The Kevin Karius Show - Mar. 10th, 2026 - Lori-Ann Muenzer

0:00as we welcome in Lori Ann Munzer Olympic gold medalist from 2000 and for good morning, Lori Ann. How was your weekend and the weekend, everything like that? Oh, it's awesome. It's fantastic. Happy Tuesday to you. How's your weekend? Well, remember, like it was so windy, like you go outside, you get blown away. Well, Saturday, I didn't go for a bike ride. We went to the gym and said, I said, Sunday, I'm going out for a bike ride. First thing in the morning, light and beautiful out. And when we went out, it was, um, no, I think I'm going to wait a day. So unless I couldn't figure out was the wind blowing me towards Vegraville or would it blow me to Calgary? I said, it would be the fastest ride ever. And I'd probably be hanging on for dear life. Yeah. It's all fine when it's at your back, isn't it? Yes, yes. I remember riding in Pinchercreek to beaver mines. We were heading towards Castle Mountain. We only got as far as beaver mines. Kevin, I was in the front and I was averaging 19 kilometers an hour. And I went, okay, I'm, I'm cooked. I'm done. It took about an hour and 15 minutes

1:03to get there. We turned around at the tea intersection and came home. I didn't pedal once. We were averaging 65 kilometers an hour. It was crazy. It was like, holy cow. It was, uh, Sunday was definitely a Pinchercreek windy, wustery day. Like it's almost like if you put a little bit of a sail on your back, you might, you might, you might take off. I definitely want to be on the fat bike with as much, you know, padding as possible and, uh, just hoping, you know, rubber side down. It was crazy. Have you ever done that like pair sailing or, yes, yes. I did it once. I was in the West End Grand Bahamas at a Jack tar, all inclusive resort. I finally summoned up the courage because heights are not one of my favorite things. I actually took my camera up with me because I wanted to take some pictures. And, um, I got taken up right away. It was like sitting on the highest tallest swing ever. It was so quiet, perspective, beautiful, and they landed me on the beach.

2:07Yeah. Uh, so, yeah, we've done it once too. And it's, yeah, I thought it was okay. The, the other one then, so not pair sailing, which I don't even know the name, but when they, you know, they run off the cliff and they're hanging on the bar. Would you ever do that? Oh, good. No. That's, I think that, I call that flying squirrel. Yeah. Flying squirrel madness. It looks amazing. I just, um, I don't think I would be awake for that. Uh, I don't even know if I would be awake for jumping out of an airplane. I've seen, uh, have you seen Will Smith's, uh, what flying taught me or something? It's a really good video about fear. And, you know, you're in your bed, you're at night, you're thinking about it. Uh, why you go skydiving and you're afraid and you're not even up in the plane yet. And then they push you on the count of two, not, they don't push you out on three. And he goes, the reason for that is because everybody grabs and I'm like, Oh, yeah, I could see that coming. And he says, it is the most blissful, amazing experience ever. Yeah. Um, yeah. I know what

3:09you're talking about with the hand. When I went skydiving, I, I was hanging on to like the, the, the opening of the door to the top part, there's sort of like a railing there. And I was hanging on to it. And then the guy, because it was a tandem, he grabbed my hand and he put it down. And then I grabbed it and I put it back up. And then I think he just basically pushed me on two instead of three and said, let's go. Yeah. Totally. That's crazy. It's just, uh, yeah. Never doing it again. Never doing it again. Uh, Gloria, I'd measure this on sports 1440. Have you been watching a little of the Paralympics, Gloria? Yes, I've been watching Natalie Wilkie take on her third metal. She's got the whole collection, bronze, silver, and gold. And just phenomenal what we're seeing the athletes do as results wise, it's, they're definitely showing us the sky's the limit. Yeah. So I think that she have eight or 10 total in her career. I think she's got 10 maybe 11 because I was checking the standings and the woman is, she's just got the

4:13collection. Yeah. Third Olympics. Well, you know, while we were watching, like even the curling shot, you know, the sledge hockey teams doing well, the curlers won again today. So it's so far so good, a pretty decent showing for Canada so far in the Paralympics. Absolutely. And one of the cool things is being able to catch the replays or some of the lives on CBC sports on YouTube has been the fastest way to catch up and keep connected with the athletes. I've been watching Alison Lang's coverage, the digital coverage that she's doing. She's doing a fantastic job. And I just think it's great to see the highlights in the showcase of the athletes. I was trying to figure out the timing system and I learned that there's a formula Kevin for the different levels. So they've got the raw time. So your actual time. And then there is a percentage. And it's based on historical data

5:14where they take 400 elite races over a period of about four years. And that is how they come up with, quote, unquote, the factored time. So different athletes are going to have different, you know, limits. They have an upper body limit. They have a lower limit body limit. They've got visually impaired and being able to put those times together gives the athletes an overall classification, which I didn't know. It was like, okay, cool. Yeah, just to make sure it was now 10 Paralympic Middles in Natalie Wilkie's career. So her third of these games, she's got 10 total. You would also send me text, Laurie Annabout, the ultra endurance cyclist back at it again. We've had on the program. Yeah, I saw her name pop up in my feed. And I'm going, okay, what did she do? Is she coming to Edmonton? We got to get her on the air. Well, she's been down in California training in the specialized wind tunnels. And that was something I had always wanted to do. But she should have just came

6:16here last weekend. Absolutely. But what she's done is is I saw her and she shaved her head. And I was thinking, what's what's going on? And she's attempting to go after the record, the all around the world record, which was 18,125. Sorry, 18,032 miles by a guy named Mark Beaumont in 2017. So she's wanting to take his record. And she figured that she could shave and save 13 hours by shaving her head. And it was like, well, what does that mean? Well, you don't have to wash it. You don't have to brush it. And I took me back to when I shaved my head for cops for cancer. It was done as a fundraiser. Oh, it is so liberating. You don't even you wake up and you have the perfect head of hair. Now, if you see me in the morning, I would probably scare everybody. Yeah, it's not pretty in the morning. But really interesting to think about how to look at this and go, okay,

7:1918,032 miles. And you want to do it in a shorter amount of time. She was riding a couple years ago when she did over 18,000 miles. She was riding 12 hours a day and averaging 180 miles. So that's two, that's just shy of 300 kilometers a day. And she was doing that in 12 hours. I'm just thinking, holy moly. So she's definitely going to be on a mission going after this, this world record. I just punched up the picture. Yeah, I've got her just shaving her head with the clippers, the trimmers. And it says that she'll save the 13 hours over the 78 days. I guess all hair maintenance. Yeah, one less thing you have to worry about. And and that's the thing is when you can take off extra weight or time as cost factors, that's huge. That's huge. I mean, that could be the difference of breaking the record or arriving and and spending way more time on the bike.

8:24So the first story that we did with her was that was that the tour divide, Lorian, or was that a different endurance race? Oh my gosh, there's been a couple of them. I know that she's I did it a ride, which is the Alaska winter solo rides that they do. We covered, I think it was a Canadian who had done the ultra running as well. So the kind of blurring. Yeah, that's right. We had we've done a few more than just one endurance racer, but I'm just looking at her bio that she had the course record in 2015. So that's a ways back. So it's probably not exactly what we were discussing at that point. Probably a year and a half ago. I'm having a tough time remembering it. Yeah, it's just I mean, those those events, Kevin, are long to be able to go supported or unsupported. I believe the edited a ride is unsupported. So you are literally packing everything with you. That's called bike packing. If you remember, Trish Holt was our guest at one

9:29point. She's also connected and spoken and knows Lail Will Cox. So I'm sure she's picked her her for some tips and tricks of how can I pack lighter? How could I go further, farther faster? That sort of thing. And just every little bit counts. I know that when I was racing, the disc wheels would make a difference. The helmet would make a difference. Everybody at work thought it was crazy when I was eating salad and I was putting lemon juice on my salads for dressing. And they're like, well, why don't you just go get the craft dressing? And I said, yeah, well, it might cost me an extra thousandth of a second or a tenth of a second. They're like, what do you mean? And then it wasn't until when I came back from the Olympics that they started to understand the difference of how much a tenth of a second makes or a thousandth of a second makes. How does Lail Will Cox get funding like for all these races? Like just even trying to circumnavigate the globe, which would take I'm thinking I'm just looking 80 days or so.

10:30Like, yeah, how does this all come about for her? Well, she's got to have the support, Kevin. You can do it on a shoe string budget. You're not going to go very far, very fast. But to be able to have a team behind you, you've got to have the pupil power. And then you also have to have the financing. So she's obviously done this more than once. This isn't her her first tour or first around the world tour. So being able to set up, she's running it like a business where you're thinking of what are all the things I need? And then how can I also be giving back and keeping in touch as well? So I mean, social media is really great because it keeps people abreast of where you are, what you're doing. There are trackers so that you can follow the route and where you're going. So to be able to do that is really instrumental. But she's not doing it by herself. Yeah. And again, as you mentioned, the support not just financially, but you need it emotionally as well. Totally, totally. And to be able to have the right people, you call them your crew, your pit team.

11:34You've got to have the mechanical part. You have to have the nutrition part. You also have to have a place to sleep. Are you sleeping in a bed? Are you sleeping in a hammock? Are you in a sleeping bag? Like what are you doing to be able to recover? And then where are you showering? Are you showering? Is there X number of days? How often do you sleep? How often are you off the bike? You know, one of the biggest challenges every cycleist will tell you is, well, we really don't talk about saddle sores. That's when things get really uncomfortable seated. So you've got to have, oh, who's doing the laundry? Who's keeping the clothes clean? And it sounds, it's something you don't necessarily think of when we go to the Olympics or the Commonwealth Games, you literally drop off your laundry. You've got to sort it, darks and whites apart so that they don't get mixed or matched. If they do, your whites get looking a little gray. But being able to have those that kind of support so that you can go out and play and perform and train and do what

12:38you do best is really huge. So there's even another component there. Where are you washing your clothes? Every country is a little bit different. The dryers in France, well, there's not like the ones in North America, they take a little bit longer. You can't jam-pack them. You know, sometimes when I was in Greece in 2000, we hung our clothes out to dry. So I don't know if she's got that much time, but I'm sure somebody's taken care of that and got that checklist done. Yeah. Laurie had Munzer with us on sports 1440. With the others, just a quick comment, Laurie, on these next two games. So they got, they go into Colorado tonight, then they go to Dallas on Thursday. So arguably the top two teams in the NHL. The Oilers, they're not at this level yet. We've seen them get to that level. I mean, they beat Dallas last year in the playoffs. Colorado's a different beast. And both these teams really gave it to the Oilers in their previous meetings here in Edmonton. So maybe just a thought on a preparation from a mental standpoint going in to these

13:43two games for the Oilers. I think this is really great for them. There are more of a due or die situation playing. I think this is where we're going to see a shift that's going to move them up, going, all right, we've got to put it together. We've got to bring out the best. We've got to play together as a cohesive team. We have to work together. And this is, it's following the pattern from last year and the year before. Kevin, not being the greatest, and then starting to move into that championship team and the way that they're playing. So the mental fortitude, it has to be there. I think it's the due or die mentality and everybody coming together and playing for the greater good of we have to win. We have to win now. And if we don't, Stanley is probably not going to be an option here for us. Good stuff, Florianne. Have a great week. Hopefully you can get some cycling in and it's not too windy for the weekend. So we'll talk to you

14:44next Tuesday. You bet. Thanks, Kevin.