crazy. But yeah, I remember thinking, "Well, I guess this is a pretty definitive moment in our relationship. I don't expect him to show up. This is going to be really hard." And he did and he cleaned these open wounds for like 12 weeks and yeah, now we are married and get to have that as part of our foundation, which is pretty crazy.
And I think with the recovery, it's really interesting and especially now seeing some friends go through similar things where you have this really big accident that puts what you love into jeopardy. You just have to believe that whatever it is that you want to be possible, that it is possible and to just try. While concurrently, and this is where the sports psychologist was so key, but you also have to just learn to accept whatever happens.
Shelby Stanger:
Oh, that's the hard part.
Kait Boyle:
So you have to... Totally. You have to believe so hard in what you want to try it and to do everything you can to make it happen while also knowing that it might not, and if it's not, it's okay. And that actually your life is still amazing and our identity isn't actually tied to what it is we end up doing. It's more how we try and how we do the attempt and how we interact with the people and the places around us in the process. And so for me, what's crazy is that was the end of 2018. 2019 was very much getting out of a wheelchair and getting back on my bike, and then 2020 happens, and so then the opportunity to try racing isn't there. And so there's just kind of this long journey of continuing to train and recover and identify, really quickly realize there's no trying to go back to the way I was because, one, regardless of a car accident, we're never trying to go backwards, right?
Car accident or not, what I'm aiming for shouldn't be who I was in 2018. And that now with having had a shattered pelvis, and one of the lasting impacts for me is that my sacrum is fused. The only metal in my body now from that car accident are these two six to eight inch long screws through my sacrum, which, the sacrum is slightly mobile. And so now I don't have that mobility, which seems to actually become more of a challenge, ironically, the longer you try to ride your bike. And so over a few years of just trying to return to ultra racing, I would have, as it goes, some success and some challenges. And so I think a pretty big milestone was at the end of 2020, I went and raced the Kokopelli Trail. That had been a goal that I had had before my car accident, so I was like, "Okay, well that's like 13 and a half hours for the women's record. That seems like a good entry point into ultras."
And so I went and raced that and was able to set a new record on it, and that was this huge moment where I was like, "Wow, it's only been two years and I'm able to do this. I think that we're on the path to being able to achieve these ultra racing goals that I had." And then it wasn't until 2022 that I went back to 24 hour worlds, and right at the 13, 14 hour mark, I just had this excruciating pain to the point that I couldn't stand on my right leg. The level of pain that after you shatter your pelvis, you're like, "This isn't good for me and I should not be feeling this way." And amazingly, my physical therapist, Kelly, who was there, she's like, "You need to get off your bike. This is not okay." And Will, the next day Will was like, "You know, I had to watch you go through the pain of that car accident and I'm not watching you put yourself through that by choice."
Shelby Stanger:
Kait, that's really brave. I've interviewed a lot of really good athletes on this podcast, and you're probably up there with the bravest. Being able to step down is probably braver than winning.
Kait Boyle:
I think it was a conscious choice to choose something else at the expense of the other thing is, I think one of the things that Will said in that moment, he was like, "I want to be able to go skiing together when we're 70." And I think that that's in the big picture, one result is so... It's one of the highest highs, but to get to continue to, thinking back, in that car of being like, "Well, if I get to walk and bike again, I want to be able to have a really long life doing this." And I know it's so cliche, because everyone says it, but you just don't know how long that's going to last.
Shelby Stanger:
Any advice to someone who wants to live wildly?
Kait Boyle:
Yeah. I think one, to believe that you are unlimited, and I think to know that you don't have to have the clearest vision for exactly what it is you're trying to do, and that may not sound intuitive, but I think that often that living wildly and having really big dreams is also being open to the uncertainty and open to the unknown and just being like, "Well, this feels right." Or, "There's something about this that really speaks to me." And making decisions based off of what really feels inspiring and really gets you excited and even maybe a little scared versus the feeling of like, "Oh, well, I should do this." Or, "I am expected to do this." Or, "It's safe to do this."
Shelby Stanger:
Right after we spoke, Kait actually participated in her first 24 hour bikepacking endurance race since the car accident. The race was a 350 mile gravel event in Kansas called Unbound XL. She placed fourth in the woman's category with a race time of just under 27 hours. For Kait, this race was about testing the waters for endurance racing again, and she couldn't have been happier with the results.
Kait and her friend Kurt Refsnider are also the founders of Bikepacking Roots, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting bikepackers. On the website, you can find bikepacking routes, virtual workshops, in person events, and advocacy tools. Check it out at Bikepacking Roots, that's R-O-O-T-S, .org. If you want to read her thoughts on the journey from the car accident to racing again and hear about what adventures she's pursuing next, head to Kait's Instagram at Kait.Boyle. That's K-A-I-T dot B-O-Y-L-E.
If you liked this episode, we have a few different episodes you'll love. You can listen to our interview with endurance cyclist Lael Wilcox, who is currently riding around the world. You can listen to both of our episodes with Rebecca Rush, the seven time world champion endurance cyclist. There's the episode with Sarah Swallow, the backcountry cyclist who founded the event, Ruta Del Jefe, and our interview with Jason Hardrath, a runner who came back from a massive car accident to complete some wild fastest known times. All of these will be linked in our show notes.
Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI Podcast Network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, produced by Annie Fassler, Sylvia Thomas, and Sam Peers Nitzberg of Puddle Creative. Our senior producers are Jenny Barber and Hanna Boyd. Our executive producers are Paolo Mottola and Joe Crosby. As always, we love it when you follow the show, take time to rate it, and write a review wherever you listen. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.