Welcome back to the Bikepack Adventures Podcast. In today’s episode, I’m stoked to be sitting down with someone who, quite honestly, seems to have a slightly different definition of what constitutes a good time on a bicycle.
Félix Laberge has spent the last couple of years making a pretty strong case for the idea that you don’t actually need a lot of gears to ride really, really far, or really, really fast.
He rides a custom-built Tulipp Cycles singlespeed, and in 2025 he set the singlespeed FKT on the 800-kilometre Log Driver’s Waltz before going on to set both the overall and singlespeed FKTs on the 1,650-kilometre Golden Horseshoe.
And then came 2026.
Félix returned to the Tour Divide, this time on that singlespeed Tulipp, and rode the roughly 4,300-kilometre route in just over 14 days, setting a new singlespeed record in the process.
What I find most interesting about Félix isn't necessarily the numbers. It's the decision to do all of this on one gear. When you're looking at a route like the Tour Divide, with thousands of kilometres, huge climbs, heat, headwinds, rough terrain, sleep deprivation and pretty much every other challenge you can throw at a bikepacker, most of us would probably look for ways to make things easier.
Félix seems to have taken the opposite approach. So today we're going to talk about why. We'll get into his evolution from his first Tour Divide to the 2026 record, the philosophy behind riding singlespeed, his custom Tulipp bike, pacing, sleep, food, FKTs, and what actually happens in your head when you're spending day after day pushing one gear across a continent.
Félix, welcome to the Bikepack Adventures Podcast.
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