Cameron Mason: Pro Cyclist + Filmmaker
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Long before Cameron Mason made it to the podium, he was filming and creating content about racing. Cameron is a Scottish professional cyclist and filmmaker who has amassed over 2.5 million views on YouTube documenting his experiences in cyclocross, road racing and mountain bike racing.
His distinctive style on the bike and behind the lens caught the attention of Tom Pidcock and he now competes for UCI team Trinity Racing. Last season, he was a British national cyclocross champion, scored top five finishes in Belgium and had a 9th place finish at the World Championships.
Cameron joins host Andrew Vontz and Spencer Martin of Beyond the Peloton to talk about his rise as a filmmaker and cyclist, and how documenting races - and riding for fun - impacted his career.
While it has become common for pro athletes to get started as creators after finding success in their sport, Cameron started cultivating his interest in film and digital media from a very early age. Cameron is a gifted storyteller and it has been remarkable to watch what he has accomplished and the grace and humility with which he has overcome setbacks like a broken arm that took him off the bike for half a year just as he started to really hit his stride.
To hear about his pro cycling career and where he is heading next in the sport, check out part two of this interview on Beyond the Peloton, available wherever you get your podcasts.
You can see more behind the scenes on Instagram, on Twitter and on YouTube.
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Choose the Hard Way is a podcast where guests share stories about how hard things build stronger humans. Sign up for the newsletter to get the story behind these stories updates and more. If you’d like to suggest a guest or say hello, DM @hardwaypod on social or send an email to choosethehardway@gmail.com.
Host Andrew Vontz has spent more than 25 years telling and shaping the stories of the world’s top performers, brands and businesses. He has held executive and senior leadership roles at the social network for athletes Strava and the human performance company TRX. His byline has appeared in outlets like Rolling Stone, Outside magazine, The Los Angeles Times and more.
Today he advises and consults with businesses and nonprofits on high-impact storytelling strategies and coaches leaders to become high-performance communicators. Find him on LinkedIn or reach out to choosethehardway@gmail.com
In This Episode:
Cameron Mason Instagram | YouTube
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Andrew Vontz LinkedIn
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Cameron 3:31
I'm in Scotland right now in my hometown of Alaska, which is like 20 minutes outside of Edinburgh. So right in that central belt? Oh, wow. So I'm very close to everything in Scotland, it feels like so I'm yeah, I'm one hour away from the trusstic mountain range and one hour away from the tweed Valley, which is where all the mountain biking in Scotland is. And then on my road bike, I can pretty much get everywhere else, you know, or the big or the main kind of clients and roads in central Scotland.
Andrew Vontz 3:58
That's phenomenal. Do you ever ride over to Arthur's Seat? Lock up your bike and do a run?
Cameron 4:02
Um, no, but I actually rode around Arthur's Seat for the first time in my life on Saturday. So I'd never you know I've lived near I'd refer Yeah, all my life. And I've written past it, but there's a loop that goes around. It's a closed road loop. And I wrote around it for the first time on Saturday. phenomenally monumentous. So, no, just you learn new things every week.
Andrew Vontz 4:27
How long is that ride?
Cameron 4:29
Well, the actual loop is like 510 minutes. We'd like a really short punchy climb. But I was doing the this Saturday 930 bunch. So it's like a just a very, kind of informal kind of formal but very fast been tried. 70k is like pretty much flat out. So if I ride through today, though, it makes a six hour day, a five, six hour day for me. So it's a really good training day. I've been kind of bulking them out through the winter. It's a good thing to look forward to in the week because you know, you're right. Adding to there for 40k or something, you're gonna get the speed with the group ride and then you have to kind of crawl home. And once you're home, then you know you've done a good day riding.
Andrew Vontz 5:09
Do you have a nickname on the group ride? Like, do they call you The Smashing machine? or what have you got?
Cameron 5:15
I don't think it's, it's maybe enough need not much needs to be said, you know, there's almost like, it doesn't need to be said, you know, if, if they see me rolling around the corner, then we know what we're on for. And there's a few guys, there's a few guys that like, as long as a few guys just turn up, then everyone knows what they're in for that we're going to ride the climbs basically, as hard as we can, and try and drop as many people as possible. But there's always a regrouping. And you know, there's guys from the Edinburgh uni that come out who have never been tried before, and they're happy to just sit on the back, you know, it's it's is pretty inclusive. And, you know, I was that kid getting dropped on that been tried, you know, 510 years ago, my kind of coach and mentor brought me there for the first time maybe like 2017 2018, and I got dropped, because I just could not deal with the pace. And then now what, five, six years later, I'm a guy who can drop people. So it's, yeah, it's things like that you can see progress in.
Andrew Vontz 6:17
So Cameron, what came first for you, being an artist, and making videos and having an interest in music or being a bike race or
Cameron 6:26
bike racer, I think, you know, everyone, like as a kid, you always need something that's going to be that number one thing, and you're always going to, you're going to put all that energy into, because I just remember having so much energy, and always not getting bored. But like, yeah, you know, that was just never enough to do and the bike was that. And then the kind of creative side came a bit later as the kind of side hustle to the bike riding because I was finding that the more I trained, and the more I trained seriously, I needed something away from the bike that was going to kind of take away from it and use maybe a different side of my brain. And that was the kind of creative side of things. So the video making the music, the photos, video editing, like that was that side of the brain, like I find the bike riding side, pretty creative, still, you know, it's expressive, it's, um, like, you know, showing myself in the best way possible, but it's very, it's just self centered, really, that you just kind of focused kind of selfish sport, that's what it is. Whereas the filmmaking I found was a lot more like, you know, I could really show, I could, like, bring other people into what I was doing. And it was way more kind of, yeah, you're a part of something bigger, you know, if I make a video and it gets viewed by 10,000 people, or 5000 people, then each one of those people has a has a real, like, relevant opinion on on maybe how good the video was. Whereas on my cycling, you know, if someone has an opinion on how I ride a bike, I don't really care. Like I couldn't care less what people thought my bike riding, but I actually do care what people think about my work in video and photos like that. So I find that really, really cool. You know, so like YouTube comments, Instagram comments, that type of stuff. Like, whether it's good, whether it's criticism, or if it's just praise, I find that really interesting, because everyone has such a different eye and such a different view on how things should be and, you know, the way that I've maybe presented an experience or a race, that's just one way of telling that story. And yeah, it's nice to see how other people maybe would have done it differently or, or if they just like how I've kind of portrayed it.
Andrew Vontz 8:39
That's really wild camera. And like I was telling you earlier, I think before we started recording, I've been a big fan of your video work since you started making it I think. And today I was going back through your YouTube feed, and I was trying to figure out what the first video of yours I may have watched might have been I don't know if he even Do you still have your first videos up? Or have you edited the list now,
Cameron 9:03
I think everything's still there. But the funny thing is that YouTube isn't the first place that I started putting videos, it was Facebook. So like on my personal Facebook profile, I would post all my very, very early stuff. So this is when I was maybe 1314 years old. So like editing on Windows moviemaker, then not really knowing what aspect ratio to explore anything. So what by the time we go on to Facebook, it would have massive black bars around it or it would like the audio would just come out of one ear and things like that. So you know, I learned a lot through through those videos, but though they're not actually very public anymore, but I'd like to dig all them out and they're on hard drives places and you know, they are on the Internet somewhere. But once it got to YouTube, it was it was a lot more refined by the time it got to YouTube by my time videos got to YouTube, you know, that wasn't like, finished product. Boom, there you go. That's what I was doing. There was quite a lot The went through that. And it started with just getting a video camera. When like an action, kind of sport camera, it was like a GoPro but it was like vertical. It was like so awkward to mount it was like this tall and like it was like a phone size thing. So I had like mount it on helmets and me and my dad, my dad's a plumber and we'd get the like quarter inch or whatever the right thread type. And we'd make like just mounts for it. As I hadn't quite got onto the you know, the dream was always I want to go pro, like the GoPro dream. But that was a little bit out of my pocket money budget. So I was just dealing with this tiny little Yeah, action thing. So yeah, we'd make mounts and I'd ride bikes and jump over them and it had like, it must have done 50 frames a second because I could do a little bit slower. And like that was the best thing ever being able to do half speed slower. Because anything I did film I was I want it, I want more I want to see it for a longer, especially because it was a self filmed a lot. So I would just have the camera on the ground. I drive past it for like a second and then have to go all the way back up. But then, you know, that evolves into all the things you learn with these little cameras mix, you know evolves into, in all the things you learn for for our future earnings.
Spencer 11:16
It's funny because you're what you're describing is essentially like in the surfing world, it feels like every surfer especially young surfers are also filmmakers. It's like you just kind of have to be both. It's almost exactly what you're describing. Like you know, getting into filmmaking just capturing your own stuff. Like do you think that this will be like the norm for for cyclists or like, especially mountain bikers going forward? Are you just kind of an outlier in this world?
Cameron 11:42
I think it helps, like why wouldn't you want a way of showing yourself off and like in a sport like you say with mountain biking or maybe even surfing where it's not? It's not normal, it's just on TV and like so like accessible, like mountain bike. And cyclocross to an extent is, is actually just a digital media like sport because like when I started racing cyclocross, there was no live coverage anywhere you would maybe find a dodgy stream of the Belgian reef somewhere, or you'd find the replay would go up on Belgium on on YouTube, like, a day later or something. But there was no actual way of like, you know, like, right, I aspire to be a cyclocross racer. So, how would people actually see you, any of you doing that stuff. So it just happened that I was making videos as well. So with the cyclocross side of thing like that was that was really big because that I was doing that high level racing. And I wasn't on TV. I wasn't really in the coverage, but I was making my own media. So that gave a whole platform for people to follow on. And it just happened that my journey was interesting to people, you know, because I was English speaking. I was pretty young. I think people could tell that I was good, but I wasn't like winning everything easily. So that's interesting, as well. So that kind of storyline helped with the software side of things. But yeah, like the off road stuff, just being a mountain biker. It's just it's a YouTube sport, like watching all the Atherton project videos, watching all of the Red Bull content when I was like 12 1314 years old, you know, like, if I want it to be a mountain biker, of course, I wanted to be a filmmaker as well, because that's where I was seeing it all. You know, if you're a road cyclist, Washington sort of runs on TV, you're not thinking oh, I want to be the guy on the motorbike. You're just thinking about the you're just thinking about the guys winning the bike race, but with mountain bike being way more behind the scenes, I think, and like they would show behind the racing. And you know, I wanted to show that side of it what I was doing. So I think yeah, like, I'm a massive video person, just in general, even if I wasn't making videos like I just, that's like my media of choice. Like I don't really read. I listen to podcasts, sometimes, especially your podcasts, obviously. And it's, yeah, but the video side of things that I always I find, I can learn so much from video. Like, I remember, my dad got the got a load of mountain bike videos burnt onto CDs from one of my friends. So like Earth, Rome, like all these like really classic mountain bike films. And I would just watch them on repeat on repeat. And there were a few skills videos there from like mountain bike magazines. And I could learn a skill on the DVD. And like I watched on the DVD, like how to pre jump like a rolling. And then I would go out and out of be able to pre jump rolling. Like I'm very visual from that point of view. So yeah, the video side is super important.
Andrew Vontz 14:37
So Cameron when you got started, and it sounds like this is really interesting to me. Because before your work got to the point where everyone could see it on YouTube. It sounds like you actually had put in years of grinding, figuring and figuring out how to use the technology. And I think when I started seeing your work perhaps that's why it jumped out to me because As you weren't just another mountain bike vlogger, there was a real aesthetic to the work that you were making in terms of the music selection, the slices of life that you were showing, as well as the race preparation, the race footage. And I want to get into some of those specifics, because I found your videos to be really beautiful. And they had kind of like this haunting atmospheric quality. And as I was reflecting on how I would characterize your aesthetic for my listeners, I would say you're perhaps the pioneer of what I would call porridge core for oat gays. You're an oat gazer. So it's like somewhere between My Bloody Valentine and porridge preparation, because there is a lot of porridge preparation and your videos, but early on, when you you got to YouTube, how did you think about your aesthetic the way you were mediating yourself, and as Spencer mentioned, as is the case in a lot of action sports, I think about skateboarding because that's the community I came up in. But kind of this, there's just an aesthetic quality and artfulness to what you do. And then there's who you are as an athlete, and then you putting all this together. So how did you think about what you were doing?
Cameron 16:14
Yeah, I think I wasn't thinking about it much. Like obviously, there's just these outside factors and influencers. So you know, like, like, Casey Neistat would be one of them, you know, like, whatever. When I started watching his videos, he was probably still making those one off. YouTube videos not fully in the daily vlog. So like that would be one influence. Definitely like, yeah, early mountain bike films, like a lot of clay Porter's work. So he works a lot with Red Bull and the Atherton's. And yeah, I think I enjoyed getting the nice shot. So like, I definitely had an eye for like, wanting things to look quite nice and aesthetic, and just happen that things I was shooting were just like your training stuff and race day stuff. And, and, you know, not that interesting things. But if I shot it in a little bit more of an interesting way, then that kind of made the overall video a bit more appealing. And then, like music choice, like I've always had a little bit more of an alternative, like music, like interests, like my dad's pretty, has pretty wide range of like, of music interests, and he's had a big influence on me. So I would always, like, look out, first of all, I went through like Spotify and finding like real, real songs. But then I was like dealing with copyright stuff. So then I went to like, loads of different websites. And I was using one website for our which was, I think it was like few free music.org which was like a little bit in the middle of like, it was kind of more creative commons, like, you could use it, but you couldn't really make the money from it and which I didn't care about at all, I just want to use good music, but it was a really good way of finding like properly out there music like really alternative really like experimental music, and then working out how like I wanted that to work with cycling, because it depends what side of you know, cycling media you're on. Like it can be really, really kind of alternative and expressive, but it can also just be really general and boring kind of electronic pop. So I kind of was somewhere in the middle of like, right, I want like 12 year old 13 year old kids to be able to watch it and be interested and like keep their attention going. But I also want people who maybe have a bit more of a Yeah, a finer eye or we want to get a bit more quality out of it, not just you know, he's going to a bike race and he might win or he might do well I want people to enjoy it for the video is because then it means that I can even if I wasn't doing well on a bike, people could still watch videos for the sake of it being a nice video. And then if I if I was doing both, if I was doing something really cool and making a cool video, then that would just be the kind of perfect combination, it's and just over the last few years, as I've got more successful, I've tried to hang on to the kind of quality of like, I don't want to just get the content out there for the sake of showing people how good I am or, you know, I want this bike race. I also want it to have my style and my own kind of characteristics that people watched my videos, why they watched those videos, like five, six years ago. So it's that kind of, and I do really enjoy that, that kind of that balance, you know, trying to make something that's mine and like, original, but then also getting across you know, I was in I was at this race and these were the hard bits these were the good bits and just trying to piece that all that all that together.
Spencer 19:36
Is there like what's the local, like filmmaking and artistic community like where you live in Scotland? Like you're close to Edinburgh, which you know, I kind of think is maybe like the cultural hub of the country. If that's a correct Yeah,
Cameron 19:50
yeah, yeah. Glasgow and Edinburgh are like the main Yeah, like Glasgow is probably more artistic than than Edinburgh. But from a cultural point of view, yeah. And embrace. It's pretty hard.
Spencer 20:00
So are you like connected? You know, you're mentioned you're on the group rides? I assume you're connected into the local cycling community? Are you kind of connected in the same way to the artistic community? Or do you see yourself as an outsider there?
Cameron 20:13
Yeah, not so much like, through school, I started to kind of go in a little bit of an artistic direction. And, and, you know, I took art to the highest level possible high school, I did Film and Media Studies, I did graphic design. And I started to apply to kind of film college, it would be like university course into film and media. Just at the same time, I also was kind of progressing my bike riding, so I ended up not going to, to university. But yeah, it's kind of I think, my level of filmmaking is just nowhere near the level it would be, it would be needed to be kind of really appreciated at higher level. And it just happens that cycling is not a mainstream of enough sport for those things to go together to, like, get me a little bit higher up in the, in the kind of artistic world. But maybe as if things were to if I think it would take more effort and involvement from me on my filmmaking side, like the bike riding side is, is definitely high enough, but I'd have to kind of double down on some proper filmmaking until like, do a really good job really bright, something original, and really kind of get that side of things. Because up until now, it is really just casual A's on the side. It's, it's more like passion stuff. So it's, but I can see that we're just a little bit more effort, more hours more, yeah, more kind of commitment into that side of things that, that I could do something pretty cool that could maybe get recognized internationally or nationally, that type of thing.
Andrew Vontz 21:49
It's funny that you say that camera, and because I think that you definitely make professional quality work. That's an excellent, that's excellent, that has a unique aesthetic. And I think you're also actually exhibiting the characteristics that of all the guests that I've had on the show who are world class at what they do, which is you always wanted to be better, and you're pushing yourself no matter what level you're at, to go to another level with what you're doing. And it's something that you've mentioned a couple of times, I'd love to explore. First of all, it sounds like you have a very supportive family. And like you have a cool dad who's spent a lot of time with you and been involved in your life and the projects that you do. Spencer and I are both dads. I don't know if we're aspiring to be cool dads, but we're definitely aspiring to be the best dads that we can be. If I might speak for your Spencer. Oh, yeah, definitely.
Spencer 22:41
As you were saying that about Cameron's dad, I was thinking, Man, I hope that's me.
Andrew Vontz 22:46
So yeah, but Cameron, can you talk more about? How was your dad involved? From the it sounds like from the beginning, like, how did he support and encourage you? Did you just naturally gravitate? You kind of mentioned how you got into the artistic side of things. And it sounds like you've had support there. But when you were a young person, how did you find cycling? What did you explore? And what encouragement or direction did your parents give you?
Cameron 23:13
Yeah, I mean, it sounds a bit cliche, but my dad was definitely more of the sporting side. And my mom was more of the creative side. But I think the way that they like nurtured me in both sides is what it was really was really good. You know, it was never one over the other. It was never kind of, you know, if you're going to do this on, you need to think about getting rid of that there was always a space for it to work together. So yeah, my mom is way more artistic, like a lot more expressive. And my dad is yet a very practical and a lot of sports here. So the cycling side of things came from my dad, but he's also like, really just like compassionate to the whole, like picture of who a person should be like he's seen it through his work in trade and in sport that you know, to be a rounded person, you need that other thing. You need that kind of complimentary thing that's going to prop you up. And yeah, for me is a little bit of that creative side. So yeah, the cycling started. It was actually on my mom's side of the family. My cousin, he always rode bikes, and he was getting really into into bike right racing. And he's Yes, six, seven years older than me. So we went to one of his bike races when I was eight, nine years old. He was already racing with the under 14 and under 60s, but I just went in under age race. I did really well and really enjoyed it because I'd always ridden my bikes just for fun in the garden and doing jumps and things, but then that kind of introduced me to the racing side of things. And I was always competitive, but just as competitive as any other kid would be, you know, like I just, I wanted to win, just not for any big reason. But just because it was It felt nice, but then through kind of under 12 mile bike racing. I actually got pretty good because I was I was like, I had really good skills because I've just come home from school and ride bikes until it got dark, you know, we had these like play around bikes, we used to go to the local like dump or the local, like rubbish place. And then people would throw away bikes and we take them home, like fix them up with it normally like, they'd have like a buckled wheel, or the break could be disconnected or something silly. And then I would ride them on jumps and like bury them into the ground spray paint and everything. So like we used to have these mock about bikes, we call them. So I learned loads of skills on them. And then yeah, as I got into the racing more, I realized that those skills helped me really well, then into under 14, or under 16, racing, like my physical development, like slowed down a lot compared to my peers. So like I was racing guys who were, you know, fully fledged teenagers and getting into adulthood, and I was still little skinny and weak, and I just got left behind a bit. So at that point, that would have been the point where I would have probably stopped bike racing, if I if it was all just about the winning, because I just wasn't winning at all I wasn't I was even getting close to the podiums in cyclocross, and also in in mountain bike and rode at the time. But then I caught up with my peers, you know, as we got into Jr. and I got, like that purity kind of spur, and I went up and kind of started to fill out a bit, then I caught them up, and then started being them again, because all the things I learned in under 14, and under 16, when I was just not winning bike races actually stood me really well, like I wasn't winning on pure power on pure pace, I was winning, because I was, you know, tactically better, technically better. And also, I wanted it more because I'd not won any bike races for like, three, four years. So that kind of balance got me to a place in junior and into us 23, where things get pretty level, you know, like, everyone's had quite a lot of years to develop, everyone's physically, they're all quite there, then no, at Utrecht three level, it's just about how well you're doing things and how much you want it. So it becomes a lot more of a level playing ground, and you just have to show yourself for who you are. And I then also took another step up, step up, then in last few years,
Andrew Vontz 27:09
my brain is still spinning. And I'm wondering if I'm talking to an alien that lives in a parallel universe, you have organized mountain bike racing for kids under eight years old is that yeah,
Cameron 27:18
so you would turn up to a Scottish cross country race. And you have the small course, which is for under 12. And they have separate starts from Yeah, under X. So under eight undertones and under twelves. And yeah, there can be some of the biggest races there are, you know, it's, it's, you know, it's kids of dads who are racing and kids who are moms who are racing, it's younger siblings have, you know, teenagers who are racing, but it's also people like me, and my brother, my brother is three years older than me, that was that was how we got into the racing is because we had a sibling, we had a relative who was already there, we went along, you know, you don't need a very good bike to race, you don't need any special equipment, you just turn up the races, 10 minutes long, everybody gets a medal, there's not really a podium for the little kids. And then you know, you go and do it again next week. And the amount of kids that come through that is is super important to Scottish sport and to British sport as well, because that's all that the same race on the same day, you know, I do my race at whatever it would be in 1011 o'clock. And then just I'd go get something bite to eat. And I go and watch the elites race. And at the time, those elites were also Commonwealth Games, athletes, Olympic athletes. And that's the best way I think for to inspire guys is to, is to have everything in one place. It's really hard to do that. But to really like have a real direct link between kids who just like riding bikes and people who are doing it for their job. And you they can see that in real life. If I keep doing this, or if I really enjoy this, then I can get to there. That type of thing.
Spencer 28:55
Kind of single handedly destroying like the US sport right now by describing this. This is not how things are done.
Cameron 29:02
I've heard I've heard Yes. Cycling, they have some Yeah, harder workarounds for that. I don't know what you guys opinions on that.
Spencer 29:09
And even you know, it's like, having kids myself, you know, my son's three and it's like, Well, should we get them on a travel soccer team as he plateaued? I don't know. Maybe we just pull him out. I don't think he can make it in the pros. Like everything's projected forward from such young age that it does feel unhelpful and what you're describing where you were, you were just racing a lot, you know, you were behind in puberty, but then you caught up and instead of beating people that's like a really common theme amongst pro athletes, that they they're always the ones just dominating.
Cameron 29:41
Yeah, and I think Cycling is a good sport, probably compared to other things that like I wasn't written off as someone who could just never make it you know, it wasn't like a real Do or Die time. I think maybe in gymnastics or in track and field you know, if you weren't in that, that like because In other sports, as loads of resources may be at that junior level or at that youth level. And if you miss out on those resources, then that's really going to stop you later on. Whereas I think it would be in a sport like cycling, where we see about how it's, you know, there's there's a lot to be said for athletes who are maybe in who were 25, up to 30, you know, there's still a lot to give. If you were to just put resources at 16 year olds, then you're gonna miss out on this whole band of athletes who haven't even got close to being at their full potential by 16 or 18. So I was lucky to benefit from that, you know, I still had people around me who believed in me. Well, that's it, like the institution's like British Cycling, and Scottish cycling, you know, that I wasn't like, totally put to the side, people could still see that I was committed, motivated, and, like talented, they could see all that even though I physically wasn't as good as anyone else. And that little bit of patience then meant that it came around for them as well. So they got to get the benefit of me being a good bike rider just a little bit later, after my peers.
Andrew Vontz 31:02
And Cameron, no disrespect to any of your competitors. Because in I think the five plus years, I've been watching your videos, I've seen you go from someone who looked like you were having some success at the regional level, you were going over to Belgium, to compete and races at the highest level. And then you had this you had this progression that I think most athletes dream about having. And you put in the hard work to make it happen. And you got to this level now, where as we're going to talk about on the second part of this interview on beyond the peloton. People who follow the sport closely like Spencer and I are wondering, when is Cameron go into the world tour? And, you know, are you going to follow your former Trinity racing teammate Tom Pidcock? And like, are we going to see what the Tour de France? We'll talk about that on the second part of this Oberon beyond the peloton. I'm wondering when at the point at which you started making the YouTube videos, it looked like you were a fairly stand out or you were on the rise as a writer in Scotland, in the UK. I couldn't name one other Scottish cyclocross racer. I mean, I'm sure they're very talented, but like you've put in the hard yards to as a creator, to position yourself to create a differentiated brand and product. How did your peers react when you started making the videos and like, what's happened over time?
Cameron 32:28
I think I'd always be making the video so there was never No, there was never a like, oh, like Cameron's trying something new, like, what's he doing? Like, there was never any of that it was just like, oh, well, that's just what Cameron does alongside of, of his bike racing, you know, I actually like was really good at taking photos for everyone as well, like, I would do my race in the under 14 or 16. And then I would take photos of all the other races and all the other categories. So I had a Facebook page called Cameron Mason photography. And I would post just albums of like five 600 photos for everyone to use, and everyone to like posts on their Instagrams and stuff. So like, I was like, yeah, well known as someone who could use a camera, but also is like, relatively good on the bike. And then it just happened that as I got better on a bike, and I kept making the videos, that people could then start to follow me as a person, you know, like, within a small community, like Scotch cycling, the Scottish Rite of crisis, scotch Scotch mountain bike, you follow the racing by just being at the racing. But as I started to go outside of that community, people, you know, my first the first people in my audience, were literally just my peers and fellow racers, you know, because they wanted to see, you know, I went to a national cyclocross race in Bradford in England, they wanted to see how I got on. So, of course, they'd be falling from that point of view. And then, once I started to get known in that type of community, you know, a UK level, then when I went to Belgium for the first time, people then wanted to see how I got on and all of that. I don't know, like, it was just a little bit of a snowball thing, like you have to, it's all just different base levels of, of following and of audience like, I've got a little bit of a following in the US, I think from from a cyclocross point of view, because an English speaking person in Belgium sort of crosses is people want to see that and then I've got a big UK following. And then I've also got a Belgian following more from a younger audience, because, in cyclocross, it's incredibly traditional media, like it's in Belgium, it's like football. It's, you know, it's basically just in the newspapers and on the main channel TV, traditionally. So someone who was making YouTube content, I was the first person really ever to make solid across YouTube gone content. And a lot of younger Belgians and Dutch southwest fans started to follow on that, and then that built out that kind of side of my audience and then naturally when I started getting better, the traditional media wanted to know who I was as well. So then, I had, you know, people wanting interviews and people chatting to me at the races but I already had this, you know, following of whatever 10 15,000 people on a on a kind of online thing. So I found that quite quite funny that I already kind of had a following and an audience by the time I was starting to, to get success, like traditional success, but I'd made that myself, you know, I had worked hard to create a cat not character to show off my character in the best way possible, show off what I was doing. And it just happened that then came with that came actual sports success as well.
Andrew Vontz 35:34
As you thought about the structure of your videos over time, you have, you know, I'd like I feel like you have a couple of periods of your work. There's the early stuff where there's somewhat instructional things or like you're out on the trail talking about how to do something. Then there's the middle period, I would like Cameron Mason's middle period, where you had all it was you and your dad, you're going to the races in Belgium, which I found to be really intriguing. And I actually wanted to talk about this and for anybody listening, who's not deeply familiar with cyclocross is the three of us are and of course, Spencer is located in the actual some people think that Belgium is the global epicenter of cyclocross, it's actually Boulder, Colorado, and specifically the Belmont bike park, and Spencer is not far from there. But you know, you and your dad, you're packing up a van, every weekend, you've got multiple bikes, multiple sets of wheels, all this kid, probably a power washer, you're driving across the English Channel, right? Like you're probably going through the channel or whatever. And then you're going to a location in Belgium at a race, you're setting up, you're racing, you're going home. On top of that, you're doing a pretty complex video shoot. So did that add complexity for you? Are at that point? Was it just a natural thing? Because it's a lot of pressure for an athlete to step into that environment at the highest level? Without all of the hullabaloo of on top of that doing a video production? Yeah,
Cameron 37:01
I mean, I get asked a lot about like, oh, how much extra effort? Is it to create the videos and all that? And I think, yeah, for someone who's never made a video before, and who is just doing all these experience versus time, if you were to just pick up and plunk on them, like all of his extra video pressure, they'd be out of practice, they wouldn't know their timings, they, you know, there'd be so many aspects that they just didn't know. Because I'd become just as well oiled in my filmmaking as I had in my cycling, it felt like just routine, you know, like, Am I doing something significant like signing on or putting on my numbers, well, then I should just film this and it takes 10 seconds and I move on my day. It like in my head, it's actually like such small pieces of my day that I needed to create a really good video actually. And it was just learning out what what works, you know, like what, you know, the spacing out of like, right, I need to get this part of my day so that it links up with you know, I'm out about to head out on course, so we need to know what tire pressure I'm riding. And then if we need to know that then the bikes are where they need to be out of the van and just just you know, you've got a flow in a kind of process on race day with your own bikes and with your own setup, but then just having you know, you've just got an audience alongside you've just got you've just got to have a bit of your brain thinking about that. But it doesn't really take much you know, like yeah, in those that middle period when it was just me and my dad, you know, he would have a GoPro in the pits on his chest. So that was pretty easy, you know, I just give him that it would pretty much record record the whole race. It creates a lot of work after because I've got like an hour of footage that I need to like find just the 10 second clip of me doing a bike ride a bike change. But I'd get better at it and work out what are the significant things but as you say, I was working out what was even going on anyway, like I'd never been to this random field in Belgium for I'd never done this race. I'd never raced these people. So to VF videoing alongside that was a little bit extra, but totally worth it when I can look back and see like, you know, that was the very first time I raced this person. And now six years later, I'm still racing and we're both pro and that type of thing. So there's there's so much value in having all this like archive and just all these experience on hard black and white paper basically like that. It's all there for people to see and but most importantly for they're there for me. So you know, I go back and I watch my own videos every every couple of months because I just find them so like, when I create the video and I edit the video, I get there sick of it. Obviously everyone does. Like it's, you put a lot of work and effort into it. But once it's done and once you've lived that experience, then to go back and relive it is I really, really enjoy that I find it so rewarding. So yeah, it's it's good fun to look back at all the videos as well.
Spencer 39:51
And when you were going to these races in Belgium, like what's your mindset or are you like, I mean, that's it. As Andrew said, Boulder might be the epicenter of cyclocross in the world but Belgium is a close second. Like it's it's big there. I'd imagine it's a major step up from Scotland. Were you intimidated? Or do you just kind of have like an inner self confidence? It's like I'm just gonna go out and do my thing.
Cameron 40:12
Alright, it was just a natural progression like I'd raced a Scottish level at then raced at a national UK level, I'd started to win races as a junior at national level. And riders before me had shown that the next step was to go to Belgium so riders like Tom Pidcock EV Richards on ik ben Turner, you know, Ian field like proper, strong cyclocross racers, they all then tried to show themselves in Belgium in the Netherlands. So it was just natural that we would be the next people to try that. And yeah, there are like barriers to get over you know, living in central Scotland, it takes eight hours just to get to the Channel Tunnel. And then you know, you're getting across the Channel Tunnel, you then another three hours to wherever you're going in Belgium, like just to do one race. That's, that's 12 hours of travel minimum, where the Channel Tunnel crossing. And then the whole unknowns of going to a race, like fun thing is like, we go to races now. And it's the fourth fifth time that I've been to them in my career. And it just feels like normal, but it was so abnormal going there. The first trip we went to was the first Belgian race I did was actually on joven, which could have I could have picked 10 easier races to do. So on joven it's like, one of the Sunday is one of the most aggressive cyclocross courses out there loads of running. Yeah, just, yeah, just the the most extreme version of myself crash course in Belgium, really. And we picked that one for some reason. Just because, you know, we might as well do it properly. And we brought a power washer for no reason, because we didn't realize that the race provided the power washers we brought, I had no idea what sign tires were. So I did the whole race on mud tires. Which, if you know about right, riding in sand is like a massive, makes things a lot harder, because you're basically just dig yourself into a hole. But my attitude, you know, I had not this was yeah, when I was it 2017 or 2018. But I had a pretty good mindset going into it. I didn't, I wasn't there. For a result, I was just there to soak up the experience. I had a bit of a messy race. But as soon as I finished, I was like, I need to do that again. Like I need to do all the things I did bad, better. And then we can see. And it's I feel like I've just done that for the last four years. Like, if something's not been right, I just would want to go back, do it better, because then I would know if if it was good, or if I was good at it. Because I just couldn't say whether it was gonna work. Unless I'd had a better race. You know, like, I just want it to every race to just be that little bit better. And I feel like I've done that for the last kind of three, four seasons.
Andrew Vontz 42:51
And Cameron throughout this process, either with what you've done as an artist in the video making or as a professional athlete, when have things not gone the way that you had hoped they had gone. Have you have you had any major setbacks on this journey?
Cameron 43:08
Yeah, I mean, I was like a sponge, like just trying to get everything and like I did, we were doing international mountain bike racing in the summer. And then we were going to Belgium in the winter. And like, the progression was so so steep, because every experience I did was was brand new. And there was so much to learn from it. And then things kind of plateaued when I was kind of second or third year, you're 23. So that's kind of 2020 Partly because of COVID, the COVID summer that I missed out on a load of racing, and loaded development. And then I had a series of injuries that just kind of stunted me quite a bit, I broke my collarbone in November of 2020. Then, four or five months later, I broke my humerus and my elbow quite badly and needed surgery all on my elbow. And it meant I couldn't ride a bike for six months. Because of the rehab involved. I lost a lot of muscle mass in my arm, and my shoulder. So I had to kind of build all that back. And yeah, that was probably the toughest time in my kind of cycling career just from I just, it was just such a long period of time, relatively. And it felt like that in my head that I just couldn't do what I enjoyed. So I just found that really hard to, yeah, six months of anything, whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, it's quite a lot to deal with. And that was just too long for me to be away from something that gave me so much kind of purpose and so much joy. So I learned a lot a lot from that.
Andrew Vontz 44:41
How did you deal with that time off the bike, and how did you have that injury? How did you break your elbow?
Cameron 44:46
Yeah, I was actually at the very first mountain bike race with my team in 2001 in Haiming, in Austria, and we've done the race race has gone well. And then two days after we were just training on the circuit on the Mount Bike circuit We are testing tires and tire pressure. And I was just coming down this one kind of rocky descent. And I clipped a tree with my left handlebar, pretty high speed and kind of fell backwards and basically elbowed the edge of a rock. So it wasn't like I landed on anything with my way I didn't put my handlebars, my hands out or anything, I just fell on a really sharp rock that just, you know, just broke straight through the bone. I thought I dislocated it at first, because I was like, Oh, I can't really move my arm. But it was quite clear. Once we got to the hospital, I broken it quite badly and damaged the actual elbow joint as well. So they ended up putting in two plates, a load of screws and some wiring on my elbow joint to kind of keep it all together. So then the Yeah, the initial thing was obviously just yeah, be happy you can use your elbow is just start with the physio, which is just trying to get movement back. But then I did start to realize that there was this was going to be a more serious thing, because there was just yeah, lots and lots of steps to get back. And I had to go into quite a hole of like, with any injury with any illness, my mindset is just like, like, buckle up, you know, act like it's not happened. And just pretend like in two days, you'll be back on the bike. And I basically did that with my injury, this one, I just went for weeks where I was like, you know, just do what you need to do. And in a couple of weeks, we'll be back on it. But the prospect of not being able to actually do that, that, you know, the trust, people were saying to me, you know, it's going to be a couple of months of work to get to get back close to riding a bike that really made me realize like this needs a little bit more of a little bit more thought about how I'm actually going to go about this. Because if I just keep pretending like I am an athlete, and like I'm just gonna get back on my bike and a couple of days or a couple of weeks, I'm never going to let myself my body and my mind, except the situation. So the first thing was acceptance, I needed to accept the reality that I wasn't gonna be able to do the thing I really like to do for a while, then it was to just make a plan, like, work out the reality of the situation. And then kind of disconnect from that. So the issue was that in my head, I was still a bike rider, but what not riding a bike. So the first thing I tried to do was do try and remove that part of my brain. So I went and did other things. I went and did started doing Hill running once I couldn't be more mobile, and found, like, the most important thing was to find other things that were just a little bit fun. And that, you know, they didn't have to be cycling, or they didn't have to be anywhere near as fun or enjoyable as cycling. But anything was better than seeing a home feeling sad about not riding bikes. So just working out what all those was, but we would me and my dad, I would sit like in our living room every day and go, I can't do this, I can't do this, and I can't do this. And we just sit there for an hour thinking about what I would want to do, because I was pretty depressed and pretty sad. And when you're in that hole, it's quite hard to even find the joy in all the little things, you know, like, I could have gone for walks, and I could have gone and seen friends and stuff. But those just felt nowhere near enough to like, Give me all those feelings that I was missing from from riding bikes. So I had to let myself come all the way down into this into this hole of kind of acceptance, and then just slowly rebuilt. And that rebuild process was where I learned about how much I can get from all these other things, you know how much I can get from being physically tired. Like I've read, I'd realized that one part of bike riding that made me so happy was that I could physically exhaust myself to the point of like, oh my god, how am I ever going to ride a bike tomorrow, and then I could recover and come back from that. And I wasn't able to do that when I had a broken arm. And I was like that's something to be grateful for, you know, like gratitude. Like I had a list on my phone, that I would every almost every day I would end up adding more things to it because I would it was work that I did with a with a psychologist and with a behavioral lifestyle advisor. One part of that was the kind of gratitude side of things and weren't learning like what I should be grateful for my family, all those kind of more simple, basic things, but then I would actually get deep down into it and realize, you know, I was grateful for the amount of food that I could eat after doing big training session, and I was grateful for the Strava kudos that I got when I did a bike big bike ride. I realize I'm missing all this stuff. And as all these things came back, I just felt two times three times more grateful for it after my injury as I did before
Andrew Vontz 49:47
and Cameron during that period of time, or later, did you think bigger picture about when your bike racing career is over? What are your aspirations as a filmmaker as an artist? Is that something that you've thought about?
Cameron 50:02
Yeah, I mean, during the injury, I didn't think about, like, there was no part of my brain that was like, I'm not going to ride a bike. And I was just worried that it wouldn't feel the same as when I'd left it. But then what I actually came to realize was that nothing ever feels the same. You know, the worst thing you could do would be to mourn for how things felt in the past, because how they're going to feel in the future is never the same as how they'll feel in the past. So that's kind of what I learned. And when the feeling did come back, it was different. But that was actually not a bad thing at all. But yeah, to answer your question, really like, yeah, during the kind of injury side of things, I guess, there was not a part of my brain that thought, I'm going to do something else. But if I can think about it now, yeah, I would like to do something creative. I'd like to, like shed light on maybe something that people wouldn't see. wouldn't have seen before. Like, that's what I actually I did enjoy that about making my videos at first with sat across was that I could get out. You know, people hadn't seen a Scottish bike racer race in Belgium for and I was the first person to do that. So I would be quite interested to do something like that for the first time. Whether it's showing like how people live in a certain place of the world, or like a document like documenting something, I think I would, I would find a lot out of that.
Andrew Vontz 51:25
One more question. Then we'll wrap this up. And we'll hop over and record the episode for beyond them. peloton. At what point did you get on to Trinity racing? How did that happen? And could you just share a little bit about what you picked up from being around Tom Pidcock indisputably one of the world's best cyclists like what did it feel like to go from I'm in a van with my dad to I'm in a van with one of the best bike racers in the world who's a world champion and headed to the World Tour.
Cameron 51:55
Yeah, so it was actually he just Instagram DM me on on Instagram, kind of mid summer 2019. He already knew of me. But we've never really chatted, we're at the same world championships together. My first World Championships were in begins in Denmark and 2019, where he won, and I got maybe 42nd or something in the year 23. And we do interact a little bit. And he seemed to think I was a pretty nice guy. And he was setting up his site lacrosse team. And he needed another guy and a girl. And I was one of the guys he asked, and we just, you know, I told him that I was committed, and I wanted to make it work. And as soon as he got out of Belgium, I think he realized that he got someone maybe that wasn't going to win the bike races, but he was someone who was going to be totally committed to the cause, you know, really dedicated and also fun to be around. So yeah, we lived together for for those two seasons. So four months at a time in a house in Belgium, training everyday pretty much together. And yeah, I I was looking back like so fresh, like I was just so inexperienced, I hadn't really trained before, anywhere near as much as I was about to train with with Tom. And yeah, even just the lifestyle side of things, like something I learned from Tom was that he was very good at putting things in boxes, he's really good at polarizing things. So say, there was a bad race or a bad experience, he'd be great at like, dealing with it head on, putting it in a box, and then just putting that box away. That's it done. On to the next thing, like his ability to refocus, and to readjust was just crazy. Like, even after good experiences, like he would win a European Championships, be really happy, be really proud of himself, put it in a box out of the way onto the next thing. And that like relentless kind of back to back mentality was super impressive. And there were no secrets. You know, like living with him. There was nothing like, oh, he has this from breakfast, which means he's so good. He has, he's doing this type of training session, which means he's so good, you know, everything he was doing, I was doing. And I was not as good as him. But I was going in that same direction. You know, we're all eating the same training, the same wrestling the same, but he was really good at that polarizing. So when he was doing something he would be doing as good as possible. He would, he would never try to spin too many plates at once. So yeah, if we were on a training session, the only thing that mattered in that moment was that training session. And then when you're at a race, you know, it's full race head. And it's just that ability to put things in their place and in boxes and not let them interfere with each other. Like there's no reason why your training session that maybe didn't go so well on Thursday, why that should affect how you race on a Saturday. So that I think is something that I've I've learned, I've learned from them and hopefully we'll kind of get better at and take into the future.
Andrew Vontz 54:59
Before Tom slid into your DMS, how did you get on his radar? Was it your results? Or was it your video making or both?
Cameron 55:06
Um, I was present. And I think he probably had watched my YouTube videos. And that he did mention that that it was like, right, you're obviously a decent software trader, but it's great for the team. Also, because he's, you know, he's starting a team, with his manager, he's trying to find sponsors, and a massive part of all of that is video production. So like, if we can have a rider that also just makes great videos on the side, we don't have to pay him any differently. We just treat him like a bike rider. And he's also just got this passion, you know that? Yeah, it's great for them. So it just happened that, that helped me. But it, it depends like what world you're in, in how much the video makes a difference, like, in most levels of sport, and most levels of cycling, like its number one priority is results and performance. And then you get a little bit further down the list and you know, content career something maybe that's helpful. But it adds to the whole picture. And I think that's what people see, hopefully, when when they see me is that I've got this, yeah, character that I'm actually getting across in a positive way. And people maybe see that and maybe all I can monetize that. Or maybe people just want to be a part of that. And they want to be connected to my image. And I'm actually getting out there. So that's a lot better than than others.
Andrew Vontz 56:24
And the remarkable thing is that once you had that opportunity, you did something that very few people who step up to that level, do outside of people from mainland Europe and cyclocross and you are now at the very, very highest level of the sport and you've made this incredibly impressive progression to the point where you're a real contender and you know, the hardest races in the world the hardest cyclocross races in the world. And we're gonna go deeper on that and where you're headed in part two of this interview, over on beyond the peloton, so camera that people want to find you and if they want to check out these videos, if they want to go deep on porridge core, and learn your porridge secrets, where should they go?
Cameron 57:14
So it's just Cameron Mason, my name on YouTube? Yeah, he can go as far down as possible and see if you can find them. Well, the videos and if you leave a comment, I will end up reading it because I read pretty much all my comments and whether it's good or bad, and then Cameroonian Mason on Instagram. That's kind of more day to day stuff if you're interested in that stuff. And then Twitter is Cameron Rooney as well with an underscore.