Kiel Reijnen is a professional road cyclist who currently rides for the WorldTeam Trek-Segafredo. He talks to Payson about his unique path to professional racing, having grown up on an island off the coast of Washington State and coming to cycling relatively late in life compared to his World Tour teammates. He explains why, even after going to college in Colorado and living in Europe some of the year, he still chooses to live on the island with his wife and kids, just a few houses away from his childhood home. He also talks about how the road cycling community he was first introduced to resembled the inclusivity of the gravel community more than the exclusivity more commonly associated with the standard road scene. Perhaps because of this, he has started competing in gravel races in the last few years, most recently at Unbound in June. During that race, an early mechanical resulted in him running 18 miles of the course, barefoot. While this generated a considerable amount of press attention, however, he explains to Payson that this wasn't the first time he's found himself running such a long distance in inadequate footwear on short notice.
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