Is Justin Williams the new Major Taylor?!
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Wow I hope not. Taylor was routinely denied wins and race opportunities, was constantly the brunt of semi-organized in-race attempts by other riders to get him out of the race, was denied entry to college after he stopped racing, and died in poverty at 53, when he was buried in an unmarked grave because nobody bothered to tell his family.
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Wow that was good, listening to his ideas about wealth distribution I can give Justin no higher accolade than it reminded me of listening to Bill Shankly, it was that same idea of socialism through hard work.
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My favourite of his
“If I became a bin-man tomorrow, I’d be the greatest bin-man who ever lived. I’d have Liverpool the cleanest city on earth. I’d have everyone working with me, succeeding and sharing out the success. I’d make sure they were paid a decent wage with the best bonuses, and that we all worked hard to achieve our goals. Some people might say, ah but they’re only bin-men, why do we need to reward them so well for a job anyone can do, but I’d ask them why they believe they are more important than a bin-man? I’d ask them how proud they’d feel if this city became the cleanest in the world? And who would have made them proud? The bin-man.”
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What a well rounded podcast, entertaining, educational, and timely. Thank you Nate for using your influence and platform for good.
I believe Justin’s story and vision would make a great children’s story or short animation, if Specialized got behind the project it would be a great product placement opportunity.
Continuing the focus on young people, given the increased bike sales and lack of summer camp opportunity I think an ideal follow up would be a couple of L39ion and the TR Gang do road safety animation shorts for kids and new riders. And yes Coach Chad should have a single legged pedal drills episode. Specialized are you listening?
Checkout this style of animation. The Tour De France Explained in Animation - YouTube
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Justin is a phenomenal person and athlete. There is no way we could capture even a fraction of what we’d all love to hear from him in a single episode!
Regarding fanboying and sexism, I offer another perspective. First, I was fangirling as hard as Jonathan and Nate were fanboying! Justin is amazing! Our goal with this episode was to hear from and learn from Justin, which meant all of us taking a backseat and just posing questions to facilitate his flow. I didn’t jump in much on this episode for that reason and because Justin naturally answered my questions without prompting.
Second, the “talking over” you mention is an artifact of the remote setup that means sometimes other hosts hear me start to speak a second after I’ve actually begun talking. It’s awkward for all of us, but we all do our best to acknowledge and hear from one another. From the very first episode I recorded with TR through every subsequent podcast (and meeting), I have felt respected, seen, and heard by all of my colleagues. I’ve yet to encounter a shred of sexism, but you can bet that if I did, I would not be shy about calling it out – because of my personality, but also because of the TR culture. And my colleagues would fix it on the spot. Nate, Jonathan, Chad, and Pete (heck all of my colleagues at TR) are awesome and walk the walk every day, and I wanted you to hear that from me. We’re owning lack of representation, and taking real steps to change this now and for the long term. We are never afraid to admit shortcomings, because we know we can – and commit to – constantly improve. We’re getting better with the awkwardness of internet lag with the remote setup, but please understand that’s a technical issue, not a sexism one.
Having said all that, let me refocus on the important part: HOW AWESOME IS JUSTIN?! He’s a fountain of wisdom, and it was brilliant to hear how he thinks not only about racing, but also about creating real change by innovating and iterating business models when the old stale ones clearly cause harm. Fangirl here. 
I could have sat in my headphones all day just soaking up all that knowledge and hearing Justin’s stories. That episode was an absolute delight!
Side note, re: behind-the-scenes of professional cycling life, I’m happy to discuss this further, but I try to focus on actionable takeaways that help our athletes get faster. Maybe a special fundraiser episode … ?
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So much of what Justin said resonated with me; hearing his stories felt healing for me in some ways. It’s hard to fit everything into one episode, and I agree it would be rad to get into more detail about how his track background has contributed to his skill and style, as well as career trajectory. Please see my response to @oldcrank, too. I was fangirling hard myself, and didn’t speak much because I wanted to hear as much as possible from Justin (plus he was answering my questions without me even saying them out loud). Jonathan and Nate are awesome podcast teammates, and I didn’t feel slighted in the least. This one was all about Justin. 
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Sometimes we get feedback like this and I think sharing our process would help a bit.
- We do a pre-planning meeting and get everyone’s questions written down (for all podcasts) including Amber’s questions.
- When we interview experts, we often want to hear them explain something even if we already know the answer to the question.
- We establish Amber and Chad as experts (and Jon as an MTB expert). My role is to ask simple questions like “how do you sprint?” or “What do you do with 10 laps to go?”. Those sound weird coming from Amber or Chad because we’ve established them as an expert.
- Jon moves the conversation along through our questions/notes and makes sure we don’t miss anything.
If the guest’s expertise lines up with one of the host’s expertise you’ll hear fewer questions from them directly, although their line of questioning will be in our planning doc and will come out.
The podcast hosts all agree that there’s more to learn from Justin and if he’s willing, we’d love to do more interviews.
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Ok, so I’ll ask the question.
How much do I have to pay to be even half as fast and skilful as Justin on a bike?
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Got it. I do now, and should have reflected before I used that word, because mutual respect amidst all the fun and banter is what I do see, week after week, from all of you.
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Two entry fees per week for 10 years? 
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That’s an interesting overview of your process and I can see why you’d want to maintain the expert/ignorant divide. However, I do think there’s another approach in one expert asking another expert how they do things, and how this compares to their own experience. For example, if Amber were to ask ‘so at 10 laps to go what are you doing/thinking about’ and then offering a comparison to how this might differ to what she has experienced in a women’s peleton/on a non-crit focused team.
Equally, if Chad were to ask and learn something about how to approach the closing laps of a race, the lesson is all the more powerful as Chad, an expert, as learnt something that he could have applied in his racing career.
I think this interview of Chris Froome by Nico Rosberg (Formula One driver) illustrates how one expert can interview another, though from different fields.
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I don’t think this is a good example because the goal of the podcast was to have Justin do most of the talking, not a conversation between 2 experts. Maybe Chad can interview Amber in an upcoming successful athletes podcast?
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Perhaps not the bestest example, just off the top of my head, an example of something I thought was quite interesting that was one expert to another. I think this also became more conversational because Froome actually asked questions back, which I think is perhaps because he felt more engaged talking to another performer at the top of sport.
You did give me an idea that might be interesting. What if TR invited two special guests that they thought would have good chemistry like in your example? But again the TR team will at most serve in a facilitation role and be in the background.
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Don’t want to derail this topic but, this is something I’d be really interested in. I’d actually like to see it happen in reverse too.
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I made a request thread in the appropriate forum Category for these types of requests. Please add this or any other ones to the thread. I am hoping a TR rep will follow the thread.
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Remember that group podcast with clif bar racing? let’s do that with Legion!
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Interesting to hear a new perspective on racing and training but I couldn’t get past his ego enough to enjoy the episode. Didn’t end up finishing the podcast.
To the TR team: sure the guy has been successful and he’s definitively talented but part of the job of a moderator and podcast participants is to guide the conversation. The fact that this guest seemed far more interested in talking about his successes than lessons he’s learned that might be applicable to the TR community should have been addressed during the episode.
This one was a thumbs down in my view. On to the next one, in a string of great podcasts
Just my $0.02 cents…