What happens when the plan falls apart out there? In this episode of The Long Game Project Podcast, host Svein Tuft sits down with good friend Greg Taylor to dig into one of the hardest decisions in ultra-endurance bikepacking: knowing when to scratch.

Svein opens up about his experience at the Caves and Coves TT on Vancouver Island — a route he'd been dreaming about for years. Despite meticulous planning and dialed logistics, an AFib episode triggered by a cold chocolate milk at a gas station in Campbell River threw everything sideways. He shares what it feels like to ride in atrial fibrillation, the challenge of weighing ego and a video project against personal health, and the hospital visit that followed.

Then the two recount their joint scratch from the Big Badger — a rugged 625K route through the Alberta Rockies. What started as a beautiful September ride turned into a battle against freezing rain, peanut butter mud, and gear destruction. Brake pads burned to the backing plate in 85K. Chains were wrecked. Average speeds plummeted. With no resupply for 350–400K and temperatures hovering around 4°C, they both faced the same question: is this worth it?

The episode also features candid reflections from three of the sport's most respected figures:

Lachlan Morton on why scratching shouldn't be shunned, how experience builds the judgment to back out of unsafe situations, and why ultra racing is an intensely personal experience.

Meaghan Hackinen on her pre-race guardrails — including a hard line on concussions — her crash on day two of the Tour Divide, and why she believes you should decide your scratch criteria before you're sleep-deprived and foggy at 3 AM.

Rob Britton on the Atlas Mountain Race in Morocco — the coldest, hardest night he's ever ridden through, the stomach issues that nearly ended his race, the phone call to his wife he never makes, and the lesson that sometimes the smartest move is to sleep before you decide.

Throughout the conversation, Svein and Greg explore the deeper themes: the library of bad choices that eventually teaches you when to stop, the difference between discomfort and genuine danger, the investment cost that makes quitting harder on longer races, and the ego that makes it harder to walk away. They discuss burn rate planning, resupply strategy, gear selection in extreme cold, mechanical realities of riding through mud, and why normalizing extreme conditions can be dangerous.

Svein also introduces the Grizzly Gripper — a 24-hour backyard-style ultra at the White Grizzly Lodge near Meadow Creek, BC, designed to make ultra racing accessible and social with a 38K loop, lodge access, warm food, and a community vibe.

Whether you're a seasoned ultra racer or just curious about what goes on in the mind of an endurance athlete when things go sideways, this episode is a raw, honest look at the side of bikepacking that doesn't make the highlight reels.

The Long Game Project Podcast is supported by GripGrab, Landyachtz Bikes, Sea2Sky Nutrition, and Nomio.

Svein and Steve Neal reunite to talk cold-weather endurance, bikepacking prep, and training for time-crunched athletes.

With the Big Beautiful Badger — a 665K, 11,000-meter climbing route through the Canadian Rockies — just days away, Svein shares a harrowing story of going fully hypothermic on a previous expedition: freezing rain, four degrees, pushing through alders at 2 AM, body completely shut down. The experience raises a fascinating question: how much extra energy does your body burn when it's trying to both perform and stay warm? And why don't standard training metrics like TSS account for that cold stress?

Steve recalls the Rasputitsa gravel race in Vermont, where he showed up in improvised scuba gear — neoprene gloves and homemade booties — and rode comfortably past riders suffering full-body hypothermic shakes. Svein follows with a story from the 2014 Giro d'Italia, where he stopped to fully kit up in heavy gear while competitors descended with their bikes literally vibrating from cold, their eyes sunken, some barely able to steer. The lesson: aero gains and weight savings mean nothing when your body stops functioning.

They dig into wet cold versus dry cold — the difference between a cold tub and a moving river at the same temperature — and how cold-induced dexterity loss makes eating and drinking nearly impossible, creating a vicious spiral. Steve's advice for the Badger: pack more than you think you need, prioritize warmth over nutrition optimization, and adopt a backpacker's mindset — stop, eat, then keep moving.

Svein contrasts this with his Jumbo Wild experience in extreme heat, where he learned that one-minute river submersions prevented cardiac drift and kept him from catastrophic blow-ups. The theme is the same in both extremes: you can't rewind the clock in a remote event. Skipping a stop to "keep moving" creates a deficit you can't recover from.

In the second half, the pair tackles a listener question from Maury Lum, a 51-year-old Vancouver cyclist training 6–10 hours per week. Does structured training advice only apply at 12–15 hours? Steve maintains that threshold for real cycling gains but shares a personal experiment: riding just once a week and doing four short circuit-style strength sessions — and racing competitively. He felt the best he ever had. Both agree that for time-crunched athletes focused on longevity, a mixed approach — strength, mobility, some cycling — beats squeezing in low-volume, high-intensity bike sessions that lead to burnout.

They close with reflections on aging and movement — Steve adapting exercises post-surgery, Svein championing floor living over couches — and why building structural resilience now pays off when you finally have time to ride more.

In 1986, Alex Stieda became the first North American to ever wear the yellow jersey at the Tour de France. He raced professionally through an era when being a Canadian trying to make it in European cycling was a strange and lonely path — and he helped open a door that a generation of riders would eventually follow through.

But that's not really what this conversation is about.

Svein has known Alex for years, and what interests him more is what happens after the jersey. After retiring from professional cycling. After raising a family, going through cancer, and navigating all the chapters life throws at you — the guy still loves riding his bike. He still trains. He still sets goals. He still wants to see what he's capable of.

This episode goes back further than the Tour to understand what made Alex that way. They cover growing up in Coquitlam, BC, and the outsized influence of Alex's father — a German construction foreman who built his own house on a broken foot, led scout trips that would be illegal today, and once turned a piece of plywood into a toboggan to get his family off a snow-covered mountain in August.

They talk about how a 16-year-old hockey player bought a road bike for $20, strapped a rat trap to it, and rode solo to Salt Spring Island — and how that feeling of freedom and adventure turned into something more serious. How a neighbor two houses down happened to be the president of Cycling BC. How a coach named Baz Barry Lycett turned a group of Vancouver juniors into national track champions. And how, at 20 years old, Alex found himself alone in Belgium with a $500 grant, a military flight, and no cell phone, sleeping in a cold-water flat with an outhouse, taking "Belgian showers" with rubbing alcohol and cologne, and winning kermesse races while the local mafia collected his winnings.

Alex shares the full story of the day he snuck into the yellow jersey — showing up to a Tour de France road stage in a skin suit, faking a bathroom break to slip off the front, and riding flat-out until Phil Anderson rolled up beside him and said, "Mate, you're in the jersey." He talks about the chaos of that first Tour: no recon, no radios, staying on army cots in a school gym, and barely making the time cut after winning five jerseys in a single day.

They also get into the harder parts — the transition out of racing, the identity crisis that comes with no longer being "the guy," and how Alex rebuilt himself through the bike industry, IT sales, and eventually a move to Edmonton with no job lined up. And finally, the part Svein was most interested in: why, at 65, with a new indoor velodrome in Edmonton and nothing left to prove, Alex is back in training, coaching juniors, chasing provincial track championships, and thinking about his old coach Baz — who at 87 was still the oldest rider in the Tour of Victoria.

This one is about what keeps us moving. What competition gives us. How our relationship with sport changes as we get older. And maybe what we're actually training for when the results don't really matter anymore.

As long as I can still pedal my bike in a healthy way, that's gonna be a win. That's the long game.