A New American Town - Bentonville, Arkansas

Bonus Episode: Off Season Christopher Blevins

• Visit Bentonville

Share episode

We celebrate Christopher Blevins’ historic World Cup season and explore how he resets with mindfulness, play, and creative work. From Cal Poly roots to Stilspoke, he shares why slowing down builds a stronger racer and a fuller person.

A New American Town is here to help you plan your trip to Bentonville, Arkansas. From guides, events, and restaurant highlights. Find all this and more at visitbentonville.com and subscribe to our newsletter. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, and LinkedIn.

You can listen to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, CastBox, Podcast Casts, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, and Podcast Addict.

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Visit Bittenville Podcast, a new American town. I'm your host, Nat Ross, with a in-depth edition inside the head and the brains and the wherewithal of Christopher Blevins. Christopher Blevins, you're in Bittenville, Arkansas. We're welcoming you home after the most incredible season on the World Cup UCI mountain bike tour ever. So can't wait to see the medals, the stories, the globes, the jerseys, all these pieces, because the community is here to welcome you just like last year when the entire U.S. team came after wrapping up their season. So I want to know, the community wants to know, Visit Bittenville wants to know. Um, now that cycling's done, you check that box for the year. Um what is motivating you? Um, you've been storytelling the entire year, um, but what is your element? Because you're an incredible storyteller, by the way, that resets you that uh Christopher gets to be you without the bike racing element on the forefront and on your mind.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Yeah, no, thank you. Um great to be here. Great to just have a week to chill. And I'm gonna win dual slalom tonight at Thunderdome. So gotta focus on my you know, biggest race of the year before we wrap it up. Um and uh yeah, what do I do now? Um, I think typically in offseason, I go into two modes. I go either monk mode or monkey mode. There's no in between at all. So monkey mode means I'm gonna hit the pickup basketball court at the Cal Poly Rec Center gym and run a bunch of uh Cal Poly college kids off the court and get extremely sore when I play basketball for a week. I'm gonna go surf until I get I get this elbow tendinitis from paddling too hard when I surf. But I had that last year because I surfed like 10 days in a row. So I can't wait to just have fun and do those things. Um and then uh I'll probably do on the on the other side, I'll probably do like a 10-day silent meditation retreat. Um so um, and then yeah, there I got I have a lot of energy for for projects. Um, and and yeah, like you said, the storytelling this time of year. So this is for the next two months, is when I really get inspired to think about video projects, poetry, just yeah, talking about my season, but also yeah, generally extending it beyond the bike as well. So I have a lot of things that I want to do, um, and also do a whole lot of nothing at the same time.

SPEAKER_00:

That is music to our ears, and I think mindfulness is a big element that you've incorporated into part of the success formula. So that's not an easy piece to uh focus on and and grasp and um and nail like you have.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah, no, it's been huge. Um and it is not just the time on a meditation cushion and using that to be a better bike racer, or it but it's going the other way for me now. Like I'm realizing that my ex my race mind, my experience, my inner experience in a race can actually teach me a lot about mindfulness outside of it and my you know how to blend full effort with calm and be and have presence the whole time. So that's been good. But um yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, you mentioned Cal Poly, and that was uh you were rooted there for quite some time. So it's gonna be nice to get a little bit of a reprieve and uh visit your uh old university there. Um when you were at Cal Poly, what did you study? And then what was um your trajectory in case the bike racing thing didn't pay the bills?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, well, I I did pick a degree that could work with bike racing. Um, a lot of people may know Lance Haydit, who also went to Cal Poly. He was a mechanical engineer. So he had a lot harder time than I did, to be honest. But I picked uh I was I studied business, entrepreneurship, and uh, and then a minor in sociology, which kind of blended quite a bit throughout it. Um, it allowed me to take the spring quarters off every year. So from March until September, I was free to race. And then I'd I the first, I don't know, month or two when I wasn't training that hard, I could have somewhat of a normal college experience. And then the winter quarter every year in school, which was yeah, start of the year in January to March, was just like zero gaps. I was just studying, you know, which again wasn't as much as a business major, um, and training. And it was the perfect environment for me personally um to be able to to yeah, get that degree. Uh, it took me five years, um, but I'm really glad I did, and I went to a place that I would have liked to have gone to otherwise. And uh yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Um, and then somehow we always ended up talking about racing, but we'll make this one short. Um, you had to pay your dues, and it it's a long commitment and long career. You actually raced on the road for a while um to get to to pave the way for where you're at now.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I did. Um I think a lot of people, you know, are in that position where they they race mountain bikes and road and they and then end up gravitating to the road because there's more, frankly, money. Um, for me, it was the Olympics. I wanted to get to Tokyo, and uh I was really fortunate to be able to race both at a high level first two years of U23 and then focus pretty exclusively on mountain bike for Tokyo and also to finish my degree, like looking back now in the world tour on the road. Yeah, there's kids that are going like you know, 100 plus race days at 19 years old, and I don't think they're really developing you know as as as people as much, and they're put in environments that are highly stressful with big contracts. And I was really glad that I was able to take my time more and finish a degree, um, make it to Tokyo. And and at the end of the day, I love mountain biking. So yeah, back to your roots. Yeah, if just following my heart, really. Dig it.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, following your heart. Um, some folks can get to watch um a little bit of the storytelling that you do on the YouTube channel, and then there's episodes, there's different elements that um speak to what Still Spoke means to you, or just um being able to do that in a format where you're doing your thing in the background, but in in the end, it's about you.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Well, Stillspoke was kind of senior project for me five, six years ago now that has morphed to include some other friends and and people and really be like a it's a creative studio platform that essentially I didn't want to have something that was just for me, yeah, uh yeah, Christopher Blemon's YouTube. And I wanted to create something that could be dedicated towards uh yeah, storytelling, creativity in the world of sports, and yeah, in this sport. And it's been fluid, very loose, it's kind of hard to pin down intentionally, but we've done a lot of yeah, YouTube series and content and uh different projects and written pieces and books and stuff, not not not published books, but like you know, creative books. So um I'm hoping that can can grow more and and it's just been really fun for me to have that other outlet. And as I said earlier, there's a lot of different ways to be a part of the bike community, and I think this is just another way for me that gives balance to the really insular racing side.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And then just to speak on the storytelling element, but um the way it works with you is you're kind of a wordsmith and and in my uh interpretation and watching it, you're rapping, you're feeling the flow, you're tying it into the moment. And for you, like it correlates all the way around. But do we get to see more of this from you in the future?

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, uh, we're we're in a recording studio, so I need to ask if I can, you know, record my album here over the winter. But no, but um yeah, it like it's so cool for me to be able to blend like directly the creativity, which for me is yeah, in in spoken word and rap and just yeah, music and yeah, lyricism, I guess. But uh to be able to blend that with the bike world in some of these projects has just been really fun. Like just yeah, uh, and different and intentionally different, you know, than some other ways of of doing content, I guess. But um, yeah, I like I said, this time of year, I I just start tilting to just take on all this stuff and get really excited, and then uh inevitably I start you know having to train again extremely hard and the world gets gets narrow again, which is also good. But no, I'd like to keep being creative and work on I've got some exciting stuff this off season, I think.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, you've got the audience, and the audience can't wait. So, Bentonville and the community here in Northwest Arkansas would like to thank you and the entire national team, um, USA Cycling, for ending the season here with us. So, Christopher Blevins, spectacular that you got to spend time with us in Haxton Road Studios, downtown Bentonville. Um, visit Bentonville and I and uh the entire community will see you all week. Yeah, let's do it. It'll be really fun. Uh, like I said, I got to win uh the dual slalom tonight. So let's get going. Appreciate you, Christopher. For everyone listening at home, thanks so much for joining us. Visit Bittenville is here for you to have a great time in town. Check out visitbittenville.com for restaurant guides, places to stay, and much more. You can also follow us on social media. Thanks for listening.