#59 From the Show Ring to the Steppe: Love, Horses, and Survival with Gianna Aycock & Colby Coltrain
Description
This one is personal. I got to ride with Gianna Aycock and Colby Coltrain during the Mongol Derby, and by the first night in training camp they basically adopted me. These two became my Derby older brother and sister, gear gurus, morale squad, and a big reason I made it to the finish line.
In this episode, we finally sat down to unpack their whole journey, how Gianna went from riding anything she could as a kid in New Mexico to riding 12 horses a day prepping for the Derby, and how Colby, the ultimate jack-of-all-trades, went from college baseball to welding fences to racing ponies across Mongolia.
They're some of my favorite humans, and this conversation is everything I love about horses and horse people, real talk, good stories, and a lot of heart. We get into the nitty gritty of how they prepped for the world’s toughest horse race, what nearly broke them (and what didn’t), and why Gianna’s doing it again in 2026.
Key topics we discussed:
The backstory: how Gianna first fell into horses and how Colby got pulled into the world alongside her
Gearing up for the Derby—what equipment they optimized, what they regretted, and the art of ultra‑light packing
The emotional and physical highs and lows during the race: illness, navigation challenges, horse draws, and how they stuck together
Lessons from the trail: reading terrain, trusting horses, managing scarcity, and the power of small acts of kindness
How the Derby changed them: in gratitude, relationship to food, presence, mindset—and why Gianna is doing it again in 2026
United States
