Outsiders: Mel Webb

Mel is an illustrator, designer, and ultra-endurance adventure cyclist based in Canada. Outside of riding, she can be found knitting beautiful creations and co-hosting her podcast Detours, shining a light on women in ultra distance racing. We caught up with Mel in the weeks building up to her traveling to Morocco for Atlas Mountain Race to learn a bit more about her and her upcoming plans.

Words by Mel Webb, photos by Morgan Taylor for the Radavist

Mel, tell us a bit about where you’re from and how you got into bike packing?

I currently live in Vancouver, Canada, though I was born and raised just outside of Toronto. I was pulled to the west coast because of the mountains and moved shortly after I finished my undergraduate degree in 2018.

At the time I was a marathon runner and quickly immersed myself into the local scene chasing the goal of running the Boston Marathon. Fast forward to January 24, 2020 and I broke my leg skiing in Whistler, cracking the top of my tibia plateau. That landed me a plate and five screws in my right leg, which made running more painful than I cared to admit. I turned to the bike as a means of cross training and rehabbing and quickly fell in love with how much further I could go than on my feet and how much I could see in the span of a few hours.

Next thing I knew I had bought a gravel bike on Facebook marketplace, went down an internet rabbit hole and came across this whole bikepacking thing and I knew that’s where I wanted my time and energy to go.

Why do you ride?

So many reasons. The main ones are how capable the bike makes me feel, and what it does for my creative practice. I’m able to see so much on a ride or bikepacking trip, and while I may come home physically tired, I’m usually brimming with ideas and energy for art and other creative projects.

What keeps you riding when things are hard?

There’s this saying that goes “treat feelings like visitors who are just passing through” and it’s something I keep top of mind. Everything is temporary, good or bad. When things are good, it’s easy to enjoy the moment, but when you’re in the pits it can feel like you’ll never get out. So I try my best to remember that that feeling is temporary and forget anything bad that’s happened to me. I used to call this goldfish mode, though I’ve just learned their memories are far better than society thinks they are, so if you’ve seen the movie Finding Nemo, I now refer to it as Dory mode.

When impermanence and short term memory loss don’t work, I revert to gratitude and finding elements of my day or moment that I can be grateful for. It is such a privilege to get to ride my bike around the world, and especially in today’s geopolitical climate, that is not lost on me. Sometimes it’s as simple as stopping and taking in the view, or reflecting on how dang refreshing that Coke was at the last resupply stop.

If I need to distract myself, an episode of the podcast Normal Gossip usually does the trick as well.

More women on start lines is a big objective for you. What’s the hope for 2024 and how can more people get involved, whether that be helping or riding?

Being a woman on the start line of an ultra race can feel extremely lonely. Last August I toed the line of a local ultra and there were a handful of women on the startlist, but when I turned up on race day I was the only one who had actually shown up. It got me thinking and lit a fire within me about how I could do more to help increase participation in the women’s field.

Detours was born out of a desire to hear stories directly from women because it is different when a woman is the one doing the interviewing. We still chat with folks who identify as male in the space, but our priority is on spotlighting the women in the field.

A project I’m passionate about getting off the ground this year is dedicated race coverage on just the women’s field at a handful of ultra races this year. The hope is that by bringing stories to light from the entire women’s field, others will hear them and be inspired to participate in the future. We haven’t firmed up which races so won’t reveal our plans just yet but I think (and hope!) that people will be excited to tune in.

I don’t have all the answers on how to grow the women’s field but I do know what has helped me feel like I belong. Of course there are many barriers to entry, but if you have the means to participate and have felt imposter syndrome like me, the best thing you can do is be brave enough to try. Every time you put yourself out there, you learn and you grow and I think that’s what this sport is all about. If you’re a loved one of someone out there who’s been nervous about signing up for their first ultra or heading out on their first bikepacking trip, tell them you believe in them. Encourage their dreams no matter how big or small they are, it goes a long way.

I would also encourage anyone who identifies as a woman, has raced an ultra or backpacks and feels comfortable doing so to share their experiences, both good and bad. It helps ease the fears of others, prepare themselves and feel less alone in their experiences.

There’s a rumor you’re spending your honeymoon on Silk Road Mountain Race. We need to know more…

My fiancé Jake and I went to Silk Road in 2022 and raced independently. I got extremely sick and scratched, but the main reason I wanted to go back together was because of the way I felt at the top of the first big mountain pass. When I got to the top of the gruelling 4300m pass that was littered with landslides and I’d just spent the last 8 hours hiking my bike up, I felt empty. At the time, I thought it would be a once in a lifetime experience and I wanted someone I loved there to share the moment with me. Little did I know that I would be hooked on ultra cycling and the Silk Road Mountain race after that experience and that I would be back.

As soon as Jake crossed the finish line I told him we had to come back as a pair, which in hindsight was a bit soon to raise the issue, but alas that’s how I roll. After a few days of recovery, he was hooked on the idea of returning, so before we had even left Kyrgyzstan we had promised each other that we would be back. We weren’t engaged at the time, so when we made the decision to return we didn’t know we would be getting married the same year. At first when we told people we were headed to Kyrgyzstan this summer and they asked if it was our honeymoon, we said no. But we got tired of correcting people and realized we likely wouldn’t end up lying on a beach anyways so here we are. We love riding and racing together so I can’t think of a better way to celebrate our newly minted marriage.

We’ve each got a handful of races in the cards before Silk Road, some together, some solo. I’ll be racing Atlas Mountain Race, and have a few other races between 500km and 1000km earmarked that are within driving distance from home and can be locked in a little closer to. Between Atlas, Silk Road and a wedding, this year will be full on so we’ll see what I can squeeze in. Naturally, I’m sure I’ll document and storytell along the way to bring people inside the inner workings of racing in a pair as a couple!

What’s the biggest luxury in your bags before any race?

Film and a film camera! Stopping to savour a moment and take a picture is huge for me and there’s no better way to do so than with film. You have a finite number of shots on a roll so you’ve got to make them count. While it’s nice to end up with pretty pictures, what matters most to me is the memory of the moment that each of these photos evokes.