Let’s give your boy a pass. He makes me laugh.
And here it is - preserved for history. h/t @FergusYL
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I’ve bagged on this guy a bit in the last year or two, after several years of really liking him and his content… So why stop now…
I raced the event in which he “won” his first national championship, SilverState508, although I was in the self-supported category(meaning I didn’t have the van carrying two bikes to swap(TT bike for flat stretches, and climbing bike for hills), four crew members, bottle hand ups, etc). He was aiming for the course record, and fell way short of it. He finished in 29 hours, I was only four hours behind him, stopping to buy my own gas station food, fill my own bottles, and swap layers that I’d carried for the entire 500 miles(also plugged a tire, then had to tube it). There were a total of 10 people in his event, with 7 of them being over 50 years old(this tells you the demographic of the event and its “organizers”, WUCA included). Prior to him getting a jersey and self proclaiming his National Championship title, I was not aware that was a thing, and this is coming from someone who attended that race, and has known about it for 10 years living in the host city…
The following year he “repeated” at the Race Across Oregon… There was one other guy “racing”… He admits this, but also treats it like an anomaly, when the highest number of racers in the last five years has been 10 people… His argument is you can only race the people who show up, and I get that. But personally, I have zero motivation to head to a race that I’m 90% confident I can win when there are historically a handful of people who even participate. It’s like those social media reels of sports that you never knew existed like “car-jitsu” and “Balloon World Cup”… Sure, you could probably become the world champion at Ostrich Racing, but who cares?
I have tuned him out in the last year, as he’s lot the plot a bit in my opinion. Admittedly, I probably take it a bit more personal, as I’m in the Ultra distance world, and know that he is nowhere near the top. But I suppose good on him for playing the game, and making money off of it.
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Thanks for the input. And your time self supported is amazing
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This might be the single greatest line in the history of internet cycling…
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I think everyone has to find their own motivation and victories. As long as it’s not attacking others in arrogance, let everyone do their thing.
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Going to make a segment on Strava and find my own victories! World champion here I come 
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He talks about whether it’s legit or not here:
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That’s kind of what they’re for right?
I’m in TR’s top 10-12% for w/kg. That’s nothing to tell other people about, but it helps me feel good that I am doing ok. In pure watts, it’s more like 50%, so of course I don’t need to think about that.
If the event claims it’s a national championship, and names him the champion, I think it’s fine for him to say that. He’s aware of all the asterisks and says it himself in the videos, but he worked hard and I don’t feel like he’s shoving it in others’ faces making it sound like more than what it is (or what the event says it is).
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They just need us to feed the algorithm so they don’t end up as the first link on page two somewhere.
Sad really.
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He could wear a national champs jersey at the gravel worlds in Nebraska…
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You have to call it a “FKT” though, and also, get sprayed with champagne at the end 
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I think you folks are all aiming a bit too low. I was the world champion in numerous sports by the age of nine or ten. Plywood-on-Car-Tire Jumping, How Far Can You Ride Your Bike into the Creek Before You Tip Over, How Far Can You Toss Dave’s Crappy Bike, and too many others to mention.
All of which feel pretty much exactly as significant as the National Championship under discussion here.
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Clicks don’t mean anything and haven’t for a while. There is no value in “clicks” any more, the algorithm is now “watch time”. This is why you’ve seen longer and longer format in YouTube more recently. So clickbait isn’t really relevant if the watcher moves on after 30 seconds.
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Even if VC’s championship was an official USAC recognition…he could not wear the jersey at a different discipline. You also can’t wear the jersey at the next national champ race
A National Champion in one discipline (mountain bike, collegiate etc.) may not wear the jersey in
events of another discipline, except as noted above.
(vi) The defending National Champion may not wear their National Championship jerseys in the subse-
quent National Championship.
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Don’t mean to take anything away from your race experience, which is impressive. But saying you were “only 4 hours behind” implies you could have made that 4 hours up if only you had the same support. You may be underestimating how much work it takes to have that much less stopped time. It becomes a completely different race.
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In general, that is correct. However, it all depends on the organizers and the potential risk a rider is willing to face.
I know back in the day (90’s), a rider could wear his championship jersey in a different discipline if the organizers asked / allowed it…but it was at the organizers discretion. I watched Mike McCarthy race a few crits in his track WC jersey, for example.
More recently, Pidcock wore his MTB WC jersey at the Little Sugar MTB race, even though it was more of a marathon event vs. an XCO event. But it was a non-UCI race so he could have faced sanctions from the UCI for wearing the jersey in a non-sanctioned event. And even though Kasia Niewiadoma wore her WC jersey in a gravel event at Big Sugar, again it was a non-UCI event so she could have faced sanctions (same with Majoric at Unbound).
There was a time when the UCI would have undoubtedly slapped those riders for doing it…but I think they know they are behind in terms of acceptance in gravel, so letting them wear those jerseys in non-UCI events was just good marketing for them.
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I think you are essentially attacking others by claiming to be a national champion without caveating that it’s super niche and there were only 8 guys in the race, etc. He’s leading people who don’t know better to believe that he’s the best / one of the best in the country, when he’s not top 10,000.
I can’t stand the cycle of self-promotion and need for validation that the “influencer” business has created.
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I understand that… It was my first Ultra of that distance, and I’ve since gotten pretty dialed at my run/rest ratio, with my last 38 hour race having only 1h30m off the bike total… So I get that it becomes a slightly different effort, but in exchange you have practically zero mental energy expenditure on fretting little things like having to stop and change the batteries in your headlight or mix two bottles of carb mix. Instead, you press the little radio button and tell the follow car to handle it, and at the top of the next hill you get handed a bottle as you roll by at 10mph. That makes massive differences over the course of 30 hours…
I’m not saying that my 4h20m stopped time versus his 1h15m are solely the difference, but its not like I did a stage race version of the route. The efforts are pretty comparable. Its also pretty hard to ignore the benefit in not carrying 4L of water to get you through a 100 mile stretch of the desert, or the time savings that having a fresh TT bike with a disc wheel, and a full TT aero helmet for a flat 60 mile section.
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If your self supported in a 500 mile race vs someone with a follow car and spare bikes. You’re not racing the same race.
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I think that if Tyler wants to claim ultra distance champ status on a fringe cycling event made up of mostly retirees and senior citizens that have less participation than the local group ride then more power to him. He’ll have to take all the crap that goes with it and I think he’s more than happy to do so.
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