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Riding Fixed, Up Mountains, with Pros – Ep. 17 Midway w/ Keegan Swenson
Midway, Utah is the kind of place that looks like it was designed by a committee of people who love clean mountain air, tidy roads, and the quiet belief that suffering is good for you...as long as it’s scenic.
So naturally, we show up with the opposite agenda: ride fixed gears uphill with Keegan Swenson: World Champ, Leadville Champ, Lifetime Grand Prix / Race Series Champ, and general collector of novelty checks, then we subject him to karaoke at altitude like it’s a controlled study.
We visit Keegan at home (like normal people do)
We stop at Keegan’s house, the modern equivalent of approaching a temple before a ritual. Then we do what any serious film crew does: we start inventorying nonsense.
There’s talk of helmets and glasses, specifically, the important distinction between sunglasses and fun glasses, which, in the taxonomy of athletes, is a real and necessary category. Then we roll out, because eventually the climb demands its tribute.
Keegan starts the ride on his new Specialized fixed gear: clean, fast, and perfectly suited for the kind of day we’re having. Scott is previewing a top secret, up and coming, Titanium Track Frame
The Experiment: Fixed-Gear Climbing, Performed With Academic Seriousness
The route is Cascade Springs to Alpine Leaf Road, and we approach it with a seriousness that can only be described as “delusional confidence.” Keegan’s on 48x19, we’re on 49x19, which sounds scientific until you realize it’s mostly an excuse to explain, in advance, why we’re about to get dropped.
This is what fixed-gear climbing really is: a conversation with gravity where you can’t negotiate, can’t shift, and can’t pretend you’re in control. You just keep pedaling and hope your soul stays in your body.
Along the way, Keegan talks about the pivot that still feels illegal to say out loud: coming up in XCO, missing the Olympic team, then going to do Leadville—and winning it his first time. The kind of move that doesn’t happen in real life unless your job title is “being unreasonably good at bicycles.”
Keegan, As a Subject: The Calm Center of a Dumb Storm
Keegan isn’t interesting only because he wins. He’s interesting because he does it with this quiet, almost casual calm...like it’s just another Tuesday.
He’s calm, measured, clinically honest about the work: racing, training, pacing, and what it takes to stay at the pointy end of the sport. Meanwhile, we’re beside him doing our best impression of men conducting research while actively losing IQ points to elevation.
And because this series is what it is, the “serious” conversation immediately drifts into topics that only make sense mid-climb:
- Music as endurance medication (band rankings, guilty pleasures, and the sacred truth that taste gets weird at altitude)
- Coffee (drip / pour-over; no fussy rituals, just caffeine and time)
- Gear nerdery (the future, the tech, and why gravel keeps drifting toward suspension)
- The “Wild West” factor (less measuring tape energy, more “do what works”)
Academic Interlude: Band Rankings as Psychological Warfare
At some point, we start ranking bands. The climb is manageable for Keegan...this is the part that gets complicated.
Keegan treats it like a real exercise: resource management, saving space for dessert, making the hard calls. It’s the hidden truth of endurance sport: it’s not just watts. It’s identity. It’s admitting you love something you’re “not supposed” to love, mid-climb, no less.
The Summit Ritual: Karaoke (Keegan’s Greatest Nightmare)
Every episode ends with a top-of-mountain gag. This time, we choose psychological damage.
At altitude—where lungs are bargaining and dignity is scarce—we introduce Keegan to his stated greatest fear: karaoke. The man who wins races for a living is suddenly negotiating with a microphone like it’s an invasive species.
We treat it academically, of course: a performance-based stress test conducted in thin air, designed to measure composure under culturally inappropriate conditions.
The Descent: Speed, Redemption, and “Bike Flow”
After the summit, we drop back down...fast corners, clean roads, the kind of descent that makes you remember why people move to Utah and start talking about “variety” like it’s a religion.
We close the episode the only way that felt right: a Blink-182-style tribute moment...plus our own State Bicycle Co. original, “Bike Flow”, created to salute Keegan and the catalog of things he’s won.
There’s also a surprise ending we’re not spoiling. Just hit play and let it happen.
About the Series
Riding Fixed, Up Mountains, With Pros is our excuse to get to know the best riders on the planet the only way that feels honest: on a ride, mid-breath, mid-sweat, mid–“why did we pick this climb.” Natural conversation, questionable decisions, and a top-of-mountain gag to cap it off.
Strava Link
Watch Episode 17
📺 Riding Fixed, Up Mountains, with Pros – Ep. 17 Midway w/ Keegan Swenson: https://youtu.be/XGxEIUvAvFU
🎞️ Binge past episodes featuring Phil Gaimon, Lachlan Morton, Justin Williams, and more
▶️ Watch the full playlist here
Final Thoughts
What sticks with you isn’t just the scenery or the suffering, or even the fact that we chose fixed gears for a climb that would be perfectly difficult on any normal bike. It’s the strange little ecosystem around it: the way elite performance lives right next to absurdity, and how quickly “serious” turns into “ceremonial.”
Keegan is the rare kind of athlete who can talk about winning at the highest level without turning it into mythology. Calm, precise, no theatrics. Which makes it even funnier (and somehow more human) that the most destabilizing part of the day isn’t the climb—it’s a band ranking and a karaoke session at altitude, performed like a field experiment in taste, ego, and social pressure.
In the end, that’s the point of this series: ride with the best in the world and see what survives once you remove the podium, the press release, and the perfectly controlled environment. What you get is real conversation, dumb choices treated with academic seriousness, and a descent back into normal life—soundtracked, appropriately, by a Blink-182 tribute and “Bike Flow.”
