Mentality is often what separates winners from the rest in pro fields, and while amateurs may not be able to train like pros, they can think like one. Join pro riders Hannah Finchamp and Alex Wild as we discuss strategies of how to get into the mindset of a winner, how to do sprint training amidst endurance training, their favorite training metrics and more.

More show notes and discussion in the TrainerRoad Forum.

Topics covered in this episode

Resources mentioned in this episode

Ask a Cycling Coach Podcast

Successful Athletes Podcast

Science of Getting Faster Podcast

For more cycling training knowledge, listen to the Ask a Cycling Coach — the only podcast dedicated to making you a faster cyclist. New episodes are released weekly.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Jonathan Lee: Welcome to the podcast is dedicated to making you a faster cyclist. The ask a cycling coach podcast presented by trainer road. I’m coach Jonathan Lee. And we have with us on seal off roads, Alex, or actually Alex, you have a new team name and I just completely messed it up. Didn’t I?

[00:00:27] Alex Wild: Not yet

[00:00:27] Jonathan Lee: 15 days, but okay.

Sounds good. Orange. Yeah, seal specialized. And Hannah, how about you? I don’t know if any, uh, any changes have happened there either.

[00:00:38] Hannah Finchamp: Uh, same as Alex, still orange, still awkward team

[00:00:41] Jonathan Lee: for now. Awesome. Good to hear. Well, it’s good to have Hannifin champion Alex wild with us pro mountain bikers. Hannah, you have, as we learned a couple episodes ago, experience on the triathlon side, even you cover all this stuff, we’re going to talk about cyclocross.

We’re going to talk about lots of different things. Uh, specifically, we’re also going to get into the mentality and have just a broad raging open discussion on how to get into a winning mindset and kind of like unlock the, the mindset that allows you to express all of the fitness that you have. It’s going to be interesting to interesting discussion.

We’ll talk about sprint versus endurance training metrics, lots of stuff. But before we do that, I want to mention something really quick. We have a awesome team here at trainer road that never gets to meet all of you through the podcast. There’s a ton of people here and they all are working on great things and what some of those people are designers.

You can see some of their work. And I wanted to just mention this because some of you might be interested in cycling and design and that intersection, and might want to get to know more people behind train road and you can do so on. So dribble is like a designers. Uh, you can kind of consider it like a designer social network, but it’s where they share the different things that they’re working on.

And if you’re interested in that, you should check it out, go to dribble and look for trainer road. There’s an account. And every week you’ll see new things that are being made, um, Babs and the rest of the Babs is the one that makes a lot of the things that you see here on YouTube and everything else.

And she’s awesome. And, uh, the, the team works really hard on stuff, and I’d like to show it off every once in a while. So if you want to see it, check it out, go to dribble. And if you want to learn more about train road, of course, train road.com with that said, uh, X Tara. I came back from that.

Congratulations to all the athletes that did that. I met a ton of you, uh, super impressive. It was flash flooding. Uh, it was crazy, but I’m glad they closed down that swim cause that swell was ridiculous. Um, but just so impressed. Brandon, our COO he’s age group, world champion, he won his age group. Uh, it was incredible.

He was the first onto the bike and then he fell back a bit on the first lap. Then he kind of actually held even on the like leaders for the second lap age group leaders. And then he ended up pulling it back on the run and winning, which is amazing. Um, uh, there’s also a successful athletes podcast coming up with, uh, Theresa.

Uh, I met her as well there and she won her age group, world championship. We have, uh, tons, we have tons of people on the podium that used trainer road, super exciting. So tryna road athletes, winning world championships, and then also national championships at cyclocross stay tuned. There’s going to be a successful athletes podcast with Jim Mueller.

Uh, he’s 74 years old, raised FTP from two 50 to two 70 after being plateaued for years at adapter training. And he won national championships. Super cool. So congrats to all the athletes, uh, taking on all those awesome things. Uh, now let’s get started on a few things and I’m just going to answer some basic principles or give some principles for something that represents a lot of questions that we got this week.

You can submit your questions@traneroad.com slash podcast. And thank you for doing that every week. And we’re getting a lot of questions from a lot of you, whether you’re using trainer road or not. You have events coming up, the majority of you are asking, how do I use train road to prepare for this event that I have at some point next year?

Um, so I want to walk you through the basics. If you don’t have an event that you’re training for, if you just want to train whether it’s for health, whether it’s just for enjoying the bike more, everything else use plan builder. And if you go in and say, I don’t have an event when you’re going through the process, it will tell you, it’ll ask you, do you have a race?

And you can just say, I don’t have an event. Then it’ll just ask you what sort of training you want to do. And then it will have you train until you don’t want to train anymore. It’s super easy. So use plan builder. If you do have an event also use plan builder, getting a lot of people that are asking, like, which plans do I put on my calendar?

I’m like, there’s a whole tool built out for that. You never have to even ask. So use plan builder. It will make it so easy. And then that way it will figure out when you should be in different training phases, which plans you should pick and the whole deal. Another question is based training necessary.

It’s all sound like a broken record, but the answer here is use plan builder. Um, if you have more experience it’s likely going to give you less base or less. Um, well it depends on the situation. Plan builder takes care of it. I’m not even going to try to explain that plan builder just takes care of it.

So if you have a question of, do I need more base training, you use plan builder, it’ll figure it out for you. I think it’s important for everybody to do base training, particularly at this time of year and to revisit it at different points in the season, Hannah you’re nodding. I’m sure that’s what you’re doing at this time of year.

Right? Completely agree. Yep. Yeah. Even if you’re super fast and went to big peaks the year before, or if you’re not very fast and you didn’t get to peaks, it’s still important to put in aerobic work. This is an aerobic discipline. So, uh, so yeah, super important. Um, but plan builder once again, we’ll take care of that.

And then a lot of people asking which training volume should I pick and the answer is, uh, almost always, I would suggest athletes go to Lowville. And I know that that might be controversial for some, but start with low volume and then he can build up. Because low volume will allow you to add in writing as you wish, as you see fit.

So then if you really like mountain biking or group rides with your friends or coffee shop rides or wherever it might be, you can still nail your training with precision. And then you can have all the other things still and not remove those from your life. And then also, even if you train a lot, try low volume and then work your way up to mid volume or high volume after a handful of weeks, if you feel like you want to do more, uh, just because starting at low, it might be more intensity or it might be more structure or more sustained work or more sweet-spot work or more.

Hannah’s cyclocross tips

I don’t know anything then you’re used to so low volume is a good spot. Okay. With that, hopefully that answered about 80% of the questions that we got this week. Uh, if you have more questions on that, of course, just go to train road.com/podcast. I’ll read them and then we can adjust. So Mike says I’m a 50 year old triathlete who’s interested in starting cyclocross.

Can you go over what a newbie needs to know equipment. He mentions that he would like to use his gravel bike, what to expect on race day, race format, any etiquette, someone should know, et cetera. Uh, Alex you’ve raced cyclocross before I believe,

[00:06:54] Alex Wild: uh, once or twice back in

[00:06:56] Jonathan Lee: 2017. There we go. I’ve raced across a bit, but Hannah, you have also raised crossed.

Let’s start off with your tips. What tips did you give Mike?

[00:07:06] Hannah Finchamp: Yeah, I like this question. Was also triathlete as a triathlete for 11 years. Um, I was a triathlete before I was a cyclist and the first just cycling discipline that I raced was actually a cyclocross. Um, so I raced cyclocross for several years, which nationals?

Gosh, I don’t know, five or six times. Um, so yeah, this is a great question and it hits home for me. So first of all, I think your gravel bike is great. There’s no need to, you know, invest in something super different if you’re just starting out. Especially the biggest thing to note with the gravel bike is that the bottom bracket is a little bit lower.

Um, so you might find that you’re more likely to clip a pedal, not a big deal, just especially as a beginner, a really good, um, It’s good to remember that so that you keep the outside foot down on the corners, which you should be doing anyways. But if you’re tempted to peddle through them and you’re going fast, you are more likely to clip a pedal than anyone else on a cyclocross bike.

So just keep that in mind. Um, then you know, more specific tips. You mentioned what to insect on race day, race format. I think the biggest thing for you. Going to these races is probably going to be pre-writing. It’s so important to know what these courses are like. Cause they’re mazes and twisting and turning and cyclocross is almost like an obstacle course at times.

So you need to know, you have to know what you’re up against. And sometimes pre-writing can be complicated with cyclocross because there’s so many races going back to back to back. And so it’s not just like showing up to other events a lot of the time you can’t show up two days ahead and pre-read because the whole course is in a park and it’s just taped off.

So check the schedule. There will be very specific times for you to go. And pre-read the course between races is usually the time. So they’ll mark that off. Um, The other thing to note is you probably won’t know how many laps you’re doing when you start. So that can be really confusing thing for beginners is how many are we doing?

How many are you doing, especially after you pre-write and you’re trying to think how many times do I have to do that? Stair runner? Well, it’s unclear. It’s unclear for everybody. So, um, if you want a better idea, time your lap, because it’s going to be based on time so you can time your pre-read and try and guess how many laps, but it’s all gonna come down to that board.

Uh, they’re they’re gonna have a little tiny board just numbers. Every time you come through, it’s going to count down. So that’ll be your, your indicator of how many laps you have left. And then in terms of. You know, racing and training. I think the biggest things to focus on as, as triathletes, we can really just set it and forget it.

We get in one possession and one pace. Um, and, and that’s it. And we are really good at some of those lower intensities and we can hold threshold and all those things a lot longer than many. Sometimes not as good as carrying speed in and out of corners, we really have to focus on momentum and cyclocross.

It can seem like everyone’s sprinting out of every corner, if you’re not good at carrying momentum, but actually, unfortunately it might just be you because if everyone’s carrying momentum and I can make that joke because it’s been me, everyone’s carrying momentum and you’re having to stand up because you’re breaking hard.

So really focus on carrying that speed and momentum, um, do train with some max efforts, not necessarily for those accelerations, cause hopefully you’re carrying momentum, but because in cyclocross, there are times when you’re going to be. Maxed out just to summit over this tiny little hill, that’s maybe only three pedal strokes, but you still need the ability to put in those max efforts, um, practice of course, the mounting and the dismounting.

And the last thing I’ll say is have fun. You, you have to, if you’re going to fit in with the cyclic cross crowd, I feel like you have to let go of some of those inhibitions and just, and just go, like I said, I was a traveling, so I feel like I kind of can make the joke that triathletes tend to be a little bit more serious.

Um, and cyclocross it is the time to let your hair down. So do it and, uh, and, and fit in a little bit.

[00:11:34] Jonathan Lee: I want to talk about the pre-writing step. Well, I mean, a lot of those steps too, but the pre-reading step. What did you find most helpful to focus on during pre-writing? Cause that’s one thing that we get the question, not irregularly from listeners.

Okay. I’m pre-writing but I’m just riding around on the course. Like what am I supposed to be looking for?

[00:11:54] Hannah Finchamp: Yeah, that is a great question. I think, I think it’s really going to vary from person to person. Um, I would kind of break it down into a few elements. So the part of the course that I feel the weakest in, or the thing that I need to practice to gain some confidence, you know, maybe there’s a sand pit and you want to ride that three times so that, you know, either this is going to be a struggle and this is how I’m going to approach it.

Or it’s not, I’m just gonna. Which is completely fine as well. So identify your weakness, make a plan for it, identify your strength so that there can be one part of the course that you’re looking forward to every lap, because as wow, I feel great on this section, I’m going to pass someone here, every single lap.

And then also I just try and get a general layout for the course, because in cross with so many turns and double backs and all these different things, you can get really lost. And especially if it’s coming down to the last lap and you’re duking it out with someone it’s really easy to start that. Wait is the next corner, the finish, or don’t I still have that run-up I don’t remember when did the barriers come?

And so I just try and break it down at least. So I know which obstacle is next. After sandpit comes barriers after barriers come run up after run-up comes, finished straight, something just super general like that, so that you can almost do these check marks as you’re going through the course and saying, well, I’m after the barriers.

So I’m halfway there. Um, and it can help that effort feel a little less intense as well. Cause you’re marking time better than just how is it only six minutes into a 45 minute writes?

[00:13:31] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. In some regards to it’s best to pre-write alone. If you’re trying to really focus on a certain things. Like, for example, when I would want to pre-write alone is when I am trying to unlock a specific line or section, uh, however, I may want to follow somebody.

If I feel like somebody is really good through that section. However, in a lot of cases, it’s. Ideal is like, if you’re looking for line choice in general, like I just don’t know where to go at all, then it can be really helpful too, when you’re, pre-writing wait for people that look like they know what they’re doing and then try to follow them.

And when I say follow them, I’m not just saying go where there, you know, put your tires where their tires were, but I’m also saying follow them in terms of do what they’re doing. Like mimic them. Uh, it can really help. You’ll see juniors do a really good job of that because they’re used to, they take more time for skills and just playing around on their bike and having fun, like, like Hannah said.

So they’re used to going through things and kind of doing what another person is doing to mimic it and learn a skill. But us adults hardly ever. We like, we stay kind of stodgy within our mold and we just do what we do. And then we hope that the course works with. So during that pre-read time find somebody else that looks like they know what they’re doing and then emulate everything.

They do give it a shot. It’s a, it’s a good time to do it. That said if it’s a scenario like it’s barriers and bunny hopping barriers is a really, like, you are not prepared for that. You don’t feel comfortable doing it. Pre-writing the course, if you, if this works with your psychology, yes, you could try bunny hopping those barriers, but it might not be a great idea to do it right before that might be better for midweek practice instead of just before the race, because then you can really throw off your psychology for the rest of the race because you’re, you know, timid and worried and concerned about that obstacle that just took you down.

Um, great tips, Hannah, on the, on the pre-reading Alex, do you, do you have any advice going into the cyclocross stuff and this case for Mike? Uh, he also asked about equipment and using his gravel bike. I know that you’re going to be doing gravel races this year and a lot of different things. Do you have any equipment suggestions in general, even if it’s not bike, but more tire or anything else?

[00:15:43] Alex Wild: Um, no, I think the gravel bike is great. I think Hannah pointed out the, the one geo difference. That’s common between gravel and cross specific bikes. Um, maybe go into a narrow, they are going to have to go to a narrow tire because the one thing that I would note is that I think 33 C is the max. You can run at cross.

I mean, that’s like regulated CrossFit’s so if you’re doing a sanctioned race, does the only thing that I would keep my eye out for.

[00:16:11] Jonathan Lee: Hmm. For what it’s worth on that point, Alex, like if you’re going to race national championships or any race for this regulated, it’s a good idea to just use those tires. So then you don’t have to switch at that race and get thrown off that said, if you’re not going to do those races, run some big old balloon tires on there, if you want.

Sure.

[00:16:28] Alex Wild: They can just be hard to go from those tires. Like 33 C looks so. Small compared to gravel tire, whereas from a road bike, they look much bigger. So it’s kind of depends where you’re coming from. Um, I was just going to add on the pre-write aspect, watching other people is super helpful, but like you were mentioning knowing kind of where your limits are, but you can take mental notes, like watching other writers can kind of unlock what’s possible in your brain.

So if you never knew that people hopped barriers and then someone hopped it, you could make a mental bit, a mental note, like, okay, barriers. Like we can hop those and then go home and practice that skill. I also like to think about like, where like race deciding moves, whether it’s, you know, first, second, third, or fourth, like if you’re whisk with someone can be made, I think a great professional to watch do this is if you ever watch.

He rides something at a time when other people aren’t, but he also watches them. Like I watched the most recent race. They went around the course and he saw that everybody was running the run-up and then the next lap, he made a mental note to be on the front. And he rode that run up. Not only is it going to gap them, if you can do it faster, but it’s also a mental thing where it’s like, they see you ride it and they can’t ride it.

It’s it’s like that ride where someone watched someone bunny hop and they can’t, but you’re doing it in a race scenario. So you’re forcing them into either committing and trying it now or, or losing time. And so putting them under that pressure can be super helpful, but also watching your competitors.

Like if you use it in second or third wheel, the first couple of apps and see what everybody else is doing, you can see where those alternative lines could get you a second or two. And I also like to have a few different options through different parts of the course, especially in cross.

[00:18:18] Jonathan Lee: Yeah, the options part is really important.

I have like a system that I use and I pre-write every course first lap, and this might, the, your mileage may vary. This may not work for everybody. But first lap, when I read a course, I, I go slow. And when I go slow, I’m like, uh, I actually visualize in my mind, like some sort of like laser scanner where I’m just looking at everything and I scrape every square foot of the course.

Right. And then second lap, what I do is I follow my intuition and what I feel like is the best line. And then the third lap, when I follow that, I then look outside of that. And I don’t allow myself to take the same line that I did before in any portion of the course, because that’s what Alex said is super important.

Particularly with cross, if you start, and it’s a really packed field and everyone’s going to the left up, that run-up cause that’s the best spot. And if you didn’t go to the right. And you have no clue what it looks like. You’re not going to do it in the race. You’ll just be stuck behind everybody. But what if you went to the right and you figured, okay, it’s a bit slower, but if it’s really clogged up, I can still go fast up this.

That might be a free 1, 2, 3, even more positions that you could grab, just because you took that one lap in a different line when you were pre-writing and this goes for mountain biking, it goes for crit racing. It goes for everything it’s, there is a best line, but that doesn’t mean that that’s the only line.

And in many cases, because of other riders, uh, uh, second best, third, best even fourth best line actually ends up being the best line in the right circumstances. So it’s super important

[00:19:49] Alex Wild: reminder. We have a non St and a couple of years ago, actually the Beatrice is like the main line on course. And the beeline actually, isn’t very straightforward.

It’s a little tricky. It’s got some bumps in it. I wrote that in thought of I’m starting, I was starting like last on the grid. It was my first ever world cup. And I was like, okay, I’ll try this. Just in case like it’s clogged. And I actually got 10 positions just by riding the beeline around Beatrice, because everybody’s like, once you get enough people in one space, even if it’s slower before you can do it faster.

So just, just keeping an eye out for those alternative lines, even if they’re of slower, like apples to apples, you don’t know what’s going to happen on race day. Someone could crash in front of you. Like you said, the start could be hectic, but having a few options in your back pocket is a good idea. I also like on mountain biking, like technical trails, I like to sit at the bottom and actually look up and you tend to see things differently than when you’re like, got to make a decision.

You got to make it down this so you can kind of see, like, if there’s like a smooth rock or a transfer or something different that you don’t see from like.

[00:21:00] Hannah Finchamp: And keep an open mind for each and every obstacle too. I think, especially in cross, because there are some things that you’re supposed to run. So I’ve spent a lot of time on cross courses, trying something, trying something, trying something, and ultimately just determined, oh wait, every single person is running this.

Okay. This is the part of the course that we’re supposed to run. Um, or vice versa, you know, and being like, oh, this is a run. And then getting into the race and being like, well, darn yes, I should have tried to riding it a couple of times. Um, and just to add to what Jonathan said, because I think it’s so interesting that everyone does have different approaches for pre-writing.

I know most people like to go, um, pretty slow that first stop, like he said, but for me, um, I like to move pretty efficiently that first lap, uh, The reason Alex also sided was at Mount St. Anne, which seems to be the free ride of choice. I, the first, the first year I got there, I remember I got to the very first obstacle on the course and I sat there and agonized over it and looked at it for probably 20 minutes.

And then finally wrote. It’s like, oh my gosh, I did it. We made it. The rest of the course is going to easy, got about 50 yards down the trail and realized that the object I had been looking at for the last 20 minutes, wasn’t even a feature. It was just part of the trail. So I like to ride the whole course, even if I have to walk something, I like to just get through it once so that I can so that I can know, okay, there’s these three sections that are really going hard and going to require a lot of attention.

And then that second lap is when I go back and I look, I really scan the course. Exactly. Like Jonathan was saying, look, it, everything goes slowly. Um, and then the third lap is when I start testing on. So whatever works for you, whatever order works, but you probably want to include all of the elements at some point or another.

[00:22:59] Jonathan Lee: The thing I’ve found with tricky obstacles to ones that make you nervous. So I’m thinking. In cyclocross, this would likely be sections that you would ride like bunny hopping barriers or a tricky section that people are walking, whether it’s like a steep, technical climb or like through a ditch or something.

I don’t know, whatever it might be. I learned this for years of being like a pretty timid kid on dirt bikes. And I was surrounded by all my friends and that, that tends to attract a certain type of person. And they don’t seem to have a whole lot of inhibition and they like to just like go for stuff. And so I was, I felt like I was surrounded by a bunch of brave kids and I was pretty timid and like, looking back now, I remember there were jumps that were like two feet far, probably.

And I would give myself what feels like now, like a quarter mile runway to get to this thing. And I would do that, run up to it and I would stop before it. And then I would run up and I would stop and I would do it over and over and over. And I would build the whole thing up to be so much bigger than that two foot jump.

Instead. It was a chasm. I was jumping over a volcano, right. Like in my mind it would have built up so much. And I got to a certain point and I don’t think this is advisable for everybody, because if you haven’t developed the skill sets yet the skill set yet, then yeah, this could be a bad idea. But I got to a certain point when I remember I realized I was holding myself back, like you have the skills to do this, but this habit that you have of second guessing yourself and not trusting yourself is only hurting you.

And I got to a point where I realized, okay, look backward at what you have done. Why are you approaching this with so much hesitation? You should approach this with confidence because you have a proven track record of evidence that you can do this. So if you find yourself in a situation where something’s really psyching you out, uh, look at your process and really like be mindful and step outside of yourself for a bit and ask yourself that question.

Have I done something like this before? Yeah, you have. Okay. How did I execute in that situation? Let’s figure out how to do it this time and let’s just go for it. And now I have a rule that I roll up to something once and then thereafter I do it and, or I don’t, and that’s it. And more often than not, I like to do things.

So it usually happens after that one time, but it’s really changed how I approach things. And it’s allowed me to be more dynamic and race scenarios where sometimes because I didn’t do a good job pre-writing then I ended up in that spot where I’m totally unfamiliar with the course. I just say, you can do this.

And I ended up getting over it. So it takes a while to, I think, build that confidence, but it chances are you’re better than you give yourself credit for. I think that we, most people second guess themselves more than they should, particularly when it comes to their technical skill on the bike. So, and cyclocross is such a cool discipline to learn that because relatively speaking, the consequences are low compared to mountain biking or compared to even like crit racing or anything like that.

Uh, KRAS has a crashes, truly consequential, uh, in cyclocross. You probably just get grass stains, um, you know, get muddy. So it’s not too bad. What about race format? Cause cyclocross is kind of like crit racing. It’s a bit unique in the sense that you can do multiple races in a day. Sometimes whether it’s because of like masters age group and then able to race with the younger elites as well, or single speed and geared, there’s usually opportunities to race multiple times.

Have you done that, Hannah and how have you like warmups and eating in between the races? How does that work? Yeah,

[00:26:34] Hannah Finchamp: definitely. I used to race, um, in the junior race or the U 23 race and then again, later in the day and the women’s, uh, lead or whatever the category was. Um, so yeah, definitely racing multiple times in a day, especially if you’re new, why not?

It’s only going to help you. It you’re going to gain fitness really quickly, especially as a triathlete. I always just viewed it as a great training day on the bike. So highly recommend racing more than once. You’ll probably actually find that since I’m guessing if you’re new. I mean, I don’t know you, but maybe fitness.

Isn’t your limiter. Maybe it’s being new to cross. So you’ll probably actually do better in that second race because you’re going to feel more confident on the course. So yeah, I’d highly recommend racing twice in a day. And exactly what you mentioned, the hardest thing is just figuring out nutrition, recovery, all of that.

And you know, it depends how long you have in between. Sometimes it’s an hour, sometimes it’s five. So. Be smart about it, but it’s, it’s all the typical things that, you know, you’re supposed to do, but sometimes don’t, you have to do it in these type of scenarios. So get in your recovery, um, drink or food or whatever you like to do right away after the race.

And then. Kick your feet up. It’s really easy to spend a lot of time walking around, mingling, standing out in the sun, hanging out at the booths, try and just separate yourself. Find a shady tree and just relax and totally disconnect for a little while. Maybe you go to your car, the parking lot for a little bit and just spend some time on your own.

But. If it’s cold. Um, it’s funny. I almost said if it’s hot because I did so much cyclocross in Southern California, but for most people it’s probably cold. So make sure you’re warming up really well. I’m literally warming up in between races and then warming up on the bike. Again, it, I find personally that if I raised in the morning and then race again in the afternoon, it’s not like my body is still warmed up rare and ready to go.

You have to do another warmup and chances are, it might actually need to heal a little bit longer because for the first 10 minutes, your legs, and I just feel junky and don’t, don’t be intimidated by that. It will go away. Um, so just spend and be fine with it. And I usually execute the same warmup warmup from one race to the next, but I just allow extra time to spend with no objective at the start so that I can get over whatever icky feelings I have or sensations I have in the body.

Before I start doing my structured

[00:29:21] Jonathan Lee: warm. Yeah, w with, if the races are close and when I say close, I mean, within two hours of each other, uh, I typically that warmup that I’ll do for that second one will be like, I’m not, I’m not worried about like structured intensity as much in the warmup, as much as, like you said, getting through the muddy feeling in my legs so that they can actually move freely again.

Uh, and yeah, I’ll, I’ll mix in a little, a little bit of intensity, cause I don’t want to be shocked by that because cyclocross always starts hard. Um, but it’s not much. And then on food, it fits like five hours. Like Hannah said that I’m going to eat a normal meal. It’s still not going to be like a ton of fat and a ton of everything else, but I’ll eat a normal meal, but if it’s within three hours, uh, then I’m going to eat something that’s just predominantly carb centric.

Like I’ll have rice and I might have something else with that rice, like, uh, something, maybe a touch of fat, like a. Eggs in the rice or something else like that. And I’ll bring that from home, but that’s typically what I’ll eat in between. One thing on exit, you said in the teller for you pancakes,

[00:30:27] Alex Wild: just to take another

[00:30:28] Jonathan Lee: set of.

[00:30:29] Hannah Finchamp: I think, I think the important thing that they both just said was they would pack it. So you need to bring these things from home. Think ahead, look at the schedule ahead, because if you’re having to leave their ACE in the middle of the day to go to a restaurant or a grocery store, it’s just not going to be efficient.

You’re not recovering the way that you want to.

[00:30:50] Jonathan Lee: And they might have food, truck food, but food truck food is rarely good for in between races, unless it’s like Belgian waffles, then eat up. But if it’s shwarma or something going to go out

[00:31:00] Alex Wild: and give you the weirdest look, when you ask them how much the Belgian waffle batter Wade.

[00:31:04] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. Alex brings his scale. Yeah. Yeah. Because

[00:31:08] Alex Wild: Mr. Do you have the macro breakdown

[00:31:10] Jonathan Lee: for that? Well, yeah. The other thing I would say. The cyclocross, like I said, just a little bit ago, it always starts hard. And as a new athlete, that will be a particularly on the triathlon side. Maybe if you’ve done sprints, you’re totally used to that.

But if you’re doing Olympics and above, that might really come as a shock. But just know that almost every cyclocross athlete that you’ll encounter at an amateur race is going to be starting too hard for their own good. So, uh, and they’ll end up slowing down and they might have their race profile will kind of look like a dip where it’s really hot.

Then it dips down and maybe it comes back or it goes really high. And then it just continues down for the rest of the race. That’s the most likely scenario. If he can be the sort of athlete that has a more rounded dip, if he could be an athlete that actually has like an upward curve, like where you just get faster throughout the race, that can also be really helpful because making passes at the end of the race is a, usually a whole lot easier than trying to make passes in the beginning in terms of energy costs.

Because in the beginning, you’ll have to surge past a pack and take questionable lines. Um, at the end, you’ll be able to hold your line and that person will be like, I’m cross-eyed please pass me. I don’t want anything to do with you, so that can really help you. Uh, when you start out with that and etiquette, if anything, People love to give tips and hear us giving tips, but it’s cyclocross races.

People love to give tips that are like the typical things like doing a step through and you’re, and they really focus on like the dismount and the remail figure that out at whatever pace you want to figure it out, figure it out with whatever technique you want and then come race day. If somebody is telling you to like, do a step through and you’re not using.

Just smile and nod and thank them, but don’t worry about it. Like, it doesn’t need to happen step through step, like people focus on the thick of thin things to distract themselves from the much more important matters. Right. So like, let’s just let Johnson, sorry. What’s that like? Yeah, yes. Yeah. Yeah. We’re not going to get into that right now, but yeah.

[00:33:15] Hannah Finchamp: Speaking of legwarmers, I cannot believe I didn’t mention this because I feel like it’s critical. I’m not what you think I’m going to say

[00:33:27] Jonathan Lee: nothing to do with socks. No, nothing. Well, it kind of bring an extra towel. That’s what it is.

[00:33:33] Hannah Finchamp: Bring an extra

[00:33:35] Jonathan Lee: pair, Alex.

Oh man.

[00:33:42] Hannah Finchamp: Yeah. Or, or if you’re not wearing any, then bring two extras,

[00:33:47] Jonathan Lee: but seriously with, I could

[00:33:51] Hannah Finchamp: cross. It’s just, it’s so critical because you’re going to go out and you’re going to, pre-read the course and you’re going to be muddy and you’re going to be cold and your uni wet and you’re getting sweaty and then you’re sitting around for 20 minutes and then you’re going to warm up and then you’re going to be sweaty and cold.

And then you’re going to go the start line. Okay. There’s nothing worse than a cold muddy. What pair of socks when you’re starting the race. So bring, yeah. Bring whatever extras you have. If you have an extra base layer, if you have an extra Jersey and bibs legwarmers, you will be happy because you’re going to look around and everyone else is going to be wet and shivering, and you’ll at least have fresh clean clothes on and it makes a huge difference.

So that’s probably actually my biggest tip in terms of comfortability

[00:34:36] Jonathan Lee: out there. And if you do more roasting twice,

[00:34:39] Alex Wild: please bring a spare. Share me Jeff, where we’re

[00:34:41] Jonathan Lee: talking to you. Yeah, don’t use the same one. Yeah. Another pro tip for a cyclocross. If you’re doing multiple races. You can go to like a, in the United States, uh, home improvement stores like home Depot and everything else.

They now have really compact pressure washers. And I mean, super compact. Like it’s like the size of like a hand drill and, uh, you can get those and then you just bring like a bucket and you just fill that up with water or some of them even have onboard water and just get your bike clean, but in between races, uh, that makes a huge difference.

If you’re, if you’re doing a muddy race, you go into that second race. I mean, I hate to be like the nerd, but you’re probably losing like 40 Watts probably. And just your chain. And then you have the fact that your tires are probably covered with mud. And who knows if those all, you know, actually be clear enough to be able to give you grip when the race starts.

There’s lots of, lots of things to keep in mind. You might not recognize that you have something broken on your bike or malfunctioning because it’s covered in mud. It’s really important and they’re pretty cheap and they’re pretty, and they’re super portable. Good tips. Um, so yeah, and also stay tuned in this case.

Uh, Mike, for that successful athletes podcast, we’ll do with Jim Mueller, 74 year old national champion. Uh, thinking of this sounded

[00:35:55] Alex Wild: very, very similar to the story.

[00:35:59] Jonathan Lee: I’m going to give this away here, but, uh, Jim is, uh, he’s a farmer as well. He had a long career in it, but he lived on a farm. So he like, has he goes into detail about like how he practiced for cross on his farm?

He basically just has like cross cross course out there all over the place. He has them all over his property. Yeah. It’s pretty great. So he sold all the tractors

[00:36:23] Alex Wild: and he just rides there.

Mentality tips from the pros

[00:36:25] Jonathan Lee: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The cows are probably really upset, but, um, Brent says I’m looking for physical and mental techniques that allow me to enter the hurt locker during a race and maximize my physiology.

Amber talked about an arousal state, which can be harnessed. And he said, that’s his rephrasing. And I’m wondering what mental jujitsu I can perform to unleash the beast within. So the thing that Amber is talking about is that arousal state basically like we, our minds, our body is designed to be able to respond to threats and opportunities.

And, uh, a lot of the time people talk about this about like the autonomic responses of like fight and flight, however, what really you want your body not to be in such a polarized, uh, zone like that. Instead you want your body to be in the right bandwidth for that. And that’s what she’s talking about that right?

Arousal, state, Lima McCormick, he’s a skills instructor, incredible one for mountain biking. Li-like spikes. He talks about that too. When he gets an athlete into something that’s too challenging, their level of arousal is too high and that’s when you can’t even take whatever you’re supposed to do. You can’t even take it on, um, it’s too overwhelming.

And if it’s too low and it’s too easy, you’re not prepared to be in a spot where your body is challenged and is learning either. So that’s like that arousal state that we’re talking about, you kind of want to be in the right zone with that. So, but the question is, how do you get to that? Because race is often pushed people to have.

And there are so nervous that they can’t even collect their thoughts or on the other side, you kind of react to those nerves with completely removing all levels of arousal and kind of being apathetic about everything. And then you miss opportunities that, that, that go in front of you and race. Um, Alex, I want to get, maybe we’ll go to you and then we’ll go to Hannah on this.

What do you do to, and I’ll say, get in the zone, but particularly like we’re talking about here to be able to get the most out of yourself, what does that mental state feel like and how do you get there?

[00:38:29] Alex Wild: Yeah. Um, I guess I, it’s a, it’s a two-part thing for me. I like routine. So I do the same things. I, I think, I feel like they’re cues to my brain that it’s like, go time.

Pancakes kind of started all off. Like if I’m having pancakes, like we’re, we’re gonna do a workout. And so like, it kind of starts to. And then I like, I like music at races, like normally 15, 20 minutes before I start my warmup, just kinda like get in my own space and listen to music that I like. Um, I also like going back to Amber, something I’ve started was kind of approaching with curiosity.

I like asking myself questions, like, what am I capable of? Can I suffer more? Can I last five more seconds? Kind of more optimistic questions like that and kind of take the, I guess, take the failure out of it because I’m okay. Losing if I gave my full effort. So I think my goal always is to have clues earlier if I’ve given my all, like I want, I don’t want afterwards to be like, oh, I could’ve gone harder.

You know? Like I want it in the moment to know that I just couldn’t have given announced. And so kind of approaching it that way has helped me a lot. And just taking the result piece away from it. It’s just, is this, is this what I’m capable of? Am I capable of more? Can I suffer more? Can I go one week, year higher?

Can I make it to that tree kind of stuff? Like that keeps me focused in grounded without getting like, oh, I’m not doing well. I’m not climbing this fast enough. I didn’t do that. Like those negative thoughts, I feel like one are negative. And, and, you know, it’s kind of like, if you look at the tree, you’re going to hit the tree.

So negative thoughts create negative outcomes, but also like they’re distracting. If you’re thinking those thoughts, then you’re not focusing on your line or the gear you’re in or breathing or just the basics. So

[00:40:32] Jonathan Lee: for Alex, you’ve mentioned this before on your Instagram last year that you have struggled in the past what’s on race day, getting what you feel.

You’re fulfilling your potential on race day. And this is common for athletes around the world and every single sport, the vast majority of athletes. And for those of us listening to this, you can probably relate. You might be the sort of person where competition, polls, absolute PR performance out of you every time.

But for a lot of us, it isn’t that way. And it can be tougher to get the most out of ourselves. Alex, I don’t expect you to have this figured out because all of us are figuring this out and we’re doing that for our entire, you know, competitive careers, whatever that may, whatever level that may be. But what are your thoughts and what are you looking forward to applying this year to be able to get to maximize and express all of that potential that you have in a race environment?

[00:41:27] Alex Wild: I think the biggest thing for me, as odd as it may sound as vulnerability, like, like when I’m alone, like yesterday, I did some power testing when it’s just me, like I can kind of. There is no failure, cause it’s just me. So it’s like, I think being that deep in the pain cave around people is a struggle for me.

It’s kind of a, it’s a very circular and backwards way of thinking because in my mind, I’m like, oh, I got to hold a little back in case someone attacks me. But if I’m holding it a little bit back, that’s what allows them to be able to attack me. So it’s as, as logical as I can see it right now, it’s like on a big climb or in a key part of the race, I struggle with that level of vulnerability and, and just having, leaving it all out there kind of thing.

[00:42:18] Jonathan Lee: Yeah, that’s on, that’s like, you’re afraid of not performing to the level that you want to perform. And at the same time, you’re also afraid of performing at a certain level. Then you feeling like that, that validates your fears and concerns. It’s complicated. Um, Hannah, have you battled, I’m sure you’ve battled with that.

You’re an athlete. I think all athletes do. Do you have any thoughts to share on that specific aspect of it, like of how to get the most out of yourself and that fear of failure and vulnerability on race day? Yeah,

[00:42:53] Hannah Finchamp: I think that’s, it’s just so true. And it’s a piece that not a lot of people discuss because it’s uncomfortable, but I always say sports are vulnerable.

Um, you know, I’ve even talked with people who have said, yeah, you know, I. Prefer not to do my best because then I know if I fall short, I, I could have done better and it makes me feel better and such a skewed way to look at it.

[00:43:21] Jonathan Lee: Um, but it makes sense. Bomber. It’s so weird that it makes sense, right?

[00:43:25] Hannah Finchamp: Yeah.

Yeah. And, and I think, I think Alex is totally right. Is you have to be both vulnerable because I mean, what’s the, what’s the point if you’re leaving something completely on the table intentionally. Um, so yeah, I think, I think the reality of the situation just is that you have to be willing to be vulnerable and you have to put yourself in the place before the race, knowing.

Whatever happens happens, and I’m going to be okay with that. And my value and worth as a human is not grounded in the result of this race, but it’s really fun to try and see what I can do. Um, and even as professional athletes, we have to remember that too. I am a racer, but that is not who I am. If that makes sense.

That’s not my entire worth. And so if I fall flat on my face, when I tried my best, that doesn’t make me any less of a person or a human, um, it just means I didn’t have a great day out on the course. And so I think remembering that, uh, is a critical piece and. And that’s just a part of it, you know, maybe that’s what makes you nervous.

Maybe it’s this whole other host of things. And I think that’s where the stress performance curve, um, really comes into play is recognizing where you’re at. You know, it’s, it’s an inverted U as Jonathan said. So if stress is on the Baba and performance is, is up the side. If you’re too, if you’re not stressed enough, you’re not going to perform well.

If you’re the right amount of stress, you’re going to perform the best. And if you’re not stressed at all, or if you’re too stressed, excuse me, on the other end, you’re not going to perform well. So finding that optimal performance to me starts with learning where you’re at on that curve. And it might seem really obvious, but that is something that took me a really long time in my career.

Because I feel like mainstream media always talks about getting pumped up. How do you get pumped up before the race pump up music? You know, maybe not in cycling, but you see football locker room scenes and all these things where everyone’s jumping around and yelling. I thought, okay, well, this is what I need to do.

I need to listen to pop music. I need to listen to motivational talks. I need to really get in zone on the trainer. And it wasn’t for several years that all of a sudden I realized I am so stressed out. I don’t know how people handle this pump up music. And I took a step back and thought, well, what if I’m on this other end?

And now for me, I know I’m on the more stressed out end of the spectrum. And I have to spend some time, you know, with my own thoughts, meditating or praying before the race and, and being calm and. And separating myself and, you know, those type of things. And so I think the very first step is just recognizing where you’re at on that curve and then

[00:46:28] Jonathan Lee: going from there.

Hmm. That’s a really good, uh, cause without that you’re always going to be hunting or reaching for something that isn’t like, you know, true to yourself. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like one thing that I’ve learned with, cause the, the big thing is we’ve probably all had days where we feel like we did enter that state at the right level of arousal and we did execute and it went really well.

And thinking of Alex at the Leadville series last year, just, you know, checking those boxes. Right. And that sort of feels like when it’s a right day, it feels like you’re checking boxes. It’s just like, boom, boom, boom. They’re done. So we’ve all done it, but the key is making it replicable. And I think that pattern is important with that.

But I’ve learned for me personally, that I need to allow a bit of flexibility in there too, because on a, I don’t know if it’s because I’m just in a different place on one day to another or different circumstances that the race. But I’ve had to like, um, my whole life with motocross and everything else growing up in racing and ski racing, I had this, like pre-race routine was just a big part of what I did.

And I was really locked into a routine and I felt like the more rigid I can make it, the more replicable, the more consistent the results. And I’m going to get better results as a result of that. And over time I’ve learned. The pattern is absolutely important. The routine is important. However, I need to allow for flexibility within that.

Um, parenthood has really helped teach that to me because nothing’s consistent and it’s always changing and it’s, but it’s helped me a bit. Um, nationals is a good example this year. Um, looking at the numbers and looking at everything else, uh, truly off day. Um, I just did like a big analysis on this about a month ago, and I really, this is post Cape epic.

So I felt like I finally had this season out of my head and I could really just focus. And I looked back at nationals and it really broke it all down. I truly had a bad day in terms of my performance. I did not perform to the level that I should have been able to perform at. Um, in training, I was doing numbers that were far better than that, right.

Um, far better. And this is a common circumstance for a lot of people. I know Alex is something you’ve mentioned too. And looking back at the whole process, I think I let my level of arousal get to. And when I look back at the day before, two days before three days before I was so stressed, I was like locked up and I was trying to fit everything into this pre-race pattern.

And I really just needed to let it go more and I needed to be more comfortable with it. So I feel like it’s a process and, and I’ll always maybe be chasing this ball around in circles, um, patterns really helpful. But the one thing that I’ve learned is that being strict with it, you know, is really tough.

If you don’t have pattern in your life, then bring that in. It’s going to do a whole lot of help if you do have pattern. And you’re extremely rigid with it, question yourself, just like what Hannah said, where do you sit on this spectrum and try to find and give yourself the flexibility to reach wherever you need to reach on that curve.

And then, like Alex said, approaching things with curiosity, like an Amber, obviously, uh, original coat to Amber Pierce. What a wonderful way to look at things. That truly allows you to fulfill potential rather than has you reaching for a specific bar. And, and sometimes we set our bar too low and that, you know, curiosity can help us get, get over the top.

What, uh, any other thoughts on pre-race prep to help yourselves getting the ideal state?

[00:50:05] Hannah Finchamp: For me, another piece that plays in huge for me is, um, encompassing a lot of positive thinking and gratitude. And that might seem really obvious because of course, no one wants to go to the line with negative thoughts, but it’s not just not having negative thoughts.

It’s intentionally having positive thoughts and believing those thoughts and getting to the place where you believe those thoughts. Um, and I think it’s important to start that before the race, but to carry it from wire to wire as well. And. And I find that every minute that goes by, that’s a place. Um, like it says, how do I enter the hurt locker to me, the piece of, of finding your ideal arousal state enters you into the game.

Congratulations, you’re now part of the race entering into your hurt locker and figuring out how to go a hundred percent is that next step after that. So once you found that perfect arousal state being able to hang on to positivity and gratitude for me is the biggest piece. And one of the rules that I try, I’ve tried to set for myself that I’m not always successful with.

As even after I crossed the finish line, I have to be positive for at least 30 minutes. Because if you know that the second you cross the finish line, you’re going to turn to, whomever’s standing there with a bottle for you and say what an often. Oh, my gosh, it was such a bad race. You’re already thinking that, not on the course.

So for me, knowing that when I crossed the finish line, I’m going to own that result with at least one positive word. And the finished shoot means that I have to hang on to and believe that word, the whole race, because it’s going to come out of my mouth to somebody else at the finish. And so that, that’s something that it helps me a lot because then it can become a mantra of, you know, even if everything else is going bad, you can at least turn.

Hopefully you can at least turn at the finish and say, well, I followed my nutrition plan. Just whatever it is, hold onto it. So that you execute one thing that you’re proud of and it will help your

[00:52:22] Jonathan Lee: race. Yeah. Th th those are, that’s a great way to do it, uh, to kind of have that cohesive thread. This is something that we talked about in the successful athletes podcast with Connor Wilson, uh, recommend everybody check that out in one year, he ended up getting up to, I think that he was four something.

Uh, everybody got up to 5.2 Watts per kilogram using train road here. I think he’s a pro cyclist. It just found it too late. Um, he’s, he’s a really, he not to take away from him, actually. That was kind of a rude comment because he puts in so much structure and hard work. It’s not like he’s just some naturally talented person that stumbled upon this Connor.

He worked really hard and I recognize that, um, Connor used to be a very high level ski racer, and we were talking a bit about visualization. And we discuss something that I, I had worked on visualization my whole life, whether it was memorizing a ski course, whether it was a motocross track and now in cycling.

And I struggled many times with when I was envisioning something and I have my eyes closed right now, if you’re driving, don’t do this. But when I was, when I was visualizing something and have my eyes closed, I’d be walking through a course and sabotage would happen. I’d see myself crash or I’d see myself get past, or I’d see, you know, I’d see something bad happen.

And I remember I used to like halt and be afraid of those bad thoughts. Like if I’m envisioning a bad. Why am I doing that restart. And, and I would try to force myself to see a positively, but in the back of my mind, I would then have this doubt that would reside there the whole time. And I had a breakthrough moment and I cannot believe I didn’t talk to somebody about this because I bet that I could have solved it way earlier.

Um, and it would have helped me, but I had a breakthrough moment where instead of stopping and being afraid of those bad occurrences and the bad things that I would see when I was envisioning something, I would entertain them and I would explore them and I would see their outcome. And then what I would do is I would think, okay, so how do I recover from that?

How do I switch? And I think that the reason that I had such an adverse reaction to it was because in skiing, if you make a mistake, you’re disqualified. So if you miss a gate or if your ski pops off, you’re done, and it’s such a tight sport that if you crash, you’re also effectively done. Like there’s, there’s no way.

So I think that that do or die sort of circumstance made me have this reaction. But if you are envisioning something, something bad happens, it’s not sabotage. These are all outcomes that could happen and don’t be afraid to explore them. So when you see yourself blowing up on that climb, it’s okay. Run through it.

Don’t turn it off. Keep that dream going for a bit, see it through and then see how you recover. Don’t try to override it, see how you end up writing that wrong later on. And that’s been transformational for me because it’s allowed me to have like a better relationship with envisioning outcomes of races, and then being able to approach it with curiosity like Alex said, and also without fear.

So then that way, when, because otherwise you envision something you’re afraid of these moments that could go bad. As soon as you go into that race and a bad thing happens, you will become doubtful. You will lose focus and it really ends up hurting you. So envisioning isn’t envisioning something perfect.

It’s just seeing how you move through the race and let yourself go through all different avenues that you have time to explore. And I promise you, it will make it so that when you’re in the race, you feel much more balanced. You feel like you’re in control and you feel like you can execute. That’s just been a huge thing.

Don’t be afraid of bad envisioning let yourself run through it. Um, and then I think also this is where we have to acknowledge a bit of difference. So if we had Keegan on this podcast right now, he’d be talking about how he just wants to crush souls. Like that’s, that’s what he wants to make. People wish they didn’t show up to a race, right?

Like that’s, that’s what motivates him. And that will not motivate somebody else. They’re going to have a very different motivation and don’t feel bad for whatever your motivation is. Everyone’s going to have different motivations and champions are not cut from the same cloth. They may have some similarities, but their motivations may be very different.

Right. So don’t feel like you have to be just like somebody else. The key principles that Hannah’s like sharing here is that you have to find the right bandwidth where you sit and then thereafter, what you have to do is you have to allow yourself Alex’s thing, racing with curiosity, but you have to allow yourself to reach and reach and reach and accomplish what you want to accomplish.

Um, don’t be afraid of not accomplishing it, allow yourself to reach it. So at whatever pace, whatever that looks like for you. So, Alex, do you have anything else to add on this?

[00:57:06] Alex Wild: No, I think we covered it. I see a book recommendation in here. So I was going to add mine. Uh, endure is a really good book for

[00:57:14] Jonathan Lee: this.

Some people really respond to like a David Goggins, sorta motivation. They can’t hurt me. Like he’s a, he’s a strong brand that’s for darn sure. Um, for some people that really works for other people, something else might work. Um, and dura is a great one. It really mechanically breaks down everything that, uh, that you go through and erase and, and how to do that.

Um, yeah. Great. One, Chad also put in a recommendation squat every day. Um, I’m not sure what that book means. I’m not sure what it’s about, but I trust that if Chad put it in because it’s in green text and I think that’s what Chad would put in, then I think it’s good.

Rapid Fire Questions

So, uh, okay. What do you say? We go into some rapid fire stuff.

Then we go back to the question that we were going to cover sound good. Uh, Taryn says, would you rather raise 12 cyclocross races every day for 10 days or one 12 hour ride? Every day for 10 days. Although right now they do 12 hour rides. 10 days in a row.

[00:58:12] Alex Wild: Yeah. Cause they were doing 12 crossroads. That’s 12 hours.

Anyway, my car ride, I get to

[00:58:16] Jonathan Lee: count the downhill. Maybe he’s maybe he’s in the four or five category or something and the races are like 30 minutes. Let’s just assume they’re 30 minutes just because you bring up a good point, Alex. It could be even six. Is there. Oh, that

[00:58:29] Hannah Finchamp: is a good point. I read it as one cross race every day for 12 days, but now I’m realizing why this question’s hard question one hour, a

[00:58:40] Jonathan Lee: day or 12.

So 1230 minute cross races. Sorry, Taryn. If this is not your intent, we’re embellishing, but it’s going to make it, I think more clear 12 cyclocross races. Let’s just say the 30 minute races and doing that every day for 10 days or a 12 hour ride every day for 10 days, it’s still 12 hours.

[00:59:02] Hannah Finchamp: If the cross course changes every day, then I would pick the cross races if it’s the same course, every race for the 10 days, then the 12 hour rides.

Cause I can at least go somewhere different.

[00:59:16] Jonathan Lee: It’s 120 different courses. Every cross it’s impressive. Maybe it said, uh, maybe it’s a Jim Mueller’s farm. Like we were talking about our successful athletes podcasts. He’s got lots of them. I, I think I do the cyclocross races. I don’t know. I’m just not 12 hours as long.

I’ve, uh, I’ve written longer than that before. And boy, I don’t really ever want to do that again. That’s that’s long to me, but I think I do the cyclocross race that said 24 hour racing, which is more or less probably what that would feel like is miserable. I don’t know. Taryn. Why do you got to do that to us?

Neither of those sound fun. Um, Jessica, what sort of terrain do you fear? Most mud rock. Jumps and drops high-speed sections or wet roads

[01:00:08] Hannah Finchamp: for me, it’s just wet trails, like wet rocks, wet roots, wet. I just have this thing where, when like, like you’re saying, when I envision it, I envision just being in this straight line and then just my wheels suddenly like being above my head. So it’s kind of work in progress of realizing, oh, wow. Actually that doesn’t happen in real life, but also that’s

but also that’s why I’m, I’m going to Bellingham this weekend specifically. Cause I want to ride somewhere wet and try and overcome this fear so that I can visualize and know that I’ve done it before. So concrete

[01:00:50] Jonathan Lee: your fears.

What roads

[01:00:56] Alex Wild: wet roads. I feel like anything on trail is in my control. I feel like what roads you come across, like an oil patch. Like my obscene fear is like you coming around and right. Sweeper, you hit this. There’s a car coming the other way. And yeah, I feel like out on the trail, it’s just me and my mountain bike.

It’s like, I’m, I’m happy pegging trees and sliding up rocks.

[01:01:19] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. I think that I, um, I struggled the most with. Technical stuff. If you give me speed, I feel like I can solve anything and I’m totally lying to myself. But, uh, you know, that’s like how I rationalize, like everything gets better with speed. And honestly, it’s usually pretty true.

Uh, but, um, slow stuff. That’s technical has been a big challenge for me, and I’ve made a lot of progress over the past handful of years by, um, working on skills and working on body position and then reinforcing those principles when I’m in the middle of those really technical things. Um, it’s also just like when I was a little kid, I’m relearning the fact that like, Hey, you don’t need to freak out as much about it.

You actually can do it. Just give yourself the chance to succeed. But I would say slow tech is typically where I struggle the most, um,

[01:02:12] Alex Wild: being forced to go slow. I think, I think that’s also a little bit of a hack. If you ride something faster, it normally gets easier. So it’s not forcing you to go slow, consider going faster.

It makes those holes, not

[01:02:24] Jonathan Lee: holes gone. Like the, you know,

[01:02:27] Alex Wild: yeah. Can bucked around. But I agree with you. I think like the balance piece of gone slow, it can be hard sometimes

[01:02:33] Jonathan Lee: for sure. Yep. Uh, another one from Brian, which of the lifetime grand Prix races or the host that got accepted looking forward to most, which, Hey, you’re both here so we can answer this one.

Uh, which ones are you looking forward to most? Not on down. It says the mountain biker. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, Hannah, why don’t you go first? Which one are you looking forward to? Most can be multiple too. It doesn’t have to just be one. I think what I’m

[01:02:59] Hannah Finchamp: most looking forward to with that series is the variety. Just, just the fact that it is so different and I’m excited.

At that list of people who are accepted every person on there is so comes from such different backgrounds as well. That it’s

[01:03:18] Jonathan Lee: Ashton Lamby is in there. I was like, wait, what? Yeah.

[01:03:25] Hannah Finchamp: I just think it’s going to be so exciting watching people’s strengths and weaknesses be exposed race after a sucker race. So I think just point blank, the variety of it all is what I’m most excited for.

[01:03:39] Jonathan Lee: Um, was there a race you’re not looking forward to like one that you’re fearing?

[01:03:45] Hannah Finchamp: I I’m not plan of, of the six. I’m not planning on doing Unbound, so I’ll be starting, I guess it would be safe.

[01:03:57] Alex Wild: Yeah. That’s all there is to not

[01:04:00] Jonathan Lee: do Unbound. Honestly, ever since that race has come out every time I’m flying over. Kansas. I looked down and it’s not flat. It’s just constantly rolling, constantly bumpy. And I look at that and I’m just like, oh, I do not want to. I looked down over a Colorado when I’m flying over it.

And I’m like, oh, I want to be there on my bike. I do not feel that when I go over Kansas, I don’t have the same feelings. So yeah, I don’t blame you. I’m looking forward to watching the one or like following, I guess, however we do it these days. Um, I think the one I’m looking forward to most is Leadville because I feel like Leadville is a race that should have closer, tighter, and super exciting racing, but usually doesn’t.

Um, and I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that, um, oh, how do I say this in a way that doesn’t sound offensive? Sorry. I’m being transparent with you, podcast listeners. Um, I feel like the race should, should have a higher level of competition attract more depth. Then it does, it has incredible athletes at it, but it usually ends up having like, um, a handful or even sometimes one standout rider that’s above the cut, you know, or a cut above the rest.

And hopefully with his lifetime grand Prix, we’ll get enough riders there that we’ll have group tactics, because that’s why that race has so much potential. I think that we’ll have group tactics that can play out and really influence the outcome. I think it would make Leadville fascinating. And I think that it’s a really cool thing that has been getting more and more riders, uh, Keegan, unfortunately just, uh, kind of walked away with it last year.

I mean, fortunately for Keegan, but not unfortunately for those that were hoping to like watch a really tight race, you know, so, but that, that’s the one I’m looking forward to most. I think I’ll actually go to Leadville this year. I’m not racing it, but uh, I want to go there and watch and support. Uh, it’s a real.

Really cool event for that. So, uh, and says, I have a very silly question using the power of all of your big datasets. Are you able to tell who is the best at matching power targets using resistance mode? Are there writers out there who have such a smooth pedal stroke that it shows up in the data? That’s a great question.

And I’ll actually try to wrap my head around how we can explore that. Um, I bet there’s some ways we can do it. We’re always digging into the data, uh, on one of our lead engineers. He’s just amazing. And, um, our, one of our all on you’re an engineer, but you’re also product manager. You’re you, you do everything.

So, um, all Han’s amazing and we’re always working on looking at the dataset and exploring different questions. Boy, it takes a whole lot more diligence and work than people think to answer those sort of questions because. We do not want to share data that is not responsible. It’s very easy to just like, take the data and kind of pose this question and get whatever answer you want.

That’s convenient and roll with that. And not be honest, but that’s not how we roll. We have to be honest. So that takes a lot of work, but maybe we can figure that out. And it seems like a kind of a fun one to discover, uh, somebody out there is going to be a robot and we’ll find them, uh, Marius says, what is the hardest race that you would do again?

So I assume hardest race that you’ve done that you would do again. Hmm.

[01:07:15] Alex Wild: Let’s go.

[01:07:17] Jonathan Lee: Yeah, that feels hard for me. It’s Leadville. Yeah. I wouldn’t do it again. We’d have to be with the right person though, because that would have to be the draw. Is that experienced with that person that I would have, um, rather than just going for the it’s just so much commitment.

Otherwise I can’t justify doing it in four months. Uh, are you saying that you would be my partner because I do not want to be that race with you. I like you a lot, but you would kill me. That would be fun. Yeah. Yeah. It would be fun. I mean, Brandon destroyed me like, uh, and I got to watch Brandon just be bored on the climbs the whole entire week, you know?

Um, he practiced, he could have worked on juggling while he was climbing, basically when he was climbing at my pace. So, uh, yeah, I think it would have to be Cape epic. Excited for that one, by the way, I’m really excited. Can’t wait for it to see that one.

How to mix sprint training with endurance training

Okay. Ray, or actually let’s go back up to Ryan’s question.

He has to, it says how much physiological stress does adding in short three to 15 seconds, sprints on endurance rides ad, does it negatively impact other objectives of endurance rides given that they have different objectives? You mentioned mitochondrial capabilities versus neuromuscular adaptations, et cetera.

I wanted to pitch this one to you first, Alex, because Alex, you have mentioned multiple times that you like doing these endurance rides and then you mix in short seated sprints, um, seated being contextually appropriate to mountain biking, right? In the sense that that’s what you work on a lot, but do you feel like incorporating those sprints flies in the face of the endurance edit patients that you’re going forward with your endurance training?

[01:08:55] Alex Wild: No. Um, it’s definitely not a purely in burn thrive, but it. Incorporating, those would definitely bring it away from being purely endurance. Um, the closest thing I have to what Ryan is saying is sprinting my brother, and I think Hannah had similar thoughts, but the elation and dopamine release of beating my brother in a sprint far outweighs anything that comes from negatively impacting.

So I will take those three to 15 seconds sprints to dust them every now and again.

[01:09:30] Jonathan Lee: Do you feel like it, uh, adversely affects any of your following workouts though? Like, because you did the sprints now you’re done. Um,

[01:09:39] Alex Wild: not that I could objectively say was because of the sprint. Um, I will say whether or not anything real comes with it.

I don’t do sprints at the end of rides as I’m getting closer to racing, like in the off season, I feel like I just have more bandwidth to do. Make stupid decisions and pay for them. So if there is any negative impact to it, I’m okay with it this time of year. But like, for example, if it was April and I was a week or two out from sea Otter, then I would probably just not with no evidence to say that I shouldn’t, but just more kind of how I think about how structured I am is I’m more loose around this time of year, because I feel like there’s only a certain amount of mental matches.

And then as we get closer to racing, definitely more tight on the little things.

[01:10:26] Jonathan Lee: Hmm. How about you, Hannah? Um, do you incorporate that into your training, into like endurance training at the same time?

[01:10:34] Hannah Finchamp: Yeah. Sometimes I’ll have, you know, little 15, second sprints throughout, um, which I think is a very mountain bike style of workout because it’s so rare that on, if you’re on a trail that you’re just doing one consistent pace the whole time.

And so, especially if you can’t get on trails because where you live in the winter, it’s hard. I think this is actually a great way to, um, pretend like you’re on extremely variable train, but that’s set. One of the things that I usually focus on and those type of workouts is after that 15 seconds sprint immediately going back into whatever pace I’m supposed to be riding for that workout.

So aerobic or tempo. So then I’m truly adding in the sprints and not doing a sprint and recover type of workout, which then inevitably also means those sprints. Can’t be all out, all out, all out. Um, so it it’s give or take on everything. And if you’re a, if you’re a track racer and you’re really good at recruiting those Masa fibers, that you can go all out super deep, and then you have to recover for 10 minutes after 15 seconds sprint that is hurting you on your aerobic rides.

But if you’re just throwing in these. I think Alex, I think you call them accelerations that you, I think that’s the perfect word instead of sprint. I would call it an acceleration.

[01:12:02] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. If you want to work on sprints and you want to improve that work on sprints, if you want to improve aerobic ability or aerobic capabilities, and that’s your goal with endurance work, do that endurance work, mixing them, I think has a different objective.

And it’s probably misunderstood a lot of the time. It’s when an athlete wants to exhaust anaerobic, um, stores and they want to make sure that throughout that endurance ride, they are forcing themselves to operate at more of an aerobic level then yeah, that can be a case. And that can happen super important.

Like you said, Hannah, in those cases to not sprint and chill, but sprint and just continue exactly where you were before. Go back to it. But. You know, it’s, it’s really, you just have to be intentional with your training. Like what are you trying to accomplish? And I think that’s an important question that you should ask every day.

That’s why we have like goals and descriptions with every single workout and trainer road. And you can see what the goal of the workout is. Uh, and, and that’s really important when we build our training plans. We have okay. On Tuesdays or the third day of the week. Cause since you can shuffle it around on the third day of the week, we really want this job to be accomplished for this athlete because their goals are X and on the it’s different than it is on the fourth day or on the first day.

It’s just objective. Like you re you want to be clear with your intentions and then you want to go out and accomplish that with your training. That’s the whole point. Um, otherwise it’s just riding right. And riding is awesome and it’s fun, but you don’t necessarily have a guaranteed outcome from writing other than maybe having a lot of fun, which is also good.

Um, but you won’t have a guaranteed training. If you don’t have a specific input or specific objective that you’re working toward to accomplish. So it’s not a bad thing to work them in. It can be intentional at times. And you’ll notice it in a lot of our workouts. We have workouts like this that are aerobic.

And then every once in a while, you’d have accelerations, um, every 15 minutes, every 30 minutes, whatever it might be. Um, but uh, more commonly if you’re really trying to improve sprints, you’ll do that work. If you’re trying to improve endurance work, you’ll do that. As far as it impacting your aerobic, like if you’ve mixed in sprints, does it break the productivity or of your aerobic work?

Absolutely not. Don’t worry about that. That’s like a big misnomer that if you break a zone suddenly there’s like no productivity for the 99% of the workout that you spent inside that zone. That’s not the case. Ryan has another question he says, is there a large consequence to consuming some fat on an endurance ride?

There’s a fine to have some fat. To what extent does that change as intensity increases? And you mentioned oftentimes fat is very hard to avoid. As most energy bars have fat in them. Hannah, what would you say to this one?

[01:14:46] Hannah Finchamp: No, there’s not a large consequence to consuming fat. Um, especially in the examples that he gives in terms of an energy bar, because it’s not so much fat that your body’s gonna run on that fat. Um, the biggest thing with that, you know, if you have. Glycogen stores, your body’s using that first. And so as long as you have enough glycogen that fats, not that that’s not hurting you or requiring you to go at a lower intensity.

The biggest thing with this is you just want to make sure that you’re not consuming fat at the expense of consuming carbs, which if you’re eating a bar with some not butter or something in it, that’s not the case. If you’re consuming something that is almost entirely fat and then you’re so full that you cannot consume a carbohydrate in addition to it, that’s when we get into the problems.

Um, because you’re, if you only are running on fat, then to answer your question, you would have to lower the intensity. Um, but if you have glycogen, then your body’s going to use that first. So the fat won’t be.

[01:16:00] Jonathan Lee: Another concern to think about too, is that fat is more costly in terms of energy consumption and more time demand to digest than carbohydrate.

So in, if you are ingesting fat, it will slow down your body’s ability to digest even carbohydrate that you’re taking in as well. But if it’s an endurance ride, you probably don’t have to worry about that as intensity increases and you’re burning more calories and your body is using more sugar, and that is the digestive process, the higher the intensity, the more disruptive fat will become.

So it’s, it’s not something you have to like, worry about like, uh, what Hannah said on an endurance ride, but a race or anything else like that. That’s why. And I go far to the extreme on this one, uh, and just carbohydrate. And I don’t want any fat when I’m doing something that’s like a. Or training or anything else if it’s like a normal ride and I don’t have a specific objective.

Yeah. I’m fine with whatever, like peanut butter jelly, bring it on. I love it. But if it’s a race, I just go to carbohydrate. Cause I’m like, well, why would I put pump gas in here instead of race gas? Like, I’m just going to put race gas in the machine. Uh, it’s going to be even better for it. So, but it’s not like it’s going to throw off your endurance rides.

Alex. How about you? I know that you tend to, I mean, you and I are kind of cut from the same cloth in terms of, we like to look at the grams per hour of what we’re eating in carbs and try to push that up as high as we can. Yeah.

[01:17:27] Alex Wild: Um, for racing for sure. I actually make a point to bring like a cliff nut Butterfield bar on anything, call it over three and a half, four hours just to have it in the middle, just to have a little bit of fat on that ride.

Um, but yeah, racing, it’s shooting for a hundred gram of carbon hour and it’s just as many different kinds of sugars, like.

How to pace long events with lots of short climbs

[01:17:51] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. So don’t stress about it too much. Ryan, you seem like an athlete like us that likes to overthink things a lot. So good to have you in it’s a, it’s a big club doors wide open. So, um, we have a rapid fire submission from one of our live listeners appetite for rose.

It says at Rosie, I assume, I assume that that’s what it is rather. I bet the accent didn’t come through on the, okay. It says get a flat tire during a five-hour race or have a squeaky chain. The whole race flat tire caught me last time. I’d take three flat tires over a squeaky chain. The whole race

[01:18:25] Alex Wild: weekend chain means you’re losing like 15.

I can fix that flat faster than losing this 15 Watts.

[01:18:31] Jonathan Lee: And I’ll actually lose like half my brain cells because of my brain cooking from hearing squeaky chain. I can’t handle it. Just throw an ice friction

[01:18:39] Alex Wild: chain on there. You don’t have no

[01:18:40] Jonathan Lee: squeak. That’s true. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder if I bet we could have used those during Cape epic every day.

I mean, if we had a limited money, we do not, but that would have been sweet because boy, my going through all those mud puddles and everything else just destroyed it. Every single. That was so noisy and loud. Uh, Tim says, uh, Hey guys, and girls, thank you for all that you do at trainer road. I try to spread the word to others to sign up.

I’m a 36 year old male, around 135 pounds, five foot, four inches with an FTP of two 17. That’s down from 2 25 earlier than. I saw a drop in FTP around September having some fatigue. And he says I’ve just been taking it easy and fun, uh, in October. And just having fun on the bike instead of training, where to go, Tim.

Good on you. That’s the time to do it. Right. Uh, my question is this I’m planning on racing the 2022 oh Ram mountain bike race next year. Uh, for those that don’t know what O Ram is, it’s a popular race. Um, it’s, uh, east coast race for the U S here and it’s the off-road assault on Mount Mitchell. I have friends in North Carolina that have talked about this race and talks about how ridiculously hard it is.

Uh, sounds really tough. It says it’s a 60 mile, 10,000 foot elevation gay mountain bike race. My question is what plan would you recommend and what kind of advice can you provide for a race like. The past, I’ve done a lot of cross country races in Florida that are 15 to 20 miles long, one to two hours and no real elevation gain.

I’ve lived in Western. He says, I think Western North Carolina, he put WNC for about a year and I’ve been working on climbing a lot. And I haven’t found a gear. I don’t live. Didn’t like yet living here. So it sounds like it’s steep terrain. I know this sounds like a tall order, but this being my only goal for the year, I’m racing this to complete it, not to finish first now going into the new year and setting my goals up for what is what I was to achieve.

And I have spent some time looking at your plans for this. I’m not sure what plan would be best for this situation. Any direction would be helpful. And thanks to everyone here for the great. So, this is like the classic scenario of this is going to be a long day. So part of you thinks that, okay, insurance work, but then 10,000 feet of climbing and it’s going to come in a lot of steep pitches, uh, when you’re climbing Mount Mitchell, it’ll be really tough.

So then you think, well, I need to be surgery and I need to be really punchy and I need to be able to do that. But punchiness, isn’t something that you can stretch out forever and it isn’t something you should stretch out for other forever either. Um, you can’t do like put you can’t punch for six hours.

It’s not going to happen. Right. And a 60 mile mountain bike race, where you have technical rocks and roots and, and everything else. This isn’t just a smooth mountain bike course. So this is could very well take six hours or more. And this could be a really big and really hard day. So looking at that, you aren’t going to be able to punch for six hours.

He won’t be able to do that. So he don’t have to worry about that instead. It really becomes more predominantly aerobic. You’ll be. Over your threshold plenty of times, but really you’ll be dropping down and you’ll be spending the majority of your day as aerobic as possible. But this brings up a good point that I want to discuss.

There’s this sliding scale of duration being the X axis, right? And as duration increases, the profile starts to matter less. And what I mean by that is you can’t rise to the occasion that the profile poses to you, like if it’s a short race and it’s a bunch of punches, like red bull bay climb is probably the best example of this versus just like one short climb.

You can entirely specialize around one minute efforts or however long it takes. Right. But as it gets longer, you can’t specialize for that. A Unbound gravel is a great example of this in the sense that you could look at Unbound and say, okay, so the climbs are going to be all under a minute. Um, they’re mostly, most of them are going to be even shorter than.

So I should just do cyclocross style training, but that isn’t going to serve you well, on a day, that’s going to be 10 hours long, 12 hours long. So you have to consider that as the duration gets longer, the punchiness of a course matters less. And it’s more about what you’re going to be able to do, which is just right aerobically for that period of time.

And with that said, cross country marathon plan is where you’d want to be. It’s still going to prep you for surges, and it’s still going to give you a ton of aerobic work in that. Um, and it’s going to be pretty applicable all that said. Um, I want to get advice from, from you because, uh, Hannah and Alex mountain bike racers that do short races and then also do long races, uh, see you kind of deal with this very balanced.

What advice would you have in this case for Tim? And we’ll go Hannah, first on this one.

[01:23:25] Hannah Finchamp: Yeah, I think that typically speaking for long, for really long races like this, I’m a big fan of the, I won’t go over X metric approach. Um, Obviously, you have to have some flexibility there. If there’s a climb that is so steep that you can’t stay under that metric, then just go as easy as you can get to the top.

It’s okay. Um, you know, but if you’re not in your easiest gear shift into an easier gear and try and stay in that metric. So usually I like just having the ceiling approach, um, because then if you’re in a group or you’re trying to stay with someone, you can look down and say, Nope, this pace is too fast. I have to stay under this metric, but it doesn’t create such a barrier that you can’t surprise yourself.

Um, because you never know what you’re capable of until you do it. And you’ve never done it until you do it. So I like creating some flexibility there. So usually I, I, beyond that, that limit metric, I will just go based on feel of it’s uncomfortable, but it’s doable. It’s sustainable, but I’d like to slow down.

Um, usually those are those. If I’m hitting those thoughts in my mind, then I’m probably in a pretty good pace. And I will check in with myself throughout the race too, and ask myself, is this sustainable? Yeah. But I wish I could slow down. Okay,

[01:24:54] Jonathan Lee: perfect.

[01:24:57] Hannah Finchamp: Um, and, and when you’re. And when you’re out there and you have those metrics set and not plan, remember that you’re smarter before the race, then you, and then you are at our sixth in the race.

So if you find yourself hours, I don’t know if you find yourself, I could see you doing this. Alex actually

[01:25:19] Jonathan Lee: hours,

[01:25:19] Hannah Finchamp: six hour six, Alex is running some sort of equation in his head and he’s like, hold on, I’ve cracked the code. Maybe I can do this

[01:25:29] Jonathan Lee: differently.

[01:25:32] Hannah Finchamp: Somehow. I think probably whatever math you did before the race is more accurate, but

[01:25:37] Jonathan Lee: I’ll

[01:25:37] Hannah Finchamp: pass it off to Alex.

Now that I’ve poked a little fun at him.

[01:25:43] Alex Wild: This is definitely something I would do. Yeah. And I’m fine with it. My real advice to Tim would just be to work the course in your favor and know what’s coming. Um, I liked the idea. Like Hannah was saying, get into those. Some, some of those situations beforehand, um, Florida, from what I remember from what we sold there for gearing is very flat.

So, so steep climbs, like even finding short, steep climbs and understanding like during and how that feels and how your fields and all that. Just putting yourself in as many of those situations as possible. Like if you have a guest on your finish time and you were far enough out and you want to see like, okay, I’m going to go ride for six hours and just see how that feels, try my nutrition.

Like as many of those unknowns you can create knowns out of and, and kind of check those boxes, then it kind of goes back to that arousal state too. Is it lowers that stress level should where you can perform your best? Because you’re like, oh, I’ve climbed 20% grades. I’ve climbed 10,000 feet. I’ve written 60 miles.

Like, okay, I’m ready to throw all this together in one day and, and execute my plan.

[01:26:58] Jonathan Lee: I know that with this race in particular, I’ve heard the descending is pretty technical and pretty tricky too. And it’s such a long day and it gets so fatigued that it’s really easy to make those mistakes. Once you get fatigued.

I mean, what Hannah’s saying is very true. We are not the best mathematicians at the end of a six hour ride. We also are less proficient by candles. So we’re also less proficient bike handlers at the end of a six hour ride. So I think it’s really important with your bike handling. I know that this, um, this isn’t something that’s likely going to increase your time substantially Tim, but it will likely help you from losing a lot of time.

Uh, and that’s to get to the point where you understand by handling from a principal’s perspective, watch the video that we’ve done with Lee McCormick about bike handling. He talks a lot about position in a way that will help you make sure that you get two or three, three, the two or three things into.

That will really profoundly help you descend when you are fatigued, because you’ll be in the right position. Honestly, being in the right position is so much of bike handling. It’s, it’s a whole lot less about, you know, speed and strength and everything else as much as just being in the right position. So if you can guarantee that you’ll be in a good spot, Hannah, the point you made is so important on long races.

Having that cap of saying, I won’t go above this. Now, if you’re racing for a win, that probably changes. But in this case, Tim has clearly told us that he’s not racing for a win he’s racing to finish. And this is how you finish fastest is by capping yourself because your eyes will get bigger than your stomach.

And you’ll want to do efforts that are too hard and you’ll push too hard in the beginning. And that really slows you down later in the race. So that is such a great point. Hannah really

[01:28:44] Alex Wild: simple. And I think something that may be hard to stick to, if you’re anything like me, um, you’ll see everybody around you you’ll be at the race start, you know, you’d be like, oh sweet.

I’m gonna stick to this guy’s wheel. Like, I mean, you start getting competitive and you have to remember that the fastest way from start to finish is sticking to your plan. Racing for a win is different because there’s, you know, drafting involved in being in the front group and seeing things first there’s a lot of different aspects, but if you are truly racing for finishing your best finished time, then executing your plan is what you can do best and try to do your best to stick to that plan.

The hosts’ favorite training and racing metrics

[01:29:19] Jonathan Lee: Yeah, absolutely. Anything else to add to Tim’s before we move on to Steve’s questions, live questions from people course,

[01:29:27] Alex Wild: Margaret six hours, and then you see.

[01:29:32] Jonathan Lee: I like that Alex is going to have like a whole math course, the math that you can do on the bike. Um, Steve says, hi, there I’ve completed two low volume training plans and succession over six months. My race he mentioned as a solo ride is in a week’s time. Steve, uh, based on the time of your question, this might’ve already happened.

So I apologize for too late, but just the same. Hopefully this advice can be helpful for, uh, Steve retrospectively and also for everybody listening, what stats should I monitor during the race to maximize my performance? How do I know if I’m pushing too hard or not hard enough during the ride? So let’s first address the latter part of his question.

How do I know if I’m pushing too hard? Or not hard enough during the ride and let’s answer that, not from a metrics perspective, and then we’ll get into the metrics perspective and how they use, sorry, Alex, his brain just broke. He’s like, I don’t know how to answer that, but how, because that’s a good point.

How do I know if I’m pushing too hard or not hard enough during the race keeping in mind, this is a solo effort, right? So he’s not, uh, he’s not racing against other people because in the end, all data informs perception. Right. And that’s an important thing to keep in mind. So what do you hunt for, for perception?

Let’s say this is a long sort of ride. Hannah. This seems like, kind of a basic question, but what sort of sensations are you feeling when you are trying to pay something? Well, and it’s a longer event. Yeah.

[01:30:55] Hannah Finchamp: Assuming that it’s a longer event. I think it’s pretty safe to say that if you can’t, um, If you can’t say at least one sentence, then you might be going too hard.

Uh you’re. You’re kind of crossing over that threshold in which you’re no longer really working aerobically. That doesn’t mean you have to be able to sing or hold a conversation. But if you can’t squeak out a confidence sentence, then, then you’re probably breathing a little bit too hard. Um, and you’re forcing your body to go more towards the anaerobic side, which isn’t going to be sustainable.

[01:31:34] Jonathan Lee: Long-term yeah. Great, great advice. Now, Alex, bathe us and data here. What stuff do you watch or do you look at when you’re looking for pacing things properly? What metrics are most important for you?

[01:31:47] Alex Wild: Uh, ride time, lap time, power, power, heart rate by part, right. Energy up speed. That person’s

[01:31:53] Jonathan Lee: a normalized.

He’s looking at his hammerhead right now.

I’ve

[01:31:59] Alex Wild: put as many as I can on the screen, as it should be no shock to anybody, but, um, yeah, uh, just how long the ride’s going to be. And I kind of just know my power curve in my head, roughly. Um, also by feel like Hannah said, it’s also a great way to lose training partners by the way. So don’t talk too much, even if you can’t.

Uh, yeah. Like if you can kind of just feel like if you can go at that pace all day, especially on a big solo ride, then you’re probably doing just fine.

[01:32:35] Jonathan Lee: Yeah, we have a great blog article written by Jesse is in the live chat right now. And it’s all about how to build a pacing plan for longer events. And we give you, uh, uh, objectives or ranges to shoot for in terms of intensity factor.

So that’s a metric that you can enable on your head unit called and that’s basically, uh, it’ll be represented as a decimal, uh, but it’s basically a percentage of your threshold. So, uh, 0.7, six hours then. Yes. Yes, exactly. So 0.7 I F would be 70% of your threshold. Now we know that in an ideal state, if we are absolutely perfectly prepared and everything else, we might be able to hold our actual threshold for an hour.

Right. Like, but that’s why the, our record so hard is because it’s really hard to actually do that. But with that in mind, that’s kind of like the benchmark for an hour. And then that trickles down. Um, it, this doesn’t have a linear relationship. So as you, what you think. Jesse’s article will explain this really well.

So we’ll link below to that, but basically you’ll be surprised that what you can do for 90 minutes, you can probably stretch to around two and a half to maybe even up to three hours and what you can do for three hours or just slightly above, you can stretch out for a very long time. Uh, so you’re probably, if it’s a long event, you’re going to be looking somewhere in between 0.6 to 0.7, somewhere there, if you’re really getting the most out of yourself, um, you’ll likely be riding it less than that.

If you’re not looking to get the most out of yourself and just enjoy riding on the day. Um, but that’s a really helpful one that I find for that. What about during races though? Hannah? Which metrics do you look at for mountain bike racing in particular? Are you the, I turn my head unit on, but I don’t look at the head unit, uh, in a mountain bike race typically, unless it’s a long one.

But do you look at metrics during XCO,

[01:34:29] Hannah Finchamp: during XCO? Pretty much not. Yeah, I think it’s, it’s too distracting and it’s unimportant to me. I, as Alex said, if you’re racing for the win a session and XCO, then if you’re looking at metrics, it would only be for pacing. And I’m not going to pull the plug if I’m going too hard.

I’m just going to hope that everyone around me is bluffing too. So I, for short events, not at all for longer events, um, truly, I, I usually go by feel, but I do use the metrics for affirmation. So if I find myself in a group that feels too hard, I might look down and discover, okay, it’s not too hard. You’re overly aroused.

As we talk about talked out earlier, it’s time to calm down or am I look down and say, oh my gosh, it is really hard. Everyone else must be hurting too. These sensations are valid. It’s going to be okay. It’ll slow down eventually. Um, so I usually are just using them for affirmation out there of my sensations.

[01:35:41] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. When it comes to long stuff, uh, like when you were racing a BWR San Diego, what were you looking at on your head even? Or what important stuff did you have on there?

[01:35:52] Hannah Finchamp: When, um, I would say that, I mean, the biggest thing for me honestly, is distance. Cause that’s a huge motivator to me in races. Like that is just knowing how far along we are in the race.

When I’m in the group, I’m pretty much looking at nothing because I’m going to stay in the group no matter what, because drafting is so critical that even if it takes everything I have for the next 20. I’m not going to get dropped because then it’s going to take everything I have for the whole race. So I’m, I’m not really looking at anything.

Um, at BWR and specifically I found myself off the front, on the black canyon climb, which was gosh, almost an hour long climb. And that was a time when I sort of. That limit and said, okay, I’m not going to go above my threshold. It’s an hour long. If you’re, if you’re going over threshold, you know, you can’t do that.

So I, I pretty much settled in around sweet spot for that. And just, and just figured if I can hold that then if anyone catches me doing that good on them.

[01:37:04] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. Yeah. That’s uh, the longer the race, the, I think the more I pay attention to IFF and something like, which is basically what you’re talking about, like, you know, the overall pacing and all lap that on long climbs, if there’s like, like a Leadville, another example for this, like I’ll absolutely be paying attention on Columbine.

I want to look at what my intensity factor is on, on power line. No, because, uh, I’m just trying to not die and fall over. So, but on Columbine, I want to make sure I’m not doing too hard. Right. Um, and that’s also time trials. I really look at my head. Right. When I’m doing a time trial, not really a mountain bike time trial and well, actually.

Yeah, even those, um, if it’s something where it has like sustained power for awhile or a longer climb, I’m absolutely looking at that because it’s really easy to go out too hard. I do that every single time I do any single bike race. I always start too hard. Uh, cause I’m overeager and that always ends up causing problems.

So in time trials, I’m very strict and I set my limits and I stick to that. And then usually what it feels like at the end of the race is that one thing, at one point it felt so easy to go over that power. And I felt, and I was questioning why I was holding myself to it at the end of the race. I’m like, how in the world?

Like, what can I do to hold onto this power? Like what sort of maybe if I change my position slightly, I don’t know that’s any, no, that you’re like pacing. It really well is when you’re coming into the, toward the end. And that’s what you’re feeling like. So yeah. But I’ve really taken a step this year of stepping away from looking at metrics during cross country races.

I used to look at them pretty regularly, and this year I had to learn to get rid of that. And I think it was helpful though I am hyper-focused on, on time. Time is extremely important in a criterium because it’s time-based cyclocross races. It would be really important to, and then in a criteria I’m always looking at pace like speed and power.

So, but speed is really important, especially if you’re in a breakaway scenario, we’ve talked about this before, but if you notice that typically the field is riding somewhere around 26 miles an hour, and then when the gas is on it’s 29 miles an hour and. Pay attention to that. If, if you notice that the group can not maintain that 29 mile an hour pace for more than three laps, then in your breakaway, you need to make sure that you can hold 29 mile by mile per hour, pace for more than three laps.

If that’s not happening, your break, isn’t going to succeed. Right. However, if you know that the group’s average speed is 26 and you’re rolling turns and you guys are carrying 27, you’re just extending. So that is an important pacing thing because you can’t always rely on vision and where you see the field and on the course, that can be really, uh, that can be really helpful there, but it’s all varying Alex, do you have all those data points up for every race?

No. No. Uh,

[01:39:55] Alex Wild: I think it depends on the race. I call you use it. If there’s a pacing aspect to it, like nationals is a good example. There’s one big climb and then it comes back around. So I paced the climb and then the rest is by feel. Um, but, um, In all these cases, understanding the relationship between speed and power is super helpful.

Like back to Steve’s question on that solo ride, I would make a game out of like, can I go faster for less power? You know, like, can I, you know, get a little bit smaller on this descent? Or if I like bring my torso down, but do 20 Watts, less like, will the speed go up? And, and things like that. And that also helps in races, right?

Because it’s, it’s not power that wins races. It’s speed. It’s like someone could do 400 Watts, but if someone else does 300 and gets there five seconds earlier, they win. So as much as power is helpful, I think understanding the relationship between power and speed. But yeah, I’ll have data up if the like normally longer races have longer climbs like Hannah was talking about with Belgian waffle ride.

Like I’d definitely have power up for that climb just to keep myself in check and like Tahoe trip. Leadville, like a lot of those longer races are cute climbs. And just to kind of understand where I’m at, but again, sometimes you just got to throw it all out the window and send it.

[01:41:21] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. I think the, um, as time goes on, Try to find the metrics that help you most and focus on those.

And as you ride and racing, gather more experience, um, don’t be afraid to put lots of data points on there, if that’s what you want. And then over time, you’ll realize, Hey, I’m actually just paying attention to one or two or three of these. And that’s what really matters to me. So, um, when, like on my Garmin, I have the, like, I have a race profile.

I have a training profile and I have a ride profile and my ride profile has like every possible metric. I could fit onto all the different pages that I have just because that way I can view it if I want. Um, and that’s in my garments telling me how much I jumped and stuff. And it’s given me that grit and flow score and all that other fun stuff.

Right. But when it’s the training one it’s super focused. I just have, it looks just like a train road display effectively. I have my interval time and then I have. I had smooth power, which we, Alex, and I go back and forth and joust on this all the time. I tend to go to see 10 seconds, 10 seconds, smooth power when I’m doing interval work, uh, outside, just because it makes it a little bit easier.

And I chase the ball less. I’m like a less typer dog. Um, but then when, and then after that I have heart rate and that’s basically more or less it. And I see my workout profile. And then your heart rate,

three seconds. Get ready, get ready. One second. Right? Isn’t that crazy? I would lose

[01:42:53] Hannah Finchamp: gratification.

[01:42:55] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. Three seconds is absolute minimum. Um, that’s like what I have just

[01:43:00] Alex Wild: had like three seconds smoothing heart rate then,

[01:43:03] Jonathan Lee: uh, I mean it,

[01:43:06] Hannah Finchamp: heart rate is smooth. Yeah, inevitably, because there’s such a lag in the day.

[01:43:11] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. Yeah.

It’s also smoothed out because of physics, but power is just, I I’m amazed. Like our power is definitely not. He has a, he has like a, um, like a 10 core CPU upstairs that can process and make sense of just the number bouncing all over the place. Cause it would blow my mind to pieces, trying to do interval work and look at that.

I don’t know how you do it. So I’m running calculations continuously.

[01:43:42] Alex Wild: If I’m one watt over target and I’m halfway through, then I can spend the rest one watt lower than target.

[01:43:49] Jonathan Lee: And then for math, it’s simple. Yeah. In the race side of things, I have my pages set up. So my first page is my cross-country page.

The second page is my crit page because that’s the sort of racing I do most often. Then I have a TT page basically. Um, and then I also have another one that’s just like, uh, that I think just has. And that’s it. And then I have another one that just has time and speed. Um, so then that way, if I’m in like a breakaway and I don’t really want to know like what I’m doing in terms of power, for some reason, I just want to know time and speed.

Then I can look at that. So, um, I

[01:44:25] Alex Wild: feel like it’s like, it’s like selecting a Johnathan character, sweety, Jonathan Johnson. C marathon time. Yeah,

[01:44:33] Jonathan Lee: exactly. I like it. Yeah. I don’t know how much going to do. Honestly, after, um, Tulsa tough, I got super lucky and had like a minor crash in a pile up. But after that, man, I was like this career racing thing, you know, it’s pretty dangerous.

But then again, maybe it was just Tulsa tough. So who knows? Maybe I should raise more Critz, uh, live questions. Should we go into a handful of them and then close it out? Uh, somebody says, Joey says, how’s Nate doing after his concussion and Cape epic, he’s getting better. I think he’s still, probably on the road to healing.

Nate will be on the podcast in the near future, which is great. Um, so that’s good to hear he hasn’t been riding his mountain bike much or anything else thereafter. Um, but yeah, so that’s, that’s where that’s at another question too, whereas chatting and Nate, so Chad was supposed to be on the podcast today, but they’re, uh, renovating in their house and it sounds like the contractors tore into the podcast studio and tore it apart.

So, uh, yeah. Anyways, so that’s why Chad isn’t here today. You wanted a window here, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Um, okay. Liam says Jonathan, with your increasing carbon take, have you been increasing mixed concentration or just adding gels, et cetera, or additional bottles? My liquid intake is typically I try to keep it, like in the winter, I’ll take in 500 milliliters and an hour roughly, uh, in the summer I’m taking him like 750 milliliters an hour.

I sweat more, uh, yeah, sorry. Yeah, freedom units. Um, uh, but that’s, that’s what I typically do. And then I just keep my car rate the same. So whatever size bottle I have, I typically take in a gel and then I typically take in 80 grams or a upper, like 80 grams of drink mix. And then I’ll take in on the gel somewhere between 30 and 40 grams, depending on the gel.

So I just tried out the precision hydration gels, by the way. So I’ve been trying SIS as gels they’re um, they’re one, the 0.8 ratio gels, what they have. Those are so good. So I’ve been trying those out. I’ve been trying out beta fuel as the mix and it’s good. I, I find. It doesn’t feel like I get as much, and this is total bro science, zero science to back this up.

But I don’t feel like I get as much energy from those that I do from Martin. So maybe I need to mix it stronger. I don’t know, but I’ve also mixed, uh, uh, one to 0.8 mix myself. And I feel like I get more out of that than the one to 0.8 out of the beta fuel stuff. But you use beta fuel, right? Alex, not the mix

[01:47:11] Alex Wild: of flavors just for me, but the gels are perfect because if you think about it, when you’re doing a really hard day, especially in the summer, what I’ll do is like one scratch bottle into SIS beta field gels, and you get a hundred grams of carbs an hour.

So it’s pretty easy and I’m not like constantly reaching into my pocket to get something also less wrappers. So going on five hour rides, doesn’t feel like you’re going backpacking

[01:47:35] Jonathan Lee: into. Yeah, I don’t want to add in more gels and then make my bottles just water, because then I’m going to have pockets literally full of gels for just a four hour ride or something.

So,

[01:47:46] Alex Wild: yeah, I think the main thing for me is I’ve stepped away from getting nutrition from liquid as much as I can just so that I can control fluid. And especially in summer when I sweat a lot and have a lot of sodium going out,

[01:48:00] Jonathan Lee: hi, Alex is a high volume sweater, a high sweat rate, and then also really high sodium loss.

Um, so Alex is, and also Alex is burning a huge amount of calories compared to the majority of us. So very unique case. Right. Um, and that’s where Alex has had to arrive after trial and error and testing. So throw it out. I’ve

[01:48:20] Alex Wild: found is like, if I would stay doing like I used to do the more time. Whatever the 80 gram one was 3 20 20.

And so what I’d find is if I wanted to drink more, cause I was more thirsty, I would just blow up my carb intake. So now I pretty much only do water and scratch hydration mix in the bottles and then kind of just switch between those as I need sodium and water, and then get my calories from blocks and those, um, SIS beta fuel gels, just nice.

Cause they’re 40 grams of carbs in one gel. And the flavor for me is on point, not too strong, not too weak.

[01:48:56] Jonathan Lee: It’s also really easy to take in compared to the Martin and jealous because it’s liquidy. Add his bonus.

[01:49:03] Alex Wild: I got asked this on Instagram, but someone asked how I do. How I feel more without like, literally, like, I guess they were talking about winter, like with big gloves and I actually liked those SIS gels.

Cause they’re quite tall. And, and the, the rip section, I guess, is long enough that you can kind of take a good bite out of it and the tab still on the top. So they were worried about like one getting it out, but also like littering at the same time, if they couldn’t get it back in. And I think that long packet helps quite a lot because it’s longer than my hand.

So even with winter gloves, I

[01:49:38] Jonathan Lee: like those. Yeah.

[01:49:40] Alex Wild: Pro tip. If you cut the top of your Clif blocks before you go red and throw away those tops before you leave, then it’s just, it’s kind of like, you can just take as many out as you need.

[01:49:50] Jonathan Lee: Okay. This is going to be a one upper moment, Alex. I apologize. I don’t like one-upping.

Did you know that the package is actually the cliff block package? You don’t have to cut anything it’s made so that if you flip it around and then squeeze it the bottom, the cliff block just pops right out. They showed it to us at HQ and it’s changed my shirt out onto the road and like, no, like into your mouth.

So in winter now has

[01:50:17] Alex Wild: post a video that I will

[01:50:19] Jonathan Lee: do it. I will now has a long end in the short end. Um, so the short tab end is the one that’s made to open up with just a bit of pressure. It’s w it’s where we’re getting ready for too

[01:50:30] Alex Wild: far down the rabbit hole on this. But I don’t know if I hit like the, the leprechaun gold pit, but my most recent package of cliff blocks, they’ve had seven in them, not six, they’ve had seven.

And I thought I was going crazy and miscounting at first and getting like two and then four, but they’ve got seven blocks in them now. And I was like, Hm, I wonder if they change it. But the nutrition facts on the back still say, there should be six. So I don’t know. Who’s trying to give me more carbs, but I’m

[01:50:56] Jonathan Lee: all about it.

Wow. Check that out. I feel like I

[01:51:00] Alex Wild: would take a photo. We have like a whole set of packages with seven in them known

[01:51:04] Jonathan Lee: and it’s blowing my mind. Yeah. Um, I’m the precision hydration. Gels are 30 grams each. They have a very faint like lemon cream pie flavor to them, but they’re good. I think there are two to one ratio.

I don’t think they’re one to 0.8. Um, but, uh, liking those or just trying different things now, but honestly it’s hard for me to go away from just my custom mix and then Martin gels. I, I still, I think, I feel I could get better energy from that. And I’m a belt I’m as bell curve as it gets. I don’t have to worry about Alex and I want to drink more.

I never want to drink more. It’s hard for me to drink that 750 in an hour. So I’m spoiled. I don’t have to worry about those things. Yeah, sure. Whatever it is. Yeah. Um, cool. Hannah, do you have anything to share on carbon take? I know that we just waxed up poetic on carves. We’re very passionate. Yes.

[01:52:00] Hannah Finchamp: For me.

So I have, I have a similar problem is Alex, but slightly different. And I have a super high sweat rate, um, abnormally high, but very dilute. I don’t sweat much sodium at all. Uh, so just plain water is pretty important for me. And so I try and get a lot of my carbs through more concrete, like still not like bars or blocks or some night that I, I actually really liked gels cause they’re so convenient, but because of the osmotic effect of pulling in water to the stomach, it’s already so hard for me to get so much water that it becomes a little bit of a slippery slope.

So that’s something I personally have to be careful with and I try and get a lot of my carbs through, um, yeah, sources, more like the goo twos and things like that.

[01:52:56] Jonathan Lee: Awesome. That’s cool. We have like all three ends of the spectrum covered here. Bell curve, Jonathan, and then not the other end. That’s good.

Okay. Last question. This one’s coming from Greg. He’s joining us live and thanks to everybody for joining us live. If you’re on YouTube, now give this a thumbs up. This is

[01:53:12] Alex Wild: Jonathan. He just skipped over the luscious

[01:53:15] Jonathan Lee: question. Okay. So somebody asks us what hair products is. Jonathan. He is so luscious and. I don’t know, I just used, I use, I use crew, I don’t know, basic air stuff, so

[01:53:29] Alex Wild: I don’t know if we can do it on YouTube, but you got a slow motion that

[01:53:32] Jonathan Lee: yeah.

Yeah. Blessed with good hair. Not good boss. Um, okay. Greg says, curious about your experiences of going down to C-level from altitude. I’m currently at 5,500 feet and curious what sea level will feel like when I go back home. So I have that means that Greg is somewhere around like 1800 meters, I think somewhere around there.

Um, motor meters, freedom units. Um, so, uh, but in this case, going down to sea level from altitude, I mean, I dunno, Hannah, you answer this one because you’re you train and live around 4,500 feet of elevation 5,000 feet roughly. Right. Um, you said you and I are similar in this regard. Yeah.

[01:54:10] Hannah Finchamp: I live at 5,000 feet and then in the summer, a lot of my trainings since I’m in park cities, closer to seven.

Um, but yeah, living at five. I think I do notice a difference now that I live there going down to SIA. C-level. You know, 10% increase, um, which is such an incredible confidence booster. When you travel to see that whole race, you’re like, man, I’ve peaked so

[01:54:38] Jonathan Lee: well.

[01:54:42] Hannah Finchamp: But I would say the biggest thing is, uh, that’s only something I noticed after having lived there for a while. That’s not something I grew up in Southern California and, or I, yeah, I grew up in Southern California. I would go other places to train at altitude for a couple of weeks. And then coming back, it wouldn’t be like, I’d noticed this huge bump just from being gone two or three weeks.

Um, so I think unless of course you’ve been somewhere at elevation for an extended period of time. You might not see, uh, a huge bump other than you just won’t be uncomfortable anymore. If you never fully adopted anyways to that altitude.

[01:55:23] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. It was a great feeling. Yeah. The only thing I like home, the two things I’d add to that is that you’ll notice if you’re on a road bike that, uh, you’ll go slower than, uh, for like a given wattage.

Um, so air’s thicker a lot of the time, especially if you’re by the coast and you know, it’s humid air and you’ll notice that it’s kind of weird. Like you, you, um, for the same Watts, you can go a whole lot faster when you’re in thinner air. Um, and it’s like, and when I say a whole lot, I’m talking like, you know, one to two mile an hour, so it’s not, uh, not like you’re going way faster, but still, um, the other thing I’ll mention and you got to use kilometers, I can’t be.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, the other thing I’ll mention is the fact that you can put yourself in a bit of a hole. So if it’s a stage race, and if your body is not used to producing, so you’re capable of doing more work, right? When you are at a lower elevation, so more readily available oxygen, your muscles just do more, but if your body is not trained to.

Right. At 300 Watts for four hours, instead of writing it 260 Watts for four hours, that doesn’t mean that your muscles just are totally fine with that, that that’s harder work on your muscles and they will feel it. So if you’re doing stage races, keep that in mind that you might feel more fatigue from one day to the next, um, that is kind of balanced out to you by the fact that you recover better at lower elevation.

So it’s not like it’s just a full net loss. Um, there is something helping you out there as well, but that’s one thing I’ve noticed, uh, you can go deeper and then as a result, you do end up paying a bit of a bigger price after the fact. So, but boy, it feels. So, uh, okay. I think that covers it for this week.

Thanks for joining me. You too. It’s been fun to have two pro mountain bikers as guests here. And now I should say just pro cyclist because you’re doing a little bit of everything with this lifetime grand Prix. So if you want to follow Hannah and Alex on Instagram, I would highly recommend it. Hannah shares, awesome training tips, Alex shares tons of insights, and he gives you the chance to ask him questions as well on Monday, which is really cool.

That’s his like little tradition that he does keeps keeps me busy on my day off. That’s right. And if you want to follow a trainer road, we are constantly posting amazing content on there, and you can give us a follow at train of road, everybody else’s, uh, social handles will be in the description where you can see them on screen on YouTube.

Share this podcast with your friends and go sign up for training road to make it the strongest year ever remember athletes that were using trainer road and then athletes that were using train road with adaptive. They were 20% more likely to increase their power to weight ratio. That’s super impressive.

Um, and it’s only getting better and better and better as more riders are using it. We’re getting more data it’s only improving. So it’s super exciting stuff. Go use it after training, get faster. We’ll talk to you all next week. Thanks everybody.