© Mikayla Lyles

I’m thrilled to have American ultra-endurance cyclist Sam Scipio on Lessons in Badassery today! Sam discovered cycling at college, and since her twenties has raced cyclocross, road, crit, gravel and mountain bike. However, she’s most at home riding a single-speed (no gears!) mountain bike a very long way on gnarly terrain with unreasonably high levels of elevation gain.

In 2018, Sam was the second woman across the line and sixth overall at the Trans North Georgia Adventure mountain bike race – a 357-mile self-supported race featuring 56,000ft of elevation, which she completed on a single-speed MTB. A year later, she joined the adventure racing team, Team Onyx, and took on Bear Grylls’ gruelling Eco-Challenge in Fiji, a non-stop adventure race covering 400 miles of jungle, mud-clogged trails, rivers and mountain passes, on foot and via climbing, mountain bike, raft and paddleboard. Significantly, Team Onyx made history as the first all-black expedition racing team.

A designer by trade, Sam has recently launched her bike frame building business, Jubilee Manufacturing, so check out her website at Jubileemfg.com. In the meantime, have a read of our email Q&A, where we cover Sam’s journey into cycling, her go-to strategies for low moments, and her experience preparing for and taking on the brutal Eco-Challenge.