144. Emma Pooley: Tour de France winner, Oat to Joy author and pro-athlete sage

This week, James is joined by Quoc Pham, founder and designer of the eponymous cycling shoe brand. Before cycling, Quoc worked in fashion, running his own label, but turned his attention to making shoes in that classic way people do when they turn inventor: he found himself commuting around London in shoes that just weren’t up to it, they were either functionally great but ugly, or nice looking but out of their depth in toeclips on a fixie – so he set about making his own. His first, a beautiful leather shoe with smooth, contoured sole called the Fixed, quickly developed a cult following in the Eroica scene, and fast forward 17 years Quoc has expanded into road and gravel, even sponsoring Geraint Thomas along the way.

This week James is joined Sir Chris Hoy, who if you haven’t heard of him was a pretty good cyclist in his day. Chris won six Olympic gold medals and one silver on the track, spanning four Olympic Games including that incredible week at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where Chris won golds in the Team Sprint, Individual Sprint and Keirin as Team GB notched up a staggering 14 cycling medals, cementing Britain as a cycling powerhouse and putting cycling into the mainstream in the process.

This week, Will (and a bit of James, but mostly Will), is joined by recording-breaking ultra-cyclists and wife and husband, Amy Hudson and Kyle Hudson. The pair have just completed the fastest ever round-the-World cycle for a couple, pedalling nearly 30,000km around the globe in just 123 days with no outside support. A whole 82 days faster than the previous record and 27 days faster than their initial target.

This week, James is joined by the bicycle polymath himself, Phil Cavell. Cyclist, bike fitter, author, writer, speaker, racer, shop owner, bike designer, wrench and generally very clever bloke, Phil, together with friend and long-term business partner, Julian Walls, helped pioneer bike fitting back in the early 2000s, opening Europe’s first dedicated bike fit studio, Cyclefit, in London on 2003.

This week, James and Will are joined by journalist, author and cyclist, James Witts. James writes for a host of prestigious titles including the most prestigious of them all, Cyclist magazine, along with The Guardian, GQ, Rouleur and Men’s Health to name but four more. James also edits the annual official Tour de France guide and has penned four books including his most recent, Dope, which explores the doping landscape of sport, from opium and the Ancient Greeks to modern athletes and micro-dosing EPO.