Amber Pierce, Hannah Finchamp, and Nate Pearson join us for an in-depth guide on goal setting and achieving, as well as a discussion on Hannah’s plans at Unbound Gravel, injury prevention and much more. Join us for Episode 346 of the Ask a Cycling Coach Podcast!

More show notes and discussion in the TrainerRoad Forum.

Topics covered in this episode

  • Hannah’s new team!
  • Amber’s guide to goal setting and achieving
  • Injury prevention and a discussion on concussions
  • Rapid Fire Questions
  • Should natural sprinter base train differently?
  • Long ride nutrition strategy tips
  • Hannah’s strategy for Unbound Gravel and gravel tips from the hosts

Ask a Cycling Coach Podcast

Successful Athletes Podcast

Science of Getting Faster Podcast

Transcript

[00:00:00] Jonathan Lee: Welcome to the podcast is dedicated to making you a faster cyclist. Ask a cycling coach podcast presented by trainer road. I’m coach Jonathan Lee. We have candidate and train a Rose Amber Pierce it. Morning. We also have a man, a new team. Now, Hannah, you’re on you. Race for pivot. And I can’t remember the other sponsors.

Can you tell us Hannifin chance with us

[00:00:30] Hannah Finchamp: and my own private tier program with the CCO title sponsors, pivot cycles and DT

[00:00:34] Jonathan Lee: Swiss. Sweet. Oh, you’re going to have solid wheels DTS the best. And then we also have our CEO, Nate Pearson stuff. Nate, look, John, I think, Hey, there we go here. For some reason, the audio is delayed.

Good to have you, uh, people are really excited to have Nate back on the podcast. It’s been awhile. Um, yeah,

[00:00:52] Nate Pearson: just joking. Sorry. Um, some people hate me and then when I say they didn’t like that, they hate me more and I, I know that I’m doing it, then they hate me more so than

[00:01:01] Jonathan Lee: it’s. Okay. But some people love you and you say that stuff.

They love you even more. So

[00:01:05] Nate Pearson: Amber is here to balance it out there. Like Amber, talk more

[00:01:10] Jonathan Lee: can’t please. Everybody, you know, that’s right. That’s right. Uh, Hannah, can we talk a bit more about your team? So you’re going to be doing a private tier effort and I got to ask a question because gravel racing is becoming, becoming more and more like road, right?

Uh, in terms of the people I know I’m gonna hit you with the first hot button issues here, but with more like, uh, road experienced riders coming in and just more riders at a higher level in general, it’s becoming more like road, right. In the sense that you’re going to have probably bigger groups toward the front typical road tactics, that sort of stuff.

Yet, there’s a trend for everybody to be a private tier on the gravel side and to do it solo, which from a sponsorship sense, I think makes a lot of sense, but from a race tactics thing, are you, do you, did you think about that or are you concerned about that with gravel racing feeling like I’m going to be alone rider and I might be racing against people that are working as teams?

[00:02:12] Hannah Finchamp: Yeah, I think, uh, it’s not something I’m worried about at this point. It could be something that things trend towards in the future and that could become another element. But I think right now, you know, unless a whole world tour team comes in with 5, 6, 8 riders, you know, I think one or two riders, it’s just so difficult to work together in the gravel scene because of how much climbing, because the technical aspects, because of mechanicals that I think that it’s probably more talk about working together then actually working together out there.

So we’ll see. But I think, I think that’s at least where we’re at right now.

[00:02:53] Nate Pearson: Like what is.

[00:02:56] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. A

[00:02:57] Hannah Finchamp: privateer is someone who gets all of their own sponsors together. And through the support of those sponsors creates their budget for the season and their salary. So it’s basically like running your own one man team or for people less familiar with the cycling industry.

It’s like running your own business.

[00:03:16] Nate Pearson: So private tiers can actually make, be more successful than somebody on a team in terms of financial outcome. Correct. So Hannah, everyone listening, if they want to support you, I’m guessing they should follow you on Instagram. Right. Cause that’s a big way to get more people.

So what is your Instagram handle? So we can all follow you. Yeah.

[00:03:33] Hannah Finchamp: My Instagram handle is Hannah underscore, fin

[00:03:37] Nate Pearson: champ. And then what kind of content did we get there from you?

[00:03:41] Hannah Finchamp: Um, I like to provide a variety of contents. So the two main things are what I’m doing, where I’m at my races. And then the other side is I like to be really informative.

So I try and have a lot of my coaching aspect on there too. So training tips and, um, just ideas for how you can improve your own training and much like trainer road, how you can get faster

[00:04:03] Nate Pearson: overlap between our audience.

[00:04:05] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. It was one of the main reasons why I initially was like, Hey, we need to have handle on the podcast because she provides an awesome training tips.

So it’s perfect for that. Um, I’m excited to see how you do I, where you on the podcast, where he talked about which, uh, lifetime grand Prix event you’re looking forward to. I can’t remember. Okay. Yeah. Which one was it? Was it unbanked under Leadville or

[00:04:28] Hannah Finchamp: Leadville? Yeah. Yeah. I’m really excited for Leadville last year was my first time at that race.

And I think it was a lot of fun, but also I just feel like I learned so much in that small, you know, just the singular opportunity that I can’t even imagine, you know, the difference of going in with, with all of that experience and seeing what else solar in this time. Cause I feel like it’s probably endless with

[00:04:52] Jonathan Lee: that race.

What mistakes do you feel like you made at that race last year? Like if you were like telling somebody else, because Leadville just this week, the lottery announcements went out. Right. So everybody’s really excited that it got into Leadville. If you were advising them and telling them some things to keep in mind, it could also not be mistakes, but things you did well, what would you tell those people?

[00:05:13] Hannah Finchamp: Yeah, I think for me, um, you know, at least in terms of trying to get a specific placement, the race really doesn’t start until Columbine. And so I think I did go out a little bit fast, but it wasn’t even so much power or effort as it was the mental effort that I was putting out. You know, where am I at?

Who am I with? What group of my end, how’s my power. How has this, how has that? And really, I feel like that whole way out to Columbine it should’ve just been. Blank mind, blank slate. Are you eating? Are you drinking? Are you eating? Are you drinking? And then once I got to Columbine, that’s when I really needed those mental bullets to follow wheels and to be willing to put out those efforts, not, you know, on St Kevin’s and all of that when it’s like you’re trying to fall every single wheel that passes, you know, like I think just staying really relaxed mentally at the beginning will be my focus this year.

[00:06:08] Jonathan Lee: Aye. Aye. Aye. Super sound advice, Nate, you did it too. I don’t know if you have anything to add for all the folks that just recently got into Leadville.

[00:06:16] Nate Pearson: I mean, I wasn’t racing it, so it’s a definite it’s a different kind of tactics that I was using.

[00:06:22] Jonathan Lee: You’re racing for the win you’re saying, but you’re still you’re you’re racing

[00:06:25] Nate Pearson: it.

Yeah. I was going as fast as I can, but it just, when Hannah said exactly right, like on, uh, St Kevin’s, which is the first climb, it’s very packed. A lot of people would freak out and somebody’s like, let’s just, they try to push through people. Cause it’s like where I was in. I think it was right behind red.

Uh, I’ve got the crowd, not a color, but it’s packed shoulder to shoulder and no one can get through besides couple of pass holes and they just try to push through and then everyone else goes, oh, they’re going to get there. And they want to push through. It’s not worth it like you. Uh it’s. And if you go hard before Columbine, like, I mean, even Columbine and you should be, you know, for the age group or like me doing it, you’re going to really just, uh, as Hannah said, eat and drink and pace all the way.

And if you have any. Thank you. There should be no surging. There should be no, uh, digging deep, maybe at the top of column and a little bit, but like on the way back, you’re only halfway through the race there on the way back. Cause when you can dig deep, it’s that last like power, uh, power line. That’s when you can dig deep.

And then after that, like after powerline, you think it’s done, but it is not done. There’s like how much time is left for me, it was like two hours. It was one time. I think

[00:07:30] Hannah Finchamp: it’s about two hours. I remember getting to the top of power line and being like for two hours, I was screaming. I made it in my mind and eventually that was less

[00:07:41] Jonathan Lee: exciting.

[00:07:42] Nate Pearson: So those two hours were where I fell apart and had the hardest time they were the hardest two hours and I could have, uh, been yeah, drank more and there’s a whole bunch of things. Let’s do the other podcast.

[00:07:54] Jonathan Lee: I kind of wrote in fear of those two hours, the whole race, or maybe not in fear, but like respecting them.

Like I knew that at that point also there are no aid stations after that. There’s a neutral aid down by turquoise lake. But for a lot of people listening to this, when you get there, they may not have any more Coke. They may not have, like when I went through, I finished just over eight hours and I went through and they didn’t have any Coke.

They hardly had any water left. Um, they hadn’t found

[00:08:19] Nate Pearson: her for me. Yeah. Some hot water.

[00:08:22] Jonathan Lee: No. Yeah. So like you should probably plan, I don’t know. Maybe they’ll do it differently this year, but it’s probably safe to say that. Just assume that you won’t have a. After the bottom of power line. And then you, cause that’s like the last spot where you can get aid.

And then at that point it’s a long way back. And that final climb up to the finish is way longer than you think to like, once you turn off the railroad tracks and you’re on that dirt road and then it’s just to me. Oh, it’s it’s long. It’s long.

[00:08:53] Nate Pearson: I remember that part. Sorry, Hannah. I remember doing that part and being like, okay, this is a good pace and looking down and it was 80 Watts.

[00:09:05] Jonathan Lee: Just the new king. Yeah. I feel like 80 though. That’s the

[00:09:08] Nate Pearson: question? I was like, I’m like two 70 like good sweet spot

all day pace.

[00:09:16] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. Yeah. Fell apart. One thing. Uh, is very true that you said Hannah is about saving yourself for going out on Kevin’s. I got, I had to have been passed by over 20 writers. Uh, and even been people were recognizing me and they’re like, oh coach Jonathan, you’re going slow here. But I was just sticking with everybody else in the middle.

There are other people, and they’re like, you’re going to have a terrible day. You’re going to be caught behind everybody. And like, you should not be way back here. You should be up there. And I was like, I’m just sitting in, because right now I’m trying to cap myself at nothing greater than 240 Watts because you’re so high in elevation.

And there’s so much excitement. It’s really easy to blow yourself up, but you don’t blow yourself up. Like you sprint as hard as you can. You blow yourself up by writing sweet spot or threshold for too long in the beginning. And then that makes you nuke. So I stayed in there and by the time, and so the way that the race works is you drop out of town and then you go up St.

Kevin’s, you drop down a road descent, and then you go up Sugarloaf and then you drop down power line. By the time I got to the top of power line before the dissent, I passed every one of those people that was like, oh, you’re going too slow. And I passed so many other people. Like I was, I moved way up and it was all because I just stayed within myself.

I didn’t gas it. I didn’t blow myself up. I didn’t like turn it on. I just stayed within myself and everybody already starts to blow up before power line. And the other spot where I see a lot of people blow up because. There’s this, uh, brand, uh, that exists for Leadville that like it’s a road race. So you really need to find a group and you need to trade poles and you need to do rotating pace lines.

And if you don’t, then you’re, you’re losing out. And what almost always happens with amateur racers back there. I dunno if it’s the same as the pro-level Hannah, but when they form a pace line, they go way too hard. So there’s this thing that you feel like, oh, well, I got to find a group to ride with, but you need to find the right group to ride with, or you need to ride within yourself, but riding within yourself as the main thing, cause it’s really easy to roll in with a group and suddenly you’re trading poles at threshold or above up at that elevation.

And that happens very often after that power line descent, because you get onto road, you have some speed underneath you and everybody feels really excited. And so it’s just really the people that are measured and stay within themselves for as long as possible. They end up making up so much time in those final two hours or final four hours of the race really after Columbine.

So good advice. I’m excited. I kind of want to go to that one this year, but it’s definitely not going to work out with a family time structure. I think our little one’s probably going to come sometime around then, but it’s such a cool event. Like the, the feeling around the event too, and what all the athletes are accomplishing.

It’s super cool. It’s a significant event. So that’s cool.

[00:12:10] Nate Pearson: Excited. If you could say to that, Hannah. Please disagree with them.

[00:12:17] Hannah Finchamp: I I’m in total agreement, I, I feel like that’s where I made a big mistake was actually across the flats this past year, because that was such, that was such a big focus of mine going up St. He was, I have to be in the group I have to in the group and for the women, especially, we want it to be with the fast men too.

So now, you know, I’m trying to like, maybe even talk onto a group ahead of my ability level, because I want to be in this fast group of rotating men, and then you get to the flat and you’re trying to motivate your group. And I was like bridging gaps between groups, trying to find Hebrew on it, to work. And by the time I got to combine, I was like, man, I’ve spent a lot of mental bullets, but yeah, just completely agree and complete.

It’s just such a fun event standing on that star line. Like the, I think the emotion is palpable and that’s, what’s so cool is you can feel how much everyone has put in to being there. A lot of events it’s like, yeah, people are there. Some people haven’t trained, you know, they’re just there to do it Leadville.

Like every single person has a goal that day. And that’s really

[00:13:19] Jonathan Lee: cool. It’s too scary not to train for exactly.

[00:13:23] Nate Pearson: It is. It’s really hard. I have two things to say first on that parallel descent, John got a top 10 all time on Strava. Wow. I know they graded it. Yeah, it’s

true.

[00:13:32] Jonathan Lee: And I just had, but the big difference I think is, well, I mean, there was traffic.

I was, but it was pretty cool. You know, so I was able to just let it roll,

[00:13:41] Nate Pearson: but I did it, it was like almost like single track down. And if you just were to bomb it, you would have died or got a flat, but John, you just got to go like 40 something miles per hour, straight down. I don’t know how you do that.

Well, there

[00:13:54] Jonathan Lee: were rain, ruts and stuff still, but I just looking far ahead, I was able to just pick up and go over them rather than trying to, because the scary part is like, you kind of have to remember. So if you’re at this race and you have the skills to be able to hop over something, it does help you quite a lot in there.

Those rain ruts scenarios. But it’s really easy to forget that we’re that good. Especially if we see other riders in front of us not doing something and suddenly we think, okay, that’s the line. That’s exactly what I have to do. Amber has mentioned this before with like getting tossed into the pro Peloton and like, you really have to hold your own, be confident, know what you can do.

And it’s the same thing with mountain biking. It’s just, instead of rubbing shoulders with people, when somebody takes a line, you need to be objective about that. You need to say, is that the right line? So in this case, everyone was doing the goat pathing. Like you’re talking about Nate where they’re trying to like find their way around the ruts.

And I just looked at it and I said, well, I can bunny hop so I can just go over that rut. I don’t need to. And if I carry my speed, it’ll be safer than me trying to bring. Turn lose traction, do all that stuff.

[00:14:58] Nate Pearson: So I year for power line was much different than yours though. It was, it was like, not ours. You could hop.

Yeah. And two I’m in my year, some people did on power line, try to jump some things. And one guy who I knew very skilled, he like burped his tire and did something. And he, his race was over. Uh, it was something that he did. I forget what it was, but basically he, he w he jumps something too hard and he did it hit him mechanical, and his race is over.

And that’s so such a shame where you get frustrated sitting behind someone, and maybe you lose 90 seconds. And, you know, it’s not that long dissent. Uh, so keep that in mind and you want to be safe too. And the second part is I also went pretty slow and I think I was in a corral pretty slow, but on the flats, I actually bridged up like three.

The first group I was in, it was like, I don’t know, 40 people and I got to the front and I tried to pull and there’s just a huge gap behind me. And I’m like, let’s go. And then I pulled up to, um, uh, Elton’s group, uh, uh, what’s his name? His,

[00:16:00] Jonathan Lee: uh, oh, the Nelson, the fat cyclist, fast cyclist, best guy.

[00:16:05] Nate Pearson: And then, uh, while I dropped him, I didn’t drop him.

He was doing his own pace and I paced up to the next group and then I found a group that was okay. But the key point is when I bridged it, wasn’t like a road race bridge. It was like, uh, I had a sweet spot level and like, okay, I will go sweet spot in here. I won’t go threshold. And this was reduced for elevation and I will just do that, moving up to it.

And if not, I was going to be, you know, like below endurance city, you’re gonna draft like too slow. Um, and that’s why I did that. And it worked out well because I found a group. We changed polls and I didn’t over exert myself. So there you can. I’m just saying you can meet a group that’s too slow. If you’re, if you’re in the baseline, you’re doing 80 Watts and your thresholds three 50.

Probably not group.

[00:16:47] Jonathan Lee: Yeah, I was, our group was in, I was doing, it was, I pulled through the first time and I was like, I’m doing 330 Watts. Like my FTP up here is like 240, like up that elevation. I was like, yeah, this is ridiculous. And I just let him go. You know, you’ll, you might find yourself in any number of situations there, but I would, I would much rather be riding by myself rather than riding with a group.

That’s pushing me over my. 100%, especially up there at elevation. Cause otherwise it’s just going to be a long day. I’m excited to see how, uh, your close friend, Amber and also friend of the podcast Laura King does to Laura Cameron king. Cause she’s going to be racing again. She loves that race. It’s one of her favorite races last year.

She had a bit of like some frustration in the race too. I think she had some difficulties in the mechanicals, perhaps. I can’t remember, but I started to see how she does. That’d be cool. Yeah. She’s super strong. Yeah.

[00:17:39] Nate Pearson: Yeah. Stupid podcast. Like I was like never again, Leadville. We start talking about it and I’m like, that’s kind of good fun challenge.

Yeah. I could’ve done a little better, but not, but let’s not talk about it ever again. Sorry. I know it’s a good podcast when like it motivates you when you said I will never do it. And then you’re like, there’s actually something magical about Amber. Woo. Oh,

[00:18:04] Jonathan Lee: do you, do you want to do it ever Amber? I mean, you’ve, you’ve got your little one.

You’ve still got like some time before. I’m sure you’d want to take something on like this, but D does that event interest you at all?

[00:18:16] Amber Pierce: Yeah, I mean, not above others in particular, but I, I am excited. Like I’ve talked about before, when we were training for Cape epic. Um, I really liked the idea of trying new disciplines and just learning, learning something kind of from the ground up again.

Cause I love that process so I could see that being a really fun goal.

[00:18:33] Jonathan Lee: Yeah, for sure. There are a lot of racers that are going to be doing this race that have never done it before, which is rare. It Leadville it for the pro athletes. I’m talking about for the pro athletes. You typically have the leaders have done it before, and then you may have one or two newcomers that are up in that group.

But because of the lifetime grand Prix, it’s going to be like all over the place. So I wonder if athletes are going to be overzealous and really blow themselves up because typically how that race always develops is that there’s a front group in that front group stays together until Columbine. It starts to separate there.

And then those races decided on power line. Basically, that’s typically how it’s decided, but it might be really different this year, just because of new racers, not fully knowing, um, they may go really crazy in the beginning. So be fun to watch. Can we, uh, okay. Let’s get into, this is our, and I actually have this written down our deep dive ish section, but if you’re joining us on YouTube, I want to thank you really quick and ask you to give it a thumbs up right here and subscribe on our YouTube channels.

Then that way you can catch more content. And if you’ll give it a thumbs up, that means more cyclists will find it, uh, especially even now as they’re doing it live. So go ahead and do that. Uh, okay. Dell says I love the podcast and I’ve listened for years and he says he’s a five-star Raider. I was disappointed last week.

Yes, exactly. You can leave those on iTunes, the Android, uh, geez. What is it? The Google play store, uh, and wherever you find your podcasts, you can leave ratings and we appreciate five stars. If we don’t deserve five and just let us know what we can do to earn the five and we’d be. To improve. That’s what we want to do.

Okay. Dell says I was disappointed last week to not hear a more in-depth discussion on goals and particularly disappointed to not hear some wildly ambitious, but of course still. And he says in quotes, realistic goals from coach Chad, can we press harder on Chad? He said he has no goals, but that simply cannot be, that’s not the simultaneous 40 pull-up Ironman completing 40 KTT national championship coach, Chad, that we know and love.

Uh, so I sent, uh, it’s, uh, because of how this works and that we’re going to have to do some magic here. So, uh, Maxine, can you play coach Chad’s resolutions from last year, then Amber and they, I sent them to you. You might want to mute your microphones while you play it. But I want, uh, all of us to watch.

These are coach Chad’s resolutions from last year, which brings me to my 2021 resolutions. And I admitted the S because I only have one and it’s a bit of a brain Buster. So bear with me it’s to never make a new year’s resolution. Again, I just don’t, I don’t follow through with them. So my resolution is to never again,

[00:21:02] Nate Pearson: resolve to do.

It sounds like Chad, and I’m glad he’s, uh, accepting reality. Now this is also like a reason why you need a system like adaptive trading to help like guide you with workouts. Because even coach Chad’s like, my eyes are bigger than my stomach. Like let’s just go high volume cycling, weightlifting, like, or

[00:21:33] Jonathan Lee: I don’t know.

Yeah. I want to make it to the CrossFit games simultaneously win a 40 KTT championship

[00:21:39] Nate Pearson: and Boston,

[00:21:41] Jonathan Lee: Boston do all this and now he will never resolve to do anything again, as he said,

[00:21:52] Nate Pearson: officially beaten down. Chad, I think so. It’s pretty good.

[00:21:55] Jonathan Lee: I mean, Chad will remind everybody, Nate shared his goals and Chad like just brutally tore those goals apart and dissected everything live on air.

When one time when Nate was sharing his goals. So, you know, Nate’s just holding the Chad to the same standard

[00:22:13] Nate Pearson: and he said, mine weren’t like ambitious enough. Cause I had process goals and I believe we can play back the clip on another episode. But I believe I hit all my goals.

[00:22:21] Jonathan Lee: Yeah.

[00:22:22] Nate Pearson: Wait from last year.

And then I had a great, uh, I don’t know what last year was, but this is the year that he made fun of me. Yeah. He makes my trading by this amount and do this. And I actually did. I did what I said it was going to do. And then I had a great year. We’ve got one from five to two that year. He did. Yeah.

[00:22:38] Jonathan Lee: It was a wonderful year.

Chad. Yeah.

[00:22:42] Nate Pearson: So

[00:22:45] Jonathan Lee: last year’s resolutions, honestly, a lot happened last year, Amber, you had a baby, he went through a divorce and it completely altered your life. Uh, you, you went through a lot of challenging times. Uh, Amber, I mean, it’s, it’s funny to watch it. Every year we do this, we look back and we’re like, wow, like you were so fresh faced.

And like, we had no clue it was coming

because I am running

[00:23:14] Nate Pearson: 2020. I was like, I want to be cat one. I’m going to do these, these races and then, oh, there’s no racing.

[00:23:19] Jonathan Lee: Yeah, I know. Uh, so Nate, Amber, you were going to focus on mountain bike skills being your own best friend. And you mentioned being your own best friend on the bike, but I bet you’ve had a whole lot of opportunity to do that off the bike to this year.

Um, maintaining a growth mindset that one doesn’t have to do with bikes. That one I’m sure that you, uh, still, uh, add some chances, but I mean, everything changed for you. Do you feel like any of those like stayed true or because life circumstances changed so much, you just wipe the slate. I did get

a

[00:23:48] Amber Pierce: chance to work on mountain bike skills.

Um, probably didn’t advance as much as I had planned, but my bodybuilding program went really well. It was highly successful.

[00:23:58] Jonathan Lee: That’s

[00:23:58] Amber Pierce: true. So I’m really proud of that, you know, and, um, I think, I think there’s something to be said about being able to pivotal when, when you need to. And that was a big pivot.

I’m really proud of that. And I actually have really been my best, my own best friend on the bike. And, um, that, like you said, has translated to a lot of other things and that ties in really well with growth mindset. Um, and a lot of that really came into play in that bodybuilding program. So, um, I would say I did pretty well with that.

Like aside from the pivot that required, you know, revisiting the mountain bike skills goal, I, I’m pretty proud of how I, I handled those. Yeah.

[00:24:34] Jonathan Lee: Heck yeah. Uh, looking back at mine, I don’t miss your scheduled workouts. I marked them down every time I missed a workout. I missed 11 workouts all year, so, wow.

That’s pretty good. Um, that’s amazing. Yeah, I was. And this year I feel like I had more, um, what’s the term that Chad uses? Uh, I don’t know, like reliable and durable fitness and I’ve had in years. Um, and boy, I was really firing, going fast, uh, in the spring and I thought that I was super ready to win nationals, but then looking back.

Uh, I was going through a particularly stressful time at that point. And as a result, my recovery was suffering and I just was hitting a wall with my training. And I was so focused on trying to hit my marks. I was continuing doing it, but I was just seeing my performance drop and drop and drop, um, tried to pivot, uh, but then, uh, before nationals and came into nationals a bit over cooked, we have this, we have these really cool features that I can’t talk about.

And I’m going to be really vague about right now, but we have these really cool features. And I looked back at what I did and it helps me understand if I should have, you know, um, maybe skipped things or not, uh, when I was going through or where my fitness was at at different times. Um, and it was, it was cool to see that, uh, it was, I had really great fitness at one point.

And then when I came into nationals, uh, it, it wasn’t as good because I was, boy, I was hurt because that was one of my big goals is that I wanted to do, I wanted to win national championships. I missed the podium by three seconds, which was really hard and just like a soul crushing. Um, but, and there was no way I was going to win though.

Seeing the people that showed up that year, but just the same, I got really close and it kind of hurt me. That was pretty tough to swallow. But the other thing that I, sorry, I had don’t miss your scheduled workouts. I missed 11. I feel like that’s pretty darn. Uh, the other thing, uh, outcome win nationals. I tried, I got to have those big outcome goals to reach for, for me that helps.

And then the last one, I was measuring food for the first week of every month. And I did that and I felt like that was really helpful. And once again, all that does is that helps me kind of like reset my guidelines on nutrition, how much a meeting, what portions am I eating? But then also like the quality of food that I’m eating just helps me refocus.

I can’t do it for the rest of the month though, because it’s too much for some people it’s fine. But boy, it’s a lot of stress and a lot of time and also like undue anxiety that you have to apply to food, which I already have a complicated relationship with as is so it’s, it can get out of hand, but the one week really helps me just stay in a healthy spot with it on

[00:27:14] Nate Pearson: while you were measuring your food, what did you learn?

[00:27:18] Jonathan Lee: Uh, so the main thing that I learned wasn’t so your mileage may vary, right? You may be in a spot where you aren’t realizing, uh, what you’re eating in, the macros you’re eating and everything else. But for me, it was more about quantity and what I was eating. It kept reminding me of the fact that I tend to just balloon and let portions go bigger than they need to be for what I’m actually eating.

So for me, in order to maintain like the Raceway, and it’s not restricting, it’s just giving myself right where I need to be, to be balanced in terms of what I’m eating. That was the main thing. The other thing that I’ve learned with that too, is that when I measure my food, I tend to eat more raw ingredients that I can measure.

Like joint prepared things. And as a result, I also feel like I eat healthier when I do that as well. I’m bringing in more vegetables, more whole grains, more stuff like that. They’re just the basics. So that’s what it helps me with. Uh, so those are

[00:28:07] Nate Pearson: good. Yeah. I wanted to talk, you just mentioned a feature.

And so I did a, I did a survey in the forum about what do y’all want me specifically to talk about upcoming features or just surprise you when they happen? Because sometimes we talk about a feature and people go, well, now that I know about this, and it’s not out, I am physically upset. Like I

[00:28:31] Jonathan Lee: hate you now we see this

[00:28:32] Nate Pearson: regularly, but the result and those people then post on the forum and they post a lot, like, they’ll go when all these, like, where is it?

Where is it? Where is it? Where is it? But I posted the, uh, the forum about this. And it was 90% of the people said, yeah, I want to know what’s coming. And sometimes they can actually give us ideas and they’re okay that they know there’s a roadmap. And just like, let’s keep giving updates. You’re working towards it.

I trust you guys, but are you all that? You’re doing it. Okay. So I want to give some, a couple of updates and stuff. FTPF automation. We have the product manager here doing it. Amber, you want to tell everybody where FTP estimation is. And so with that is instead of doing a ramp test, you click a button and it tells you your FTP.

Oh

[00:29:07] Jonathan Lee: yeah. Amazing

[00:29:11] Nate Pearson: machine learning.

[00:29:12] Jonathan Lee: It doesn’t go ahead. Instead of, it’s not just instead of taking a ramp tests and it’s instead of taking it. Like, if you don’t want to assess your FTP, you can use this instead. And let

[00:29:23] Nate Pearson: me, let me before Amber goes, like the idea of this, this is how I think it will be in the future.

80% of people will use it this way. There’ll be a 20% of people who are, we call them data scientists who just really want to do the test. They enjoy the test. They don’t have any issues going all out. It’s very repeatable for them. They never have bad tests. Um, those people can still do it, and we’re still going to leave that.

But for the majority of people, they’re going to love myself included. I’m going to do ramp tests anymore. I’d rather just do FTP estimation. Uh, and also some other products have done that, where they would kind of tell your FTP, but ours is a much, much different approach and it takes into account a lot more things.

Uh, it uses machine learning. What you do is you, you, um, you do certain like calculations,

[00:30:13] Jonathan Lee: how much secret sauce

[00:30:16] Nate Pearson: is talking about machine learning and what you do is so you, you classify people different ways and maybe you do. I think the first version of it had like 80 different ways or something. And then since we have a history of people doing FTP tests and we know afterwards their workouts afterwards, so we can actually confirm, is this a correct FTP for them?

Cause that’s super important. We then run that through and this machine learns these things. And based on the amount of data you have, the machine has a level of confidence and we have low, medium and high confidence basically. We’re not going to give you a score, meaning you don’t have enough data recently.

Um, but if you’re medium high and even medium, it gives you like a bell curve, but we’re just displaying what the peak is, the bell curve. And then when you see that data, if there is any adjustment, adaptive training, then afterwards adjust you into it. So even if it’s off by four Watts or something, which can be a lot for people within like two workouts, you’re like you’re back at exactly where you should be and your training is, uh, consistent and awesome.

And you can actually then instead of doing a ramp test that day, get a lot more TSS and have a full workout. So Amber is teams doing that. She actually more features on top of this coming, but there’s an MVP that we’re going to get up to early access, which you can turn on on the website, but Amber, what, what’s the status?

[00:31:23] Amber Pierce: Uh, we are close. So keep your eyes, field your ears open. Um, this is coming pretty soon and I just want to touch on that cause it is a really different approach. Um, and what we look at is your training history. So your personal training history and your personal biometrics, and those are the things that we look at in a model.

Other models, we’ll take like a capacitive effort. So in all out effort and they’ll use, they’ll plug that into an estimation model and then estimate your FTP BA uh, based off from that. Um, so the bell curve that, that Nate’s mentioning, isn’t a bell curve of like general population, but it’s really like it.

This is, this is much more specific to you as an individual and we’re taking into account more than just one effort. So. The goal with this is, as we always talked about, and Chad has famously proclaimed on beers with Chad. It’s not a test, it’s an assessment. And the goal with taking these tests periodically throughout your training plan is to make sure that you’re training at the appropriate intensity level and that you’re hitting that your power targets are appropriate for you in each workout.

So our goal with this is to create an easy button for you to update, um, your progress and your fitness to make sure that the workouts that you’re doing are productive and to make sure that you can actually be completing those productive level, those workouts that are of a productive level of difficulty, um, that you can be completing those as soon as you’re ready to.

Uh, so yeah, we’re, we’re not exactly calling it the easy button, but that’s kind of what,

[00:32:54] Jonathan Lee: Hey, Nate,

[00:32:55] Nate Pearson: go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah, I’m ruining marketing’s day. Uh, so do you want to say any more about that? Or can I go release more things? The podcast?

[00:33:04] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. Can I first ask Hannah if you dread testing as much as everybody else, Hannah?

[00:33:09] Hannah Finchamp: Yeah. I’m not a big fan of testing, but not just because I don’t like the testing, but because. The way it interrupts my training flow, you know, at least for me, I feel like in order to get a good test, I have to rest at minimum one day going into it, then I test. And then, you know, like nature said, you don’t necessarily have a big TSS day out of that.

So it takes up at least two days of my training and me as like that type athlete. I’m like, oh my gosh, two days you want me to give up two days? No. So I’m really stumped that you guys are doing this. I think that’s, it’s, it’s awesome. To me

[00:33:42] Amber Pierce: really, that brings up a re one sec, as I say it, that brings up a really cool part of this feature.

When you hit the button to update your FTP, you’ll get a custom, well, you’ll get a replacement workout, which first it will be customized to your plan. Um, but yeah, you’ll get a replacement workout that way. You actually get a workout on the day, a full workout, not just our typical 20 minute effort on the ramp test.

So less anxiety, you get more training. Um, keep that flow going, keep your cadence going. It should be a good thing

[00:34:11] Nate Pearson: that replaced. Got it. Now is I think hard-coded to guard Goddard at the moment and then put in the first time. Yeah, it’s we have, uh, another one to update it. So the idea of this and why we released features is what is the minimum value we can get out.

And then we add extra value incrementally to it, rather than like, let’s wait for a hundred percent of value could think of, and then launch it all at once. That’s nobody wants that. Hannah, the other part that you brought up, which is, so I hear this all the time from friends and people on Instagram and message B is who are some of my friends?

Uh, they say it’s the mental stress though, of a test. It’s like a race for some, for some people it’s like, I have seriously, especially when we did a live like the night before you don’t sleep, like it’s a race. Uh, it’s really about

[00:34:54] Jonathan Lee: it. Those live things that we did like ever since then, Can’t get a good test on a ramp result because my brain is broken with it.

Like I have a complicated and problematic relationship with it. That’s just, and you might find yourself in a situation with that where, like Hannah said, you feel like you have to be really fresh to get a training benchmark that benefits you right. Moving forward, because that’s the end goal. Like honestly, who cares, what format you use, who cares, whatever it is, whatever else it is.

You just want to have a training benchmark that gives you good training. Like what Amber said, like that’s the main goal. So in this case, it can be just so relieving to athletes that struggle with testing anxiety. Absolutely. One of them, uh, to just be able to get that update. And it will, it will update you as you go throughout your training.

Um, super cool. Awesome. If

[00:35:44] Amber Pierce: you love the Ram test,

[00:35:45] Jonathan Lee: you can still do it. You can still do it. You feel love to 20 minutes. You can do that and feel of the two by not going to leave

[00:35:50] Nate Pearson: you out. Um, you could do an hour, uh, an hour threshold if you want. Yep.

[00:35:54] Jonathan Lee: Totally. However you wish you, or you can just allow whatever number you want.

Yeah, it’s

[00:35:58] Nate Pearson: ridiculous.

Yeah. And then, uh, next thing, I’m going to spoil a, and we talked about this, but is the FTP prediction, so it uses the same system, but it looks ahead in your training history or your, your, uh, training plan. And what we’re going to do is show it for future ramp test and future races. So on your career page, you have a list and based on what’s on your training plan, we will predict what your FTP will be on the.

Um, which is very interesting. And, uh, that is also machine learning. Sometimes for some people like mid volume is a higher FTP increase in high volume, which is very interesting. Um, there’s more, of course, as you, it is a range and it’s an estimate and the closer you get to it, the more accurate is, but it’s still kind of, uh, it’s super cool.

And it’s motivating too. And, you know, as we get how we did this train, this mall two is the same way as we looked in the past, we tried to estimate it and then machine learning tries to get closer and closer to it. Um, but there’s also Amaris team that is after we get the FTP estimation done, we’ll do the FTP prediction.

Um, we might have a different branded a word for this, but Amber that’s, that’s a few ways out, correct.

[00:37:09] Amber Pierce: A little bit further off, but the, um, the ability to replace ramp test with our estimation tool is coming soon. And if you’re interested in that, I would sign up as quickly as possible for it because we will have some fast follow updates to that each of which will be cooler than the next,

[00:37:26] Nate Pearson: oh man.

The next thing I think I saw never seen Hammerstein do this. I saw this yesterday, but this is even plan builder every day of the week. So plan builder, you have low, medium high, which you get three, five, or like six days per week. You can choose the amount of time you want on each day. So let me just tell you this, our high volume plan, you could do six days a week, all 30 minutes, or you could say on this day, instead of two hours, I could only do an hour.

And what this allows too, is some people. Hi, as too much means too low or low, too much meaning too high or on the weekend, I have more time, but these days I don’t and they can, they can switch it and then adapt. The training gets the right workouts for you inside of that, which is amazing. And then you can use our work as an alternative.

And if you want to switch it individually in a day, you can. So this allows you to build a much more custom plan for the volume that actually lives into your life. And then we put that in with the FDP prediction and we’ll actually show you how that then impacts it in the future. Um, that is, is that in master Amber?

Is that that’s your team, right? Or

[00:38:25] Amber Pierce: is that David student? Yeah. Yeah, that got merged yesterday. So that’s coming very soon.

[00:38:29] Jonathan Lee: That’s really cool. There’s many more exciting things. I don’t know. I got nothing to lose, John.

[00:38:37] Amber Pierce: I got to send like some virtual high-fives to my team because they have been crushing it lately.

So great job team.

[00:38:42] Jonathan Lee: Yeah,

[00:38:43] Nate Pearson: for sure. So please post in the chat because like the two, if you guys on the forum, if y’all like this, our engineers and our, the company, the more consignment you have, the more excitement we have. And some people, like, I think the three of us that worked for train road on this call, we are pretty closely connected, but there’s like a, we relay messages, but the more excited you are, like it’s just the whole team, the whole company likes it.

So please tell your friends, the next one, this is more farther out, and this is not even been, this is in elf, like proof of concept, I would say, but this is like what everybody wants. Well, two. We talked about outside workouts is work at levels two to get that into adjust levels. That’s pretty close. Um, the next one is, uh, based off of squid games.

Like you don’t want to talk about right. That’s you’re referring to. Yeah. Okay. The project is called somebody who said, wondering if we should ready to pull the plug on Nate’s mic, that’s a trainer. I was like, no, it’s just say it.

What’s the worst that can happen. As you understand,

[00:39:51] Jonathan Lee: Ivy, Ivy is currently like,

[00:39:55] Nate Pearson: no, go on the forum too. What happens is talk about these features and if you don’t want them to tell us, or if you, based on, if you want another thing on top of us, tell us maybe there’s something that we don’t understand, like how that discussion I’ll get in there and we’ll have it just understand. We can’t do everything at once.

And we do things in an order and we try to do the minimum value product, like the minimal delightful product for people then go forward. So it’s called

[00:40:17] Jonathan Lee: another thing, one of the thing before that too, you may want a feature to that. Like is, um, it’s something that you’ve wanted for a while. Uh, somebody just posted on the formula that he like, Hey, like I requested this a while ago and why hasn’t it been done?

We also do things, kind of like we prioritize, we have to prioritize the things that we do. And even a small little feature seems like it’s super easy. Like I could just write the code and make it happen. Why can’t you do it? Train a road. But it’s, there’s always a whole lot more to just a small feature.

And for us, we have to look at mass like critical mass behind how many people want a feature. We have to look at. If it’s interrupting the current experience that slate in is causing, you know, uh, some sort of like bug or issue like that. Of course. But then we also have to like keep true to our true north.

Imagine if we had just like satisfied every single request over time, we wouldn’t have adaptive training out right now. There’s no way we would. There’s like zero way. So you have to balance this all the time with what’s our true north and that’s to make the world a faster place to make all of you faster.

So we have to build toward that and we have to make sure that we’re driving, you know, moving, having meaningful projects that are moving along in that space. So,

[00:41:27] Nate Pearson: and stepping back, uh, we have a brand promise, you know, we make cyclist faster. That’s what we want to do. And the two supporting ones of that are, uh, we care about the details.

So you don’t have to, and, uh, we strive to improve just like you do. So I think, you know, we try to talk about that all the time is the constant improvement. And the one thing that can be that can have friction is that that brand promise of we care about the details. So you don’t have to, and there are some people who understand.

Training as well as anyone at Treanor road, right? Like amazing. Uh, they’re world-class people and they’re in the forum and they want specific data that would help them. And in certain cases that may not be applicable to everyone or everyone wouldn’t know how to do that. And when you develop a product like this and you want to have it for, you know, hundreds of thousands of people, having too much data in there can be very confusing to people.

And if I could, I mean, if I could, if we had unlimited resources, it would have like a, like a pro version and just put every single piece of data in there possible and have the people that want it pay more, but hide it from everybody else. Um, we don’t have the bandwidth to do that. And that market probably isn’t that big, but if I could wave a wand, that’s how I would do it.

So at the moment we focus for what we think is the best way to, um, show you the data that you need. That’s motivating. And then do other things like adapt training, FTP estimation, uh, FTP prediction, and figure out what, so you can just train without having to worry about all those details and have us as the, like, as your coach, uh, who picks workouts, um, to do all these for you.

So that’s, that’s the, that’s the thing. And it hurts because I do want everyone. To do it second. Um, what was it? Mash goes, and it’s like my four year old telling me about his day. Funny as my new therapist goes, Nate, you have ADHD. And this is my first day on a full pill of Adderall. So maybe this is the new Nate,

let all the secrets out and take over the podcast. Okay. So the last feature I want to talk about, which is very, very exciting. We’ve talked about this before, actually wants you to adapt for training, but we actually have it modeled for internal writers and we’re tuning the model at the moment, but it’s called red light green light.

And what this is is for every day that you train is to change the intensity of the day based on your recent training. So this can be driven two ways. This could be driven by like an HRV score, um, or whoop or something like that. If that’s, if you have one of those or it could be driven by just TSS and like intensity and how hard you went and what it, what it currently does internally is he says red, yellow, or green.

So green do what you were supposed to do. Yellow. Let’s drop you down to an achievable, easier workout. That’s not gonna be so stressful. Red let’s do a recovery day or rest day, and then change the days in the week for that. Um, this is what I think we really need for people who mix outside and inside and people who, uh, don’t have the exact same schedule.

And then what we want to do is feed more and more data into this project. So HIV is the first one. Maybe it’s sleep data, step data, um, Um, can’t think of other ones. Oh, uh, subjective data. Like, how do you feel? And then we can see then how should we change your day, each time? And we look at this at a macro level and see how our suggestions actually changed to fitness outcomes.

Um, so that’s this, it’s like a first it’ll be simple. And then as we get more and more data in, if the data then impacts the model, it’ll get more and more complex. But those are the, the

[00:45:03] Jonathan Lee: context with that. Yeah, please do. So, uh, um, nationals, like I talked about before I was pushing, just trying to push myself through a wall and then I took a week off and then I had a week until nationals.

And when I took that week off, uh, I already had it scheduled as like a light week. So I just did like very minimal training throughout that week. And then the next week, because I’m, uh, I’m just probably like a lot of you listening to this. I was like, well, I gotta really light it up. And at least do some short, intense stuff prior to going into this.

I don’t need a lot of volume, but something going into this week before NATS and I did shorter and more intense work. And I was still pushing against that wall. If you look back at the yellow light green light thing, that week was yellow and then it went into red, but I was pushing through it. Right. And then when I got to nationals, I was like, And that’s why my performance at that one.

When you look at the numbers, my performance is really far off from what I would’ve expected it to be in terms of power output. And in terms of like where I was sitting with my heart rate, the whole thing. So this would be like a fantastic feature because I was on a plan coming into that, but your body reacts differently and that’s why we built adapted training so that it can adapt to you.

And this is going to be a huge step to helping the, it adapts even more to train you even more as an individual. It’s just super exciting. So yeah,

[00:46:23] Nate Pearson: I suppose cycle menstrual cycle tracking too into doing this red light red light yellow light red light green light project. Uh, that’s also often awesome.

De-saturated dad, thank you for the comment. It says I’m a user who is very satisfied with the pace of innovation by the Tiara team. I’m getting much more value from my account now than I was a year ago, which is quite

[00:46:42] Jonathan Lee: easy. I hear that

[00:46:45] Nate Pearson: you have an AI driven training plan now, and a year ago you did not a

[00:46:48] Jonathan Lee: fixed price.

Somebody is saying with all the value being added, why not create a pro version and charge more? Uh, if you guys have feedback on that, let us know. Uh, the world is a more expensive place these days and it’s complicated, you know, last time. All right.

[00:47:04] Nate Pearson: Yeah, go ahead. I’m just going to say something and please talk in the forum about it, but.

This is just the thought I had this Brandon, I love I’m just going to do it. Uh, I’m in charge

and it’s just like, why am I here? I’ll get me to go get a drink and a little bit and walk away. There’s a, uh, um, so we have grandfathered people inside of Trina road and that actually pulls down our revenue a lot and like, like hiring people. But there’s also some, we are at 20 bucks a month too. And what we think we might do this is, this is just an idea that we floated me.

And the COO is that we have a, like a $15 a month plan, a $20 a month plan. The 20 has like the more pro stuff. And the 15 has the more regular, so 20 would have like adaptive training, 51. And then, uh, the grandfathered people would be locked into whatever features we had. And we do that. So you would have adaptive training and whatever that is forever, you get incremental updates, but big things like FTP estimation stuff, you would have to then upgrade to a plan to get those things.

Um, that allows me, if we did that, it would allow me to keep my promise where you could still pay for this train and road and you still get whatever features you had forever. But if for us longterm, um, those people could then move to the, uh, They could upgrade and pay, you know, five more dollars a month or something like that.

And on a macro level, that means like we have like three more teams and it’s huge because allows us to get so much more stuff out. And, but I also don’t want to like break a promise to people. And I feel like I wouldn’t, but I’m saying here, because people can say that’s a horrible idea, Nate, or I think that’s a fair idea.

And I know that probably isn’t the best case idea because you want to be, I mean, everyone wants, if we get Trina was free, that would be everyone’s best idea, but that

[00:48:54] Jonathan Lee: discussion could have everyone’s. But ours, the thing is like, people may not understand is that we aren’t a venture funded company. We don’t have a huge amount of, we are bootstrapped.

So when we make money that allows us to hire more people and that allow more people as us to build more features. So like, it’s not as if I’m like, you know, we’re raising the price and Nate’s got his eyes on the Lambo and that’s the goal. Like the goal is that we hire more people to build more things.

That’s the goal. So it’s, um, that, that’s, that’s why we have to talk about those things, you know, as you can see,

[00:49:27] Nate Pearson: I’m passionate about this stuff and I still have lots of energy and I still want to go super far. So anyways, that’s an idea of having a 15 to 20, um, and then having the grandfather, people stay with the current feature set that they have, but then future stuff, they would need to upgrade for that.

So talk about the forum. Tell me why it’s a good or bad idea. And, uh, we can move on.

[00:49:48] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. So, uh, once again, Nate, isn’t saying that we are raising the costs or raising the price right now. He’s just sharing that to get feedback from all y’all or Lori, the price. Yeah, sure. Feedback. Let’s hear it. So it’s your, okay.

Okay. So let’s get back to goals a little bit here and let’s talk about, I can be ahead of big diversion there and it was awesome. Ivy. I’m sorry.

[00:50:13] Nate Pearson: Yeah, I’ll be in this thread. I’ll handle this. Just message me privately. IBM.

[00:50:18] Jonathan Lee: Um, I want to get into goals, so, uh, and if anybody wants to share their goals, they’re welcome to this year.

If you don’t want to share your goals, that’s also okay. Um, I talked about my goals actually, hold on. This might go long today. I don’t know. Okay. I need to share mine with all of you on here, because last time I talked about it and I don’t know, I got like her from Alex and from Chad. I got, huh? And that was it.

So, uh, this year, since we have the little one coming, I’m going to pivot to triathlon and I’m going to do that because three sports makes more sense than one somehow. But the reason that it does is because I don’t want the right now to move the needle in terms of training, uh, on the bike, I have to train a lot.

It’s a lot of high volume. So, uh, for me, I want to change up my goals. I don’t feel like I have to do that sort of a thing because that’s level of training and time commitment takes me away from my family. And we have another little kid coming along the way this year that’s worrisome to me. I don’t want to do that.

I don’t want to miss time with family. So instead when I can run, take the family for a hike, do anything else like that? Instead of distracting from my goals, it somewhat or directly contributes. If I can run with a stroller with the kids, right. Or spending time in the pool helps as well. So my goals are shifting a hundred percent.

I’m going toward just triathlon. I don’t have any event goals whatsoever. I’ll be doing a handful of races this year on mountain bikes. And I might do a triathlon, I don’t know, but it’s totally shifting. So in other words, feel free to share your goals if you want to, or if not, but, uh, you know, that is what it is, but Amber, uh, can you share some stuff just basically on goals from a base level, in terms of, what do you think is a healthy perspective to have on goals?

Or how do you think about it? Um, about goal setting, goal achieving the whole thing?

[00:52:02] Amber Pierce: I think, well, the first thing is you want to pick a goal that’s really motivating to you. Cause we’ve already talked about this a little bit. There are going to be some really tough days. You might have to pivot based on changing circumstances.

Um, but the goal, the, the overlying, the overarching thing about your, your goal should be that it really lights a fire under you. And that’s the thing that’s going to get you through those tougher days. Uh, it’s really going to be the thing that pulls you through the possibly months of preparation that are going to be required to meet that goal.

So really dig deep within yourself and figure out what it is that’s going to light that fire and the goal itself. Um, I would step back to like, once you’ve kind of landed on a goal, maybe it’s an event, maybe it’s not necessarily the event itself, that’s going to light the fire, but what it represents, it might be a deeper why behind the reason that you want to complete an Ironman, for example, whatever that goal happens to be.

What is the why behind it? Is it something about growing yourself? Is it something about, um, challenging yourself? Is it some, you know, like Jonathan part of your driving force for this goal is to spend more time with your family. That’s, uh, I mean, that’s a really powerful Y you know, to, to add fuel to the fire on a goal.

So pick something that’s really gonna move you really gonna motivate you. And then from there, break it down. So we’ve talked about the difference between process goals and outcome goals, process goals, performance goals. And we’ll get more into that in a little bit, but what you want to do with any big, hairy, audacious goal, um, and it should be big and it should be audacious and it should, because that’s the thing that’s really going to let your fire.

Then break it down, break it down into smaller goals. What are the things that you’re going to need to do to support this goal or to put you in a position to achieve it? And then when you broken those down into like really tiny pieces, those tiny pieces are likely going to look like smaller process goals.

And this is all about managing energy and motivation. So you have this big, huge overarching motivator, but then you’re going to break that down into these smaller process goals, because what’s more motivating than success, right? When you’re having success with these smaller victories on your way to your goal, it’s really gonna, it’s just going to keep generating more and more money, momentum or momentum and motivation.

So it’s going to keep that fire alive and it’s going to just keep that motivation fueled all the way through to that goal date, whatever that happens to be. So I really encourage you to think about this in terms of motivation, stewarding that motivation and how you can break down a big audacious goal into smaller ones so that you can keep that fire going throughout your

[00:54:27] Jonathan Lee: preparation.

It’s really easy to let our motivation make our eyes bigger than our stomach, right? Or in this case, our legs, perhaps in lungs. Um, how do you, Hannah, make sure that you set a realistic goal because amateurs suffer from this. Uh, and, but pros do too. It’s not like a, it’s not like you y’all are immune. It’s the same thing.

So how do you make sure that your goal is really.

[00:54:51] Hannah Finchamp: Yeah. You know, I, I always love the saying, um, I’ve heard, it said a lot is people often overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in five. So I think, you know, a lot of people make these huge outlandish goals that need to happen right away.

It doesn’t mean that you can’t have those goals for your lifetime. It just means, Hey, let’s set a more realistic timeframe. And so I think timeframe is one of the first things that you can look at when you’re talking about making a goal realistic. You know, if something really like Amber said, if it lights a fire under you, don’t give it up.

Don’t say, oh man, I can’t do that. Just make a more realistic timeframe for it. And then take a step back and say, okay, well, if my goal is to do that in three years, what should my goal to be in two and one and for the next month? And so I think it’s really having that lens zoom and, and zoom out. And for me, what really excites me is usually whatever I’m doing next.

Um, I think that’s probably the case. There are a lot of people. And so when you’re looking at whatever’s next, that’s not always a lot of time. So for me, usually my goal is just one more step it’s as simple and as silly as it is, it’s literally just improvement. Um, you know, and when, when you’re talking about process goals, it could be on my next ride.

I am going to fuel, you know, X. And that’s pretty simple, theoretically, to make happen if you’re talking about the next race. Well, I know I was fifth year, last year. Maybe your goal is to be fourth this year. You know, like literally just that one step for me is always really exciting because, you know, and this is at least very personal.

I don’t know if it’s the case for anyone else, but you know, if I hit a goal, I’m very rarely, you know, in a race, if my goals are, I guess a race is harder, let’s say, you know, your goal is a certain wattage and you hit that wattage. I’m very rarely like, okay, done. Like if I can get five more than my goal, I’m gonna do that.

And so, you know, I, I think as long as you’re seeking improvement, that’s a great goal. And then don’t be afraid to blow it out of the water.

[00:57:03] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. And probably if your goal aligns to what Amber said of having a why behind the thing, that’s truly motivating, that’s what makes you go for five more, right?

Like you’re saying, Hey man, I’m really like the approach of just making it steps of where you’ve been and looking at the next step. And then as long as there’s a why behind it, it’s motivating. You can go from there. Nate, you’ve given body that actually really well because, uh, with the different goals that you’ve set over the time that you’ve set them on the podcast, you’ve said, I just want to be a bit better than this.

A bit better than this. I was this last time, a bit better than this, rather than setting something that’s really large. So I think the, I think it’s a good. And

[00:57:43] Nate Pearson: it’s process goals versus outcome goals. What do you actually have in your control versus what is the outcome? Because the outcome, it just is what it is based on what your processes.

[00:57:53] Jonathan Lee: Yeah,

[00:57:53] Nate Pearson: exactly. And like, as Hannah said, it could be more than you could undershoot. Right? Totally undershoot. You don’t want to stop it there. And you also don’t want to feel like totally awful if you’ve improved and you hit your process. If you hit your process goals and you’ve been proved, but you didn’t get to where your goal was, that’s still a win because the goal is like a guest.

[00:58:12] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. Uh, always, and it’s easy to have outcome. So I mentioned that like, I need those outcome, big outcome goals to stretch myself and to make myself, you know, extra motivated to go far. But you also heard the downside of that, that when I didn’t even, you know, when I missed out on the podium, even at nationals, it just devastated me.

And it was really hard to just find motivation again and to deal with all that. Thank goodness we had Cape epic and it felt like something that was totally different than what I had been working for. So it was like a fresh motivation to go for. But so that’s the, that’s the thing. If you’re, if that’s how you work and you kind of need something to stretch and to do all that.

Uh, what works for you just know that there is downside to that. There’s a lot of potential risks to losing motivation. If the outcome goal was something that you weren’t able to get to and with racing, you simply can’t control what other people are doing. And when other people show up that are really strong and you didn’t anticipate them being there, or they have a great day, or you suffered mechanicals or things out of your control, that’s the hard part about results-based goals and race fields.

You can have results based goals and things that you can control, but results based goals for ACE fields are really complicated. I’m still struggling with that relationship with them.

[00:59:24] Amber Pierce: That’s a really good way to figure out how to break down a big goal into process goals. So when you look at that big goal, there’s going to be a lot about it.

That’s within your control and there’s a lot, that’s not going to be within your control. So stepping back and identifying what are the things that are actually within my control that I can do to contribute, or to put myself in a position to achieve this goal. And it’s really about putting yourself in a position to achieve it.

Because again, that’s a really fair acknowledgement of how much is really beyond your own control. So focusing on what you’re, you know, control the controllables, that’s how you set process goals. So identify what are the controllables, what are the things that are within your control and then really focus your attention on those things, tick those boxes as you move toward the big goal.

[01:00:04] Hannah Finchamp: Absolutely. And I think too, um, you know, It’s always good to have more than one goal, because just like everyone saying things are out of your control. So if your goal is to go to this race and take top five, and you look at the start list the night before, and you’re like, well, I didn’t achieve my goal, but it’s just such a bummer, you know?

And that, and so it’s great to one have something that you’re like, okay, but I’m still working towards this. Um, and also don’t be afraid to adapt your goals. That doesn’t mean you didn’t achieve them. I read something. I can’t remember where I read it, but I read something about one of the reasons women are so good at endurance sports is because women are really good at adapting their goals in their mindsets on the fly.

So not to say that everyone can’t do this, then you can do it too. Um,

[01:00:56] Jonathan Lee: but you know, it’s a hard pedal we go goal. Exactly. But

[01:01:01] Hannah Finchamp: it’s like, I think the study was something about marathon, like hitting a time and showing up. And it was like pouring rain and they surveyed to see, you know, whether people were still dead set on hitting their goal.

And a lot of the women were like, you know, it’s raining, I’m adjusting my goal X amount or my time X amount. And I think that’s great. You should be willing to look at your scenario and say, okay, given the circumstances, I can still achieve my goal. If I alter it to match those circumstances.

[01:01:35] Nate Pearson: Uh, Hannah, what you just said is so insightful is I think in general, this is a generalization, which is never a good thing to do, but men usually have maybe a stronger ego than women.

Yeah,

[01:01:50] Jonathan Lee: it’s true.

[01:01:51] Nate Pearson: It’s true. Well, John St it’s true. I’m saying it’s a generalization.

[01:01:55] Jonathan Lee: It’s a generalization. That is true. I’m sorry. The generalization is true.

[01:01:58] Nate Pearson: Yeah. And, um, what Amber said about your inner Y and this, this might, some of you are going to hear this. You’re going to say no, but like, think about this and like deep inside, because I know I’ve been here too, where some men, an outcome that you might be going for is tied to your belief of your self worth as a person.

And then if I do this thing, I will then be worthy or I will have a better opinion of myself. If I get cat one, upgrade. If I hit this time goal, and if I don’t hit this time goal, I am therefore somehow unworthy or compared to my friends, I am not as good of a person as them, or as, not as having much grit or something like that.

And when your inner, why like is tied to that, it can be extremely challenging when you don’t hit your goal and it can be devastating. Right. But if it’s this thing of like, did I get better? Am I better than before? Did I enjoy this process? And I having fun during it, all the like different kinds of wise is it, do I want my kids to be proud of me?

And you know what? My kids are gonna be proud of me. Right. Yeah. These sorts of things. Uh they’re they’re gonna be proud of me if they see me working hard everyday and I’m sending example for them, that stuff. Amazing. So just if you look into it and I think what Hannah just said, men show up and go, I got to qualify for Boston or, you know, three of my friends have I haven’t, this is my time.

That’s my goal. And if I don’t hit it, I am not as good as my friends and not like in the club, uh, that can be a motivator and it’s just a tough way to live. And it takes a lot of like work and you go to therapy and stuff to try to figure out, to go around it, to get different, um, motivations. Amber, did you have this too, as, as you were younger, a,

[01:03:36] Jonathan Lee: this is resonating.

[01:03:38] Amber Pierce: This is resonating a lot with me. I’m like, okay, this is not just men, cause this is a hundred percent me. But I think that that’s such a big trap is, is to tie a sense of self-worth to an outcome. And, and I will say that almost through my entire athletic career, I had this idea in my head that if I just qualify for this event, if I just get this result, then I’ll be enough.

Then I’ll be satisfied and it’s that I’ll be enough or I’ll be worthy. There’s different versions of this that we use to mess with ourselves. Um, don’t tie your why to whether or not you’re worthy or you’re enough. I mean, that’s a given that’s your baseline. It is okay to be okay with yourself now and still have a goal.

The goal, the goal doesn’t have to be about proving, proving your worth as a human being, because that’s not what this is about. It’s a learning process. It’s a growth process. So it’s a hard thing. Not to do. And it’s something that I think most of us struggle with, but if you, the first step is to be aware of it, you know, if you start think digging into, okay, I want to complete an Ironman.

Why do I want to do that? Well, it’s to prove that, you know, I’m, I’m an effort it’s to prove myself to my friends, somehow take a step back, just be aware if you start to tie that into a self-worth thing and take a step back and see if can you find a different way, can you find a different way other than that, can you take a stop, just stop for a moment and say, you know what, maybe I am enough right now.

Um, or, and this is, I’m gonna throw this out there with a word of caution. This doesn’t work for everybody, but this actually worked really well for me. So I’m just going to share it. Um, I’ve struggled with this for a really long time. And I talked to my swim coaches. If you listen to my, uh, successful athletes podcast, you know, I started swimming when I was at the age of 10.

And so my relationship with my swim coaches goes way, way back. They’ve known me a really long time. And we were talking about this problem of not feeling like enough. And they said to me, you know, when you were 10, you didn’t feel like you were enough. And then when you were 15, you didn’t feel like you were enough.

And at 20 you didn’t feel like you’re not at 25. And here we are, I’m 40. And I still don’t feel like I’m enough most days. But what that made me realize was maybe that’s not the goal. Maybe I maybe just somehow in my wiring, I’m not going to feel like I’m enough ever. And I actually just stopped. And as soon as I accepted.

It stopped being my goal. And it was so freeing and that sounds really counterintuitive to say, okay, you know what? I just accept that. I’m never going to feel like I’m enough. But what it did was it stopped me feeling like I had to chase it. And then when I started setting goals for myself, the why behind the goal wasn’t so that I’ll finally feel like I’m enough.

The why behind the goal, I was free to have a different why. And the, the why’s became so much more motivating and in a weird counterintuitive way, it’s actually made me finally feel like I’m enough. It’s it’s just a funny thing. Um, so I’m just putting that out there as something, it may not work for everybody, but it’s, it’s kind of a fun, mental trick to try.

And if it does work for you, then I’m really happy to share that.

[01:06:42] Nate Pearson: Yeah, I think you’re enough. Yeah.

[01:06:45] Amber Pierce: You guys,

[01:06:46] Nate Pearson: uh, I can, do you want to say, I want to say something directly to that.

[01:06:50] Hannah Finchamp: I’ll share a personal example. So you go ahead

[01:06:52] Nate Pearson: first. I’ll do something quick. The, so the first step is Amber said is to be aware.

And if you’re aware of it, that doesn’t mean you need to, like, I can not train until I have like the Zen master of not like having this kind of insecurity, not being enough. Cause that’s might not ever happen. If you’re aware of it. Just be like, if I don’t hit this girl go goal, I’ll still love myself. If you have that relationship, like go for it.

Like that’s, that is probably better than most people. And I would say that’s a healthy relationship. It’s not going to devastate me if I don’t hit my goal, but I still motivated and I want to do it. Um, but I still, uh, What it’s, it’s being kind to yourself as Amber always says, right? And, uh, if I, if something derails me or I get sick or I get stressed and I don’t get a workout, I’m not like I’m the worst person in the world I’m depressed.

And I’m just going to double the next day and get into this black hole. Um, sorry, Hannah, go ahead.

[01:07:46] Hannah Finchamp: No, I just, I, I absolutely love what Amber is saying and I can relate to it a lot too. And I think that’s also one reason why for me, process goals have become more and more of my focus throughout my career.

You know, when I was younger and in high school, it was a little bit easier to make the goal being to win. I want to win. I want to win. And then, you know, as you go up the professional ranks, you realize I’m not going to win every race.

what am I going to do about this? You know? Um, and the answer is to just, it’s not, the answer is not to just accept that you’re not going to hit your goals. No. Um, you know, and, and I think a great example of this for me personally, was last year, I was a part of the Olympic long team. So that means I was one of six women who were buying for a shot at the Olympics and ultimately three would make it.

And so obviously my goal was to make the Olympic team to make that final selection. And I remember sitting down, when I found out I was a part of that team and being like, wow, I want to make it. I want to make it so bad. This is my goal. I wrote it all over the house. I want. And then I sat down and I thought, but you know, I can’t control what all these other five women do.

I can’t control, you know, how they’re training or what they’re doing and what if I don’t make it? What, what if I don’t, which, or I didn’t. So, like, I also have power to say, um, you know, some of this, which is, you know, I sat down and I said, okay, what if I don’t make it? What I want to know what I want to be able to tell myself.

And I said, I want to be able to tell myself I did everything I can. And so I sat there and I wrote down every single thing that I thought that I could do. So process goals to make the team. And I wrote until I felt like I didn’t have anything else to say. And I looked at the lesson. I said, if I do all of these things, I promise myself, I will be happy.

And those became my mantra for every day. It wasn’t, I wanna make the team, it wasn’t. I want to make the Olympics it’s I want to knock off this list. And one of the things on the list was literally drink two liters of water a day. You know, it’s really simple, simple things. And you know what? I didn’t make the team.

And I, when I got that call, I walked over to the list. I looked at bliss and I said, you know, I did it. I’m really proud of myself and that felt so good. And now, instead of saying, I didn’t hit the goal, I know that I hit a part of the goal. And now going into 20, 24 with a new goal, I get to revisit that list and say, okay, this list served me then, but it didn’t make it to that outcome goal.

What can I change? What can I adjust? What can I add? And that makes me so excited. And that’s exciting to have these little micro goals on the way to something that just seems like it’s on you almost can’t even grasp it. Cause it’s like so far away. Um, but you have these little benchmarks that you get to pursue every day.

[01:10:49] Nate Pearson: So just said like she, so it sounds like Hannah is finds enjoyment in the process and adjusting the little things that she can control in her day to day.

[01:10:59] Jonathan Lee: That is that’s what makes

[01:11:00] Nate Pearson: like amazing pro athletes, right? Or people that gets very

[01:11:03] Jonathan Lee: successful people in anything

[01:11:06] Nate Pearson: like a business too. Like I love building trainer road.

I don’t think about the outcome of what’s going to happen. I’m just like, you guys have seen me in meetings. I’ll need like it. Uh, and uh, that gives me a pole and it, I always want to like improve it and do little, little changes and stuff, but you can imagine if I said, Ooh, if we didn’t grow at this rate, I’m like going to be depressed or I’m a failure.

If we don’t grow at this rate, the rate is what it is, what can we do to make it faster? And as long as we’re doing those things, uh, I don’t feel. I’m good with my

[01:11:35] Amber Pierce: life. Yeah. I want to comment two things. I, I love, um, I love what you guys have just said. And I think we can sum that up by saying, if you’ve prepared the best you can prepare and you gave a hundred percent on the day, that’s literally the most, anyone can ask of you including yourself.

So if you can answer yes to those two questions, you’re golden, you know, as far as we’re concerned, you’ve hit that goal. Um, and the other thing I just want to share on the topic of being enough and this, this concept of being worthy. One thing that has really driven that home for me in a way that I didn’t expect is having a kid, because I look at this baby who is frankly, not capable of doing a whole lot.

Right. And she’s a hundred percent worthy. I mean, I don’t look at her and say, baby, you better roll over, or you’re not enough. You know, you better, like, even if you’re not a parent saying that out loud, I mean, it sounds ludicrous, right? To say that to a tiny child who is just learning how to be in the world, that baby doesn’t have to achieve any benchmarks or goals in order to be worthy.

And you’re exactly the same that doesn’t change just because you become an adult, you are worthy as you are right now. And that doesn’t mean that you can’t also feel interest and excitement and enthusiasm for growing and learning new things.

[01:12:52] Jonathan Lee: Nice. This perhaps goes without saying for some people listening to this, but I do think it’s an important reminder.

This is why it’s really important to reflect back on your achievement and give yourself credit for your success throughout the, like, you don’t have to delay that until the moment of achievement, whether that’s a specific event or whether that’s the end of the year or whatever it may be. It’s important to reflect and give yourself credit as you go along.

Um, and, and when I say give yourself credit, that also seems like it might be taken for granted. Like, of course I’d give myself credit, but type athletes in particular has really struggled with this. And I know I personally struggle with this in the sense that there’s always typically somebody faster, that you can see or is right around you, or, you know, it’s really easy to compare yourself to others.

And as a result, remove all credit that you actually do deserve. And that’s so important for the motivation aspect of this as well. Don’t feel like you need to just be an intrinsically motivated person that you decided the goal on January one and then December 31, when it wraps around, you should have the same exact level of motivation.

And even if everything was really difficult the whole time, that’s not how it works. Like you have to look back, you have to be fair. You have to be honest with yourself and you have to be caring for yourself too. So make sure you’re doing that. Let’s go deeper. So

[01:14:12] Nate Pearson: what Amber just said about, um, her child being, uh, worthy enough.

Yeah. What can happen is, uh, For those that get really focused on outcome stuff and you feel bad, it can oftentimes be tied to when you were a child, your parents only showing love if you achieve something. So if you got straight A’s, they were happy. If you got seized, they’re upset rather than unconditional love.

Like no matter what, and, you know, constantly showing care for emotions and stuff like that, it was very based on the outcome of what you did outside in life. And, um, that’s something to be aware of. And there’s a great book called do the work, which is talks about one of the chapters is reparenting of how would you have wanted to be parented yourself as a child on to what Amber said?

Pretty sure. Amber is not going to be like, let’s your D one swimmer like get outta here. Right. But some parents not to maybe that extent, but they’re like that. They’re like, they are just proud about what your achievements and not who you are as a person. And I highly doubt Amber is going to going to do that and not saying that Ampere’s parents did that, but just some we’ve all seen it.

Right. And you’ve seen documentaries about high level athletes where their parents were so much about the outcome and it can also like break people. Uh long-term so just something to think about. And, uh, again, that book is called, do the work.

[01:15:29] Amber Pierce: It can be really subtle too. And so I just want to. Parents do this with the best of intentions and they don’t realize that they’re doing it and it can be something as subtle.

And even right now, I’m trying to be aware of it. And it is hard cause like she can’t even talk yet and she’s rolling over and I’m like, great job. And I’m like, oh no. Is she going to think that she has to roll over and do a good job in order for me to love her? You know? I mean, you can really drive yourself nuts with it.

So if you’re a parent do the best you can. It’s, you know, it’s okay. Do some reading there, there’s a lot of resources out there that can help, help, um, help you be aware of this. And if you’re somebody who experienced this as a kid, while you’re being parented, like Nate said, there’s a lot that you can do for yourself to help repair that.

But also, you know, your parents were probably doing the best that they could to. They really probably had the best of intentions and it is not

[01:16:15] Hannah Finchamp: easy.

[01:16:16] Nate Pearson: And you want to celebrate, so you do want to celebrate the wins like Amber saying, but also let’s celebrate when you see them do something, being kind, Hey, you’re a kind person.

I love the person you’re developing into. Uh, that was so thoughtful to think of your friends. Like all these kinds of things that you want your kid to develop to, to be more conscious and say that to them as they’re developing an Amur right now is fun. But wait till they’re like 8, 9, 10, like, and they understand this stuff that is super fun.

Uh, it’s a.

[01:16:45] Jonathan Lee: So this gets don’t want to get too far on the parenting side, but maybe it does teach us all the DRL, but it does teach us to be better athletes. Because I think like you said, there’s that saying that like, uh, you can teach a man to fish and he’ll fish for, or you can give them an efficient you’ll eat for a day, teach a man officially forever.

And the same thing with your children goes to a certain respect of you can teach your children that you are happy when they do something great. And that isn’t necessarily bad. You should be happy when they do something great. Um, or you can teach your children to feel great when they do something great.

And that’s a big part of our, like we, we always ask our son, like, how does that make you feel? Like when he’s like, Hey, check out what I did. Cool. How does that make you feel? And my instant reaction is, I want to say, I am so proud of you and I want to jump into that, but I try to do that. So then he first learns that, Hey, this is important because it makes me feel good.

And the same thing with sports, we should do the same thing with cycling. We should, instead of just going through something and saying, now I’m proud of myself. Instead, we should focus on the small achievements, like what we’ve had advice from Hannah and Amber in particular, and make sure that we’re giving ourselves the credit for those things I want to get into with, yeah, go ahead.

Sorry, go ahead.

[01:17:59] Amber Pierce: And let’s just say, just approaching them with curiosity and. Yes.

[01:18:04] Nate Pearson: I have to say the word, someone was confused in the chat, the it’s Nicole Lapera and on Instagram, she is the holistic psychologist and she gives tips like every day. She’s definitely worth the follow.

[01:18:15] Jonathan Lee: Cool. Um, okay. I want to talk about the, how the rubber meets the road in terms of planning a season that like you have some sort of a goal.

Hannah, how do you do this? Especially now you’ve got lifetime grand priests. You’ve got like a seven, I’m sure you have 19 eight races under calendar. Um, a myth. That’s not the truth while of racing with the model. How to, yeah. Right. How do you plan out a season for you when you’re talking about it’s the, you could feel pressure to feel like you need to win every race because you’re a pro and that’s your job.

So how do you plan out your season in terms of picking a races and building up for them, timeframes, everything else

[01:18:55] Hannah Finchamp: it’s really complicated. Um, it’s not as easy as it sounds and I think, uh, it’s lot easier to do for other people than it is to yourself. Um, so yeah, I mean, I think for me, at least you’re right as a professional athlete, I really never go to a start line and I’m like, My goal is to be fifth today.

That’s not really an internal dialogue that I have. Um, so the difference for me with, you know, an, a race or a B race is really the preparation. And then the mindset stays the same of, you know, I want to do the best with what I have today. And I know that on that a race that is everything. I know I’m those B races, what I have will fluctuate.

And so, you know, for me, I’m setting those eight races around, um, those huge goals that I have, you know, looking, uh, you know, and it’s, that’s where it can get complicated, right? Is it’s like, well, you have world champs, you have national champs, you have the lifetime series, you have all of these huge events.

And that’s why, you know, I don’t necessarily like to announce out loud what I consider to be a versus B, but to just know that every time I stand on the start line, my goal is to give it my best. And obviously some will be prioritized. Um, To the top of that list that said, I think that there’s a general structure that is possible versus not possible.

And so, you know, just like Amber said, you should do what makes you excited? I get asked this question a lot is what should be my event this season? Well, I don’t know. What do you want to be your event this season? What makes you excited? Because if you’re not excited about it, it should not be your a event because you’re going to need to think about that event every single week until it happens.

And so first, what makes you excited then you want to look at it and you want to. I usually say 12 to 24 weeks of training before that AA event. Um, and then you want to have a couple of races before that event. And I think especially now that’s really important, uh, having gone through COVID and all of that, I know a lot of people are aligning up on the start line.

I know we’re still in, COVID not to diminish that, but a lot of people are standing on the start line for the first time in a long time for this AA event. And then after like, I dunno, I just never really got into it. Well, it, it takes a little while. So you should have 12 to 24 weeks of training before your event.

If possible, you should have a couple, we, a couple of races before that a event, if possible. And then if you have more than one day event, you should have at least six weeks in between them. And the reason for that is because you have to recover both physically and mentally. You might be thinking if it’s just like an XCO, oh, I only need a day recovery.

That might be true. You need time to mentally come down from that event. And then you need time to build up again, and then you need time to taper again. And as much as we don’t like to admit it, when we taper, we do lose just this little itty bitty bit of fitness and. When you’re doing it for just one race, it’s IM it’s imperceptible.

You don’t, you don’t notice that you lose fitness, but if you do it for five weeks in a row, all of a sudden you’re much less fit going into that fifth race than you were that first race, because all you’ve essentially done is rest and prep for five weeks. So that’s why you need this time to build, to recover, to build, to taper.

And that realistically at, at minimum takes six weeks. You know, and more as better, I think nowadays, you know, we have so many different types of racing and opportunities that once you start plugging in all of the stuff, it can be really overwhelming on the calendar. Like I have so many goals and none of them fit, you know, the structure.

Um, and so. You know, just, just standing by some of those basic principles, making sure you’re covering well enough trying to have your races and sections. You know, if you’re doing SEO, like for example, for me, I’m doing world cups and then I’m doing Leadville. You know, you don’t always have the option, but if you can kind of section them out, um, that is really helpful.

You know, maybe you start the season with XCO and finished with longer events. And then also when all else fails, when you can’t control, when these races are, when you call the race director and ask them to move the race, to fit your build. And they say no

[01:23:55] Jonathan Lee: in the world,

[01:23:59] Hannah Finchamp: you know, now, now is the time to prepare for that have a really big base, because that will help you all season long when you’re recovering. And when you’re, um, tapering into these events, if you have this just massive foundation that you formed at the beginning of the season, that will help you still be strong in September and October when you haven’t been able to put in as many hours.

So now is the time to get fired up and really put in that work to make your season fun.

[01:24:31] Jonathan Lee: Awesome. Also hand his tips, perfectly aligned with plan builders framework, by the way. So you can use phlegm builder and apply all of Hannah’s tips to how to plan out your season. Fantastic stuff. Thanks, Hannah. I’m super excited.

So this lifetime grand Prix is currently surrounded by a whole lot of controversy. Thanks to friend of the podcast. Jeff can push and others, but, uh, I’m really excited to watch it. Cause I feel like I have a series now and there’s kind of like a narrative and it’s going to be really fun to watch, um, and to see how, uh, all of our friends do here on the podcast that are also racing.

It’s going to be cool. Let’s get into some rapid fire questions. Then we’re going to talk about Unbound gravel, and you Hannah, your goals, and then we’ll finish off with some injury prevention. Um, and then if we have any time, we’ll get to live questions, but not sure. Okay. First one, this is from Marianna.

She says question for the wonderful lady host of the podcast. What is the highest peak power you’ve heard of a woman achieving? I constantly hear men talk about absurdly high numbers and find myself. And she says as a self-proclaimed sprinter that has yet to ever do a race without a benchmark. We feel you Marianna, you’re not alone in this case at all.

Um, yeah. Amber or Hannah, who wants to take this one, Nate and I will step out. We

[01:25:46] Hannah Finchamp: defer to

[01:25:47] Amber Pierce: Amber, well, I may not be the best source for this. So I’m gonna, I’m gonna answer this with a lot of caveat. So my expertise is in road. So if you’re talking about absolute power and an actual peak power numbers, you probably want to look at the data of track cyclists.

Like they’re the ones that are really going to have like the highest numbers. Um, but I’m more familiar with data on the road. And even then I never paid too much attention to the power output of my competitors, because it’s not necessarily the number of those numbers that are going to win races so I can speak to my experience.

And then the one data point I do know, because she tweeted about on Twitter is Chloe Hosking, who is a sprinter on the world tour. Um, in training, she held 986 Watts for five seconds. So that’s not a peak power, but holding that for five seconds is bonkers. And I will say that of the data that I’m aware of when you’re looking at race, finishing sprints in the world tour, you’re looking at numbers on the order of a thousand Watts and above.

You have to remember that that’s after potentially 80 to a hundred or even 130 kilometers of flat out racing. Take all those numbers with a grain of salt. Um,

[01:26:58] Hannah Finchamp: absolute

[01:26:59] Amber Pierce: peaks also are very, very dependent on body mass and technique as much as strength. So keep that in mind. When you hear people talking about numbers, it’s really, really hard to compare the numbers of two individuals.

Uh side-by-side and I was never a pure sprinter, but in training I could hit about, I could hit 1200 Watts. Um, I know I hit above 1200 Watts a few times. Um, and then I could pretty consistently hit, I could pretty consistently hit over a thousand Watts in training and races. Um, but definitely not for five seconds, at least not that I’m aware of.

That’s that’s, uh, that is world tour level performance. So, um, I don’t know if that helps give you a little bit of an idea, but again, I’m a larger writer as, as cyclists go. So at five 10, and when I was racing, I was anywhere between a hundred fifty, a hundred fifty five pounds. So, um, as a larger wider writer, I’m I can put out more Watts as a peak power absolute number, but again, that’s, we’re talking absolute Watts, absolute numbers, and that’s not lost per kg.

Um, so there’s a whole lot of caveats here, but I hope that that actually gives you some somewhat of an idea.

[01:28:03] Nate Pearson: Amber is peak power is higher than my people. Which is like, your snap is better than mine, which is crazy. And what, before you go, John, one thing too, that Amber said, we haven’t, I haven’t had a road race since you said this because of COVID, but something you said about sprinting stuck with me, and I never did this, as you said, think about turning the pedals as fast as you can.

And when I always did it, I was thinking of like, how hard can I do one downstroke, right? Like downstroke, downstroke, downstroke, and you were thinking more of how do I make a circle as, as fast as I can have one fluid motion. And I’ve, I’ve thought about that so many times, and I want to go out and try that, uh, and do it.

But I just have, you know, I’ve been mountain bike focused since then and stuff too, but very, that was a cool insight that, uh,

[01:28:47] Jonathan Lee: thank you for that. Yeah. Super helpful. I think Amber is race ambers, race, sprint powers higher than my race sprint power, for sure. Because in training I’ve hit 1400, but then in the race, it’s amazing.

How little, like how much of that I can’t achieve. Um, it’s typically, yeah. It’s like if I break a thousand Watts in the sprint, usually at the end and I’m not a sprinter. Right. So like, but if I break a thousand Watts at the end of a sprint, that’s like, wow, like, uh, that’s a good job by me, but it’s usually not the case.

[01:29:18] Amber Pierce: And it comes down a lot to technique. So like Nate was saying it’s a different way of looking at it. It’s a different technique. Um, so it’s not necessarily about. Strength per

[01:29:28] Jonathan Lee: se. Yeah. Do you have anything to add to this? It’s part of it, it’s part of it coming from the mountain bike side. I mean, I know you’ve also done road races.

You’ve done try. You’ve done everything, but

[01:29:43] Hannah Finchamp: I mean, I don’t have a lot to add from the, the numbers aspect. I think that, um, you know, when Amber talks that technique, that really hits home for me, because I am not a sprinter at all. That’s something that I’ve had to work really hard to have any kind of snap probably coming from the triathlon background, especially.

And for me, I noticed that it’s definitely less about my physical improvement, like physically getting stronger or fitter and more about, I feel like when I’m sprinting, while when I look down and see numbers that I’m happy with, it’s when I can almost feel that muscle synchronization or that neuromuscular connection.

It’s like when my brain is saying, go, and my muscles are actually responding. It’s like, oh yeah, not now we’re doing it. It’s less about like, oh yeah, like I’m squatting so much more than I ever have before. Therefore I’m sprinting really well. No, the correlation is much higher, uh, mentally than it is physically.

Which is a really,

[01:30:46] Amber Pierce: oh, sorry.

If you’re listening, that should be a really, really encouraging point for you. If you’re somebody who’s ever struggled with sprinting, or if you’re somebody who wants to improve your sprint, because it is so technique heavy, it’s not necessarily about going out and build it. Like Hannah said, it’s not about squatting massive weight and building a bunch of muscle mass, um, because it is so technique heavy, there is a ton of room for improvement for anybody who wants to work on their technique.

[01:31:13] Jonathan Lee: I imagine if you had the assurance that your chain wouldn’t break you’re sprinting or fall off,

[01:31:21] Nate Pearson: like, honestly, because you’re so strong

[01:31:29] Jonathan Lee: because honestly, I didn’t think about it a whole lot until I had a chain break in a sprint, but then when I saw Nate nearly die, when we were filming the sprinting, I think it’s a sprinting one-on-one video. It’s on our YouTube channel. Everyone should check it out at Scott peak, just looking awesome.

Buff, strong sprinter, man, on the thumbnail, we were filming Nate and Nate’s chain blew off. And it was because his chain ring was just like noodled to the side and then off. And I, like, I was filming with the camera, like almost dropped the camera. I was terrified. Like, and it’s just stuck with me so much now.

It’s like, I’m always nervous to work on. Sure. It’s hard

[01:32:08] Nate Pearson: to get that snap. And that’s why I wish, uh, like I’m not. You know, arrogant to say, but I’m like, I’m not a weak person. I’m strong. And that’s why I was able to bend it. But I was, the Knight technique was wrong. I was just trying to pull as hard as I can just down.

And that’s what I was pulling up so hard and just pushing down. And I wish like I have a strong deadlift and stuff. I wish I was doing circles. And I think the circle circles too, would have eliminated that like the hotspot with torque and maybe made it a little more consistent and less likely to then bend something.

But man, I switched my drive train completely. I switched spiders, everything. Uh, I was like, what’s the strongest of everything that I could get. And then I switched over.

[01:32:48] Jonathan Lee: And that’s one thing that in that video in particular, and Amber has mentioned this before, but when we talk about sprint exercises and our sprint training specifically, and if you’re working on that, that’s why you start out at a lower percentage.

You don’t go all out. You start out at like 80% sprints and you started out with fat, like low gear, high gear, and you do all those things to try to perfect that circle. Like you’re talking about Nate, like having the coordination to be able to maintain tension on that chain and to be able to maintain power and torque all the way through that pedal stroke.

And then later on, it gets easier to apply it later because boy, it’s so easy to feel like I’m sprinting. If I’m just like pushing something downward with my feet and you see that with a ton of sprints, whereas I watched the Williams brothers sprint it, it never looks like they’re bobbing up and down with their, when they’re pushing down, instead, it looks remarkably smooth for how much power they’re putting out.

And if you look at cab, he’s an incredible example of this too. It’s always so smooth with their feet. It’s just super smooth Korean Rivera Rivera also like one of the smoothest sprinters I’ve ever seen. So. Okay, cool. Uh, a couple of now we’ll actually get into some rapid fire ones. What’s your favorite sneaker daily?

This one’s from Zack. What’s your favorite sneaker? Daily footwear. When not on the bike.

[01:34:06] Amber Pierce: Can I just say sneakers? I like sneakers

[01:34:09] Jonathan Lee: sneakers in general. Yeah. I’ve Nike, Stephan Genos skis. Those are like my favorite ones. I don’t get that specific. Yeah. Uh,

[01:34:18] Nate Pearson: Nike kill shots or that kind of thing like that. I like, yeah.

I like the brand Nike and they always look good. So different color Nike’s are fun.

[01:34:26] Jonathan Lee: Super cool brand. Yeah. Love them. Yeah. Hannah, let

[01:34:29] Hannah Finchamp: me go away from sneakers and say if I’m just like hanging out Birkenstocks and my travel shoe is Blundstones.

[01:34:38] Jonathan Lee: Nice. Ooh. Foes are really comfortable too. They’re like those slides that swimmers use a lot of the time.

They’ll just gigantic and poofy and really comfortable slides are pretty sweet. Okay. Next one. Possibly rapid fire, but possibly a silly question. I’m a road cyclist and cat for racer. This is from Felicity I’m training myself to be able to do pull-ups because I’m ashamed of having no upper body strength.

I’ve gone from being able to do about half a pull-up to two. Is there an amount that would be too many and potentially equate to a detrimental amount of upper body mass? If it helps I’m five, seven and about 135 pounds. This is not very rapid fire, but at the same time, I figured since we have, we can probably give a quick response.

There’s a strength training calculator you can use on trainer road. Uh it’s if you go to train road.com and actually if you just search train road, strength, training calculator, that’s probably easier than typing out the whole URL and you’ll find it. And you can check there and they basically give like different strengths recommendations for different exercises that are kind of just like benchmarks.

Um, if you’re wondering this question, how much strength is enough? Because a lot of the time to get into strength training, you’re like, I need to be a meathead like this person at the gym. So I need to lift a ton of weight or I’m not doing it. That’s not the case. Uh, so there’s like benchmarks for you there.

Um, so that’s a good calculator. We also have, I don’t think we’ve ever mentioned this on the podcast. We have a Watts per kilogram calculator. That’s super helpful. That shows where you are compared to the averages that exist in our database. And then it also shows how that compares to pro athletes as well.

Uh, it’s really interesting. So check that out and then you can also do like fun little things and like play around with, well, what if I had this FTP, but if I did this, uh, and it’ll all be very fun and exciting, then once we have things like FTP prediction, like Nate’s talked about, so, and there’s more calculators coming.

We have one for race day nutrition that we’re working on, pacing, gearing, and any other ideas. If you have a calculator idea, let us know. We like those things. So, but, uh, gals in particular with his one, uh, pull-ups importance, I don’t know. What would you say to Felicity in this. And plus one, just get jacked, whatever it is, do more.

[01:36:43] Amber Pierce: No, I don’t never, never too many.

[01:36:46] Hannah Finchamp: I definitely don’t think you’re gonna, uh, overdo it with a body weight exercise, especially like pull-ups. I also think that pull-ups in particular, um, can almost be once again more of a coordination exercise, a lot of people don’t know how to engage their lats. And I feel like Amber probably knows this more than anybody else, because can I tell you how many times at some practice we just sit there and doing this, trying to feel our lat engage.

And so, yeah, that’s huge with polyps. It’s just learning how to use that muscle in general.

[01:37:20] Jonathan Lee: It’s probably not the most crucial exercise in terms of cycling performance. If you’re a mountain biker, it probably has more relevance than perhaps road. I don’t know, but it’s a great exercise for your just general health.

Um, works on a, like a upward shoulder mobility, which is really limited for cyclists because we spend all of our time with our elbow or with our shoulders, our arms pointing down. So it can be a really helpful thing. Alanna says, what is your,

[01:37:46] Amber Pierce: it gets harder as your quads get bigger. Just FYI. This might be a self limiting exercise.

I don’t think you need to stress too much now.

[01:37:56] Jonathan Lee: Muscles, leg, muscles, TV. Can’t you pull up. Sorry. Um, Ilana says, what is your favorite cycling life? Metro.

[01:38:04] Amber Pierce: Mine. And you guys have all heard this before, but be a good wheel. That’s my favorite.

[01:38:08] Jonathan Lee: That’s a good one. I like it.

[01:38:10] Hannah Finchamp: Mine is a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step or one pedal stroke back to those process goals.

[01:38:17] Amber Pierce: I love it.

[01:38:17] Jonathan Lee: Yes.

[01:38:19] Nate Pearson: Like that, it, it, uh, it never gets easier to just go faster and the same thing in life. Like life doesn’t get easier. No,

[01:38:27] Jonathan Lee: no, it does not. I keep

[01:38:29] Amber Pierce: telling myself that every weekend and it just doesn’t happen. Monday goes again, and here we go

[01:38:35] Nate Pearson: with the kids eventually

[01:38:38] Jonathan Lee: that’s actually, yeah. It waivers for the kids.

Right. And then once they become teenagers, who knows? Um, I would say I have a few, but I I’d take repeatability over peak power at any day. Uh, I don’t care as much about like a peak as much as I care about my ability to be able to repeat things, feel the work, uh, that’s much more than just eating 120 grams of an hour of carbs when you’re on the bike.

It’s also outside of that and making sure that you’re giving yourself what you need to be able to do things. And then I got a quote, Keegan, Swenson, uh, gotta be the right amount of dumb, uh, like Keegan has a lot of wonderful quotes, but it’s kind of true. Like, you know, it’s really easy to overthink things, particularly for a lot of us, you know, type a interns athletes, you just,

[01:39:24] Nate Pearson: you know, and being bold.

So Keegan is bold and races where some people might be dumb. He’s like. 30% of the race, I’m just going to go solo and he does, and then he wins and no one calls him because that’s a dumb move. Why would you do that? Right.

[01:39:39] Jonathan Lee: Just the right amount of dumb, but I’m

[01:39:40] Nate Pearson: national champs. So that’s why.

[01:39:42] Jonathan Lee: Yep. Yeah. Um, and then the last thing that I’ve noticed just on bikes, and it’s kind of taught me about life, is that staying on the gas is always better than easing up.

Like when you feel like you want to ease up and you coast, whenever you do long rides like that. And if you just spend time, oh no, I’m tired. I’m going to go hard. And then I’m just going to go easy, hard, easy. That’s the great way to make that four hour ride an eight hour ride. Um, instead everything is just a little less painful.

If you just always kind of stay on the gas a little bit, you don’t have to be sprinting all the time. You just have to be consistent, consistent effort, you know, and it makes a difference in life too. It’s that consistent effort rather than sprinting and then blowing up.

[01:40:23] Amber Pierce: I want to add one in German for international listeners, skip Noah and Gus for guests, which is there’s only one guest full guests.

[01:40:31] Jonathan Lee: That’s amazing. I like that. Yeah. That’s a good one. Nate. You said something. I didn’t, I didn’t hear it there.

[01:40:38] Nate Pearson: Yes, but uh, so keep it on, but also let yourself rest because there’s this mentality of always, especially Americans. I always have to go. And to that, to that analogy when you’re doing the work, push through it, but then when you have your recovery, like recover for real and be okay.

Resting and not being productive in Washington. Talk

[01:40:56] Jonathan Lee: nice gas chenzhou Vincenzo ask rapid fire. What’s your favorite grips and BARR tape.

[01:41:07] Amber Pierce: I’m going lizard, skins, personal favorite. That’s

[01:41:09] Jonathan Lee: so sticky. I love it. It’s super Kaz,

[01:41:14] Nate Pearson: super bar tape. I don’t care about not like

[01:41:16] Jonathan Lee: ribs.

[01:41:19] Hannah Finchamp: This is where I get to plug a sponsor because yes I grips is supporting me this year.

So ESI grips. Um, I use their fit XC, which is kind of it’s skinnier on the inside and wider on the outside. I really liked that because I started noticing I had all these pictures of myself riding the mountain bike with my pinkies up, literally riding like this on the mountain bikes so that these were like I was having a cup of tea and that wider part on the outside of the grip actually allows my pinky to make contact with the grip.

It’s actually really important

[01:41:53] Jonathan Lee: who knew the things you can learn, um, ODI, elite pro. Those are the ones that I like most for mountain bikes. They’re not maybe the lightest, but I really like them. And yes, you can check out on my Instagram where I do nerdy things, like take a razor blade to the waffle because I don’t like waffling where my fingers are.

So, um, yeah,

[01:42:11] Nate Pearson: I got those for the John and John’s like, you gotta cut that waffling off. I’m like, dude, I can’t feel the waffling. Like no clue is there.

[01:42:18] Jonathan Lee: Well, I don’t know how you ride with it. Yeah. If I lived at it, you can’t look upon it. If I lived in the UK and I road in mud, I would keep it on because that’s what waffling is for as mud.

But when you don’t have mud, which we do not have mud here, it’s different. And then SRF HD specialized bar tape is my favorite, uh, BARR tape. It’s pretty thin. Um, I don’t like thick, cushy bar tape. Um, in fact I didn’t have that at the bike store, so I put Supercars on and I really dislike it. Um, but I like more thin bar tape.

Um, I’m sure if I did longer rides, I would change my tone. Okay. Uh, Christopher wants to know our picks for men’s and women’s elite cyclocross world champs. I don’t know if Nate you’ve been following racing or anything like that. So yeah,

[01:43:00] Hannah Finchamp: Hannah, for me, I paid talk and brand.

[01:43:04] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. Especially because Vanderpoel is not doing it banner it’s out as well.

So I mean, I don’t know how you, I don’t know. Maybe Pitcock has a mechanical, but otherwise I don’t see how he loses and then listen to brand. Have you been watching these cross races? It’s brutal how she’s beating the field. It’s like shark in the water. Like she just lets everybody cook and she lets him go off and take these wild flyers.

And she just like sits there and watches them. And then with like three laps to go to left, to go, she just starts like slowly turning up the burner. And then she finishes with like a 15 second lead, 32nd lead. It’s crazy. She’s just like, it looks like she is, uh, I guess you adapt the saying a woman amongst girls.

Like it’s, it’s pretty crazy to see you just feel like she’s just playing with everybody out there. It’s pretty cool. So she’s a heck of an athlete, uh, Ivy or, sorry, Amber, I don’t know if you have any differences there

[01:43:57] Amber Pierce: and kinda checked out on the racing scene. So you’re making me, you’re giving me FOMO though.

[01:44:01] Jonathan Lee: Sounds awesome. Yeah. Yeah. She’s an impressive, uh, racer that one. Uh, Brian says, why don’t road riders use hydration packs? What is it about gravel roads or surfaces that justifies them? That’s a good question, Amber, when you think I

[01:44:15] Amber Pierce: have a couple thoughts, but I’m really curious to see what Hannah has to say about this.

It’s I think it’s less about the surfaces and it’s more about the structure of the races. So in training on the road, there’s tons of refill opportunities cause you’re on the road. So there’s gas stations and drinking fountains. Whereas when you’re on gravel track training, you’re usually in the middle of nowhere and there’s a lot fewer opportunities to refill bottles and the same goes for racing, uh, road racing, usually have a caravan or support vehicles behind you.

Um, And the races are quite a bit shorter, so you don’t need to carry as much water, whereas in gravel, uh you’re self-supported and the distances are quite a bit longer. So you wanted to carry as much water as possible. And sometimes that’s only possible with a hydration pack. So I don’t know that that’s my, that’s my thought on it.

But Hannah, what do you

[01:44:58] Hannah Finchamp: think? Yeah, 100%. That’s the reason why in training, um, like you said, gas stations, you can refill anywhere on the road. If there’s no gas stations, if I’m in a super desolate place, while I’m running road, I’ll still wear a hydration pack. And I think that’s fine. Like Amber said, it’s not about the surface.

It’s about the refill opportunity and you just don’t want to wear a hydration pack if you can fill up somewhere else because. Less efficient. It’s slower. It’s heavier. But if you don’t have the option to refill, the slowest thing is to be dehydrated. So

[01:45:35] Jonathan Lee: also, plus you stop at gas stations. That means they also have like coconut nut, Crum, donuts, and other delicious things that you can get to. And hydration packs don’t provide those. So that’s just the way it goes. I thought a unit when I was cracked behind Keegan’s wheel, completely exploding and blowing apart, and we went to a gas station and I got some coconut creme donuts.

So

[01:45:54] Nate Pearson: you gonna be like, this is what Nate feels like, why not? He’s on my wheel. Maybe I should. And

[01:45:58] Jonathan Lee: nicer to him. I was so cracked the first day of our training camp. He’s like, oh, we’re going to do kit peak. It’s like 112 miles. You ride straight on a desert road. Like I seriously, it’s like a straight desert road for 45 miles.

And then you do like a 5,000 foot climb up this mountain in the middle of nowhere. And then you turn right and you go straight back. It’s like just mental, like mentally excruciating. And it was head windy and both ways of course. And, oh, it was brutal. It’s like a triathlete stream. Oh, he was it. And he loves it.

He was just like, you go straight, you go up, you go down and you go straight. It’s perfect.

[01:46:36] Nate Pearson: You have problems. Is draft with a headwind

[01:46:39] Jonathan Lee: at the end? Yes, because I was coming on raveled so well, cause we, we held, it was like six hours, I think, total because of the wind and for three hours. Biker for two and a half to three hours going out there.

I was riding alongside him, like an idiot. Um, but I was riding alongside him and we were holding like two 30 to two 50 and I was feeling fine. And then we got to the crime.

[01:47:04] Amber Pierce: That’s the wrong amount of dumb,

[01:47:06] Jonathan Lee: just yeah. Too much dumb. Yeah. And then the climb was really long, really consistent. Didn’t give me a chance to rest.

And I started to nuke at the top of the climb and it was 7,000 feet too. So really high elevation two. And I started to nuke and it was freezing cold and we descended. And that day I actually started to even cramp, uh, because I think I hadn’t done like a long ride like that. So I was getting cramped to hinges and I was just dying behind him once I got the coconut creme donuts though.

They’re great. So, uh, it was all good after that. I really, I think it was just the rest of my legs needed a little bit of a break. Cause it was like riding ERG on the trainer for four hours and like high wattage, like 240 Watts for me for that long it’s pretty long. That’s where you start to get into crack city.

So, um, okay. Hannah, I want to talk about Unbound gravel. So it’s such a huge race, everybody that it’s kind of funny. So with this lifetime grand Prix, which if those that don’t know, this is a race series that is a gravel mountain bike race series here in the U S now with a bunch of big marquee events, including Unbound, gravel, Leadville, and different ones, we’ve talked.

Uh, for the pros that made it in to the selection and they have their own selection criteria upon which they selected all these athletes. You get to do all those races, but you get one throw away race. Right. And here’s the thing, everybody I’ve spoken to. They’re like my throwaway races on bound. So if everybody’s throwing away that one race, like in the end, it’s all even right.

Um, how are you approaching it? Because I don’t think you’ve done Unbound before. Is that correct? It’s

[01:48:40] Hannah Finchamp: going to be my by race. Sorry to disappoint. That’s where we talk about biting off more than you can chew. I think if I’m racing world cup XCO. I need to limit my endurance racing to eight hours and not go for the Unbound experience.

[01:49:02] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. Yeah. Cause Unbound, I mean, 11 out, depending if it’s bad weather or if it’s muddy, it’s like, it could extend by hours, you know, it’s just,

[01:49:13] Hannah Finchamp: and it’s not so much about the day, you know, I think, I think that I can physically go and do it. I think anyone on that list could, um, but it it’s about the recovery that it would take after, you know, you’d have to recover for such a long period of time that not only, you know, in that recovery, you’re losing training when you’re talking about some of these other events.

So I would have to spend time recovering from Unbound when I should be, or would want to be doing some different efforts for say the world cups later in the season.

[01:49:45] Jonathan Lee: I wonder if they’re going to have to wait the points that come from that event to get more people more of the selected pro athletes to do it in the coming years, because it is an outlier.

I mean the only one that’s done it here is Amber. Um, and Amber, you crashed out of it, but you still, aside from the concussion, I’m sure you had extreme bodily fatigue from that event still, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It’s just brutal. Um, so, so are you, when you say that’s your bio, are you skipping that event or are you doing it and then you’re just letting the result be what it is.

[01:50:19] Hannah Finchamp: I I’m skipping. Yeah, I think, I think it’s going to be, uh, an all-in type of thing of just, I’m not going to touch it. I’m going to put my energy somewhere else. There’s no easy way to do that. Exactly. Exactly.

[01:50:34] Jonathan Lee: If you were going to do it, let’s just assume hypothetically that you were, what would be your strategy?

Like how would, uh, how would you execute on the day in particular? Like, do you even know, would you be the sit in and hope look for early breaks and hope that the, in the better odds there,

[01:50:52] Hannah Finchamp: um, you know, I feel like I have really unique kind of way to approach some of these events. I think there are some givens, obviously you have to pace it, you know?

So I think there’s definitely, I would go in with specific. I will not exceed X amount of power, you know, at all kind of thing. Then obviously you want to be in a good group, but, um, for me, fueling would be my absolute number one focus. There is not, you know, sometimes in races it’s like, okay, I’m going to feel every 30 minutes.

And then if it’s 35, I’m fine with it. I think an Unbound, I wouldn’t trust myself. It would have to be on the button. Like I would have it. So dialed in of exactly what I’m meeting every minute, because you can not afford to bunk in that race. It’s just not an option. And then beyond that, I find for me.

Going into those races. It’s just about having an open mindset and having no expectation because the second I start expecting something to happen. And these long races is where it can just all unravel because if you’re at hour four and it’s not going the way you expected, you have eight hours trying to pick up the pieces.

If you go in with no expectation, it’s a lot easier to adapt to everything thrown at you, including you might not feel good for five hours of that race. And then still have a phenomenal performance when something clicks at mile 100. Um, but if you give in to that feeling, it’s just going to be one of the hardest days of your life.

So I think just having a totally open mind and trying to resist every urge to have expectation would be my mindset going into it.

[01:52:40] Jonathan Lee: I feel like with that race too, in terms of endurance events, it has more injury coming out of that event than majority. And I think it’s kind of sneaky that way. Cause people think usually injury with technical courses or something like that.

And that’s how they tie it in. But with this one I had. Talk to a lot of pro athletes that were really worried after that event, because I’ve got a knee problem. Now I’ve got a hip problem or I’ve got a back problem or Amber in your case, a concussion. Um, right. Well, the, the interesting

[01:53:10] Amber Pierce: thing about my concussion was in the race.

I didn’t realize I was concussed. I didn’t learn that until after the fact, the reason I stopped, I actually, I crashed it about 30 miles in, and I didn’t pull out until about 140 miles in. And the reason I pulled out of the race was because my knee hurts so bad. It wasn’t because I was concussed. And then the concussion symptoms were really clear a few days later, which was also scary.

Um, so I kept going for a hundred miles and it was the knee pain that actually caused me to pull the plug.

[01:53:37] Jonathan Lee: Hmm. Yeah. Uh, th this is. Let’s take some time to talk about concussions in particular and injuries. I think that it dovetails well with these, like, because there are a lot of amateurs taking on this event too, and it’s important to keep these things in mind.

Right. Um, Hannah, this is more or less like you, you, what were your degrees actually in school? What did you study?

[01:53:58] Hannah Finchamp: Yeah, I have two degrees. One is an exercise science, but then the other one that’s really coming into play here is athletic training. So I’m a certified and licensed athletic trainer, which for those who don’t know, that’s a healthcare profession, we evaluate prevent and rehab injuries.

So concussion is something that we’re trained to, um, evaluate we’re trained to help people return to play through it. We’re trained, you know, we’re athletic trainers are often the first person on the scene to. To evaluate that concussion. Um, my professor actually that taught me a lot of this stuff in college.

One of his kind of side gigs was he, I went to college in St. Louis and when the Rams were still in St. Louis, one of his jobs was he would be at the Rams games and sit in this special spot and watch for concussion mechanism. And then he would radio down to the field and say, Hey, I just saw this concussion mechanism.

You need to evaluate this player. And so there’s a lot of, um, a lot of strategies in place nowadays for concussion, because we’ve learned that they’re really complicated and it’s really important to catch them.

[01:55:11] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. What could you share on them? Um, with us, whether it’s like coming into how to recognize them, like you talked about, or even how to treat them, and clearly you probably like, you know, the disclaimer that like, you know, she’s not your doctor in this case and it’s good to work with the doctor, but still what, what would you share with us?

Yeah.

[01:55:29] Hannah Finchamp: You know, um, there’s a lot of scientific. Data that is always changing and evolving. Um, so I think what I’m trying to present is just the most common scientific thoughts behind it. So I think the first thing that can really help people change the way they view concussion is to understand that the root of the word concussion means to shake or to shake violently that’s the Latin root.

So that means that concussion can happen from a direct or indirect blow to the head. Um, so that means you can be hit with something like a ball can hit you. You can hit your head on something like the ground, or you can hit nothing and you can just experience a violent shaking. So like whiplash or something like that.

Um, and you know, it’s significant. It is concussion is considered a mild traumatic brain injury. And actually in 2009, we eliminated the grading of concussion. So that means they no longer. Doctors still do. Cause I think it helps people understand, but technically speaking, we no longer say, oh, you have a mild concussion.

You’re either concussed or you’re not. So that means when we took away that grading in 2009, that means that all concussions should be treated equal once they’re evaluated. And so that kind of gave us a better way to help people go through this process. So the other thing that’s really important to understand with concussion is that concussion is, is it is a functional disturbance of the brain.

It is not a structural disturbance to the brain. So what actually happens with concussion is your brain experiences, an altered ionic balance and an altered metabolism. So the best analogy I’ve ever heard for this is it’s like your brain is a snow globe and you shake it up and all of that snow goes everywhere and now it’s fuzzy.

Nothing in that snow globe is physically damaged. You don’t see any damage, but it’s all kinds of confused. And so that’s a great analogy for what’s happening in your brain is concussion. And so that means it’s not a bruise to the brain. If you open it. You know your skull and looked at it. You probably wouldn’t see anything.

And that’s why when we do people say like, oh my gosh, you might be concuss. You should go get an MRI. You should go get a CT scan. You’re not going to see the concussion on those things. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go get one because when we get those imaging, it helps us rule out things like, um, brain bleeds, you know, epidural, subdural, hemorrhages, which can show up immediately or days, and weeks later, if it’s a slow bleed, so you should get evaluated, you should look for those things.

But if you’re wondering, do I have a concussion and MRIs? Not that proof, you know, I’ll hear people say, oh, I got an MRI. There was nothing there. So I’m fine. No, that, that doesn’t mean that you’re fine. Um, I also hear a lot, you know, you’ll do the H sign. So follow the finger with your eyes. Oh my gosh. They didn’t even do that.

They didn’t evaluate me for a concussion. You don’t have to have eye tracking issues or nystagmus or people are issues to have a concussion. Those are just tools that we can use to help rule in or rule out. But if you’re experiencing enough of the symptoms for concussion, We might not even have to do that to already say you are concussed.

So some of the symptoms for concussion just wanna run through them really fast and highlight a few is symptoms include headache, pressure in the head, neck pain, nausea, dizziness, blurred, vision, balance, sensitivity, light, sensitivity, and noise feeling slowed down, feeling in a fog just don’t feel right, difficulty concentrating, difficulty, remembering fatigue, or low energy confusion, drowsiness trouble, falling asleep, more emotional irritability, sadness, nervea nervousness and anxiousness.

Um, I think a lot of those are very,

[01:59:46] Jonathan Lee: yeah,

[01:59:50] Hannah Finchamp: exactly. And when you have a hundred percent of them, it’s like, boom, check mark concussed done like whole and one. Um, but I think it can also be really confusing when you only have a few of them and you’re still concussed in that case. And so some of the ones I want to point out, you know, balance, that’s a great time when you should have a pre exam.

So there’s a lot of ways that you can go and get a baseline for what your balance is because everyone’s balance is different. You know, if you have trouble standing on one leg with your eyes close, well, maybe you already had that. So that’s a really good one where you want a baseline for it. Um, Wednesday, you don’t need a baseline feeling in a fog and just don’t feel.

Those are two of my really favorite if there are favorite symptoms, because that’s what I hear more than anything. It’s like, well, I don’t, I don’t know. I’m not really dizzy. Like I’m not nauseous, but I just don’t feel right. And I think that’s really confusing for anyone who hasn’t had a concussion, but when you’ve had one, you know what that means?

Um, Amber, did you, yeah, you probably,

[02:01:00] Amber Pierce: yeah. I just want to share, because this is really resonating with me in my experience with the concussion that I had. Um, after Unbound, I had a lot of these symptoms early on, and then a lot of those symptoms went away, but the one that persisted was, I just don’t feel right.

And it was as an athlete, who’s trained myself to override a lot of those, you know, uncomfortable sensations and okay. I, I feel uncomfortable. I just gotta keep going to have that sensation of, I just don’t feel right. It was really hard to, to stop and say, okay, I actually need to listen to this because it is very subtle.

It’s not like I have knee pain. I have shoulder pain. My hand is in a splint, you know, it’s not visible. It’s not obvious, but it’s so, so, so important to trust. And that was the interesting thing. Cause that persisted for a long time, and it took me awhile because, you know, once the sensitivity to light went away, the sensitivity to noise, like the really obvious things went away.

I for a little while thought, oh, I’m good. But then I realized that actually. I just don’t feel right. And that was the thing that actually prompted me to go see a specialist. Um, and he validated that right away. He’s like, that’s the most common thing I hear is I just don’t feel right. But it’s a really, really important one.

And I love that you’re highlighting that,

[02:02:16] Jonathan Lee: the situation where you have you aren’t, uh, because, uh, the irony of all of this is when you’re concussed, you might not even be in a spot to evaluate yourself to figure these things out. Right. Um, but there are some, some real like, signs that something is wrong.

Uh, what would those be? Hannah?

[02:02:34] Hannah Finchamp: Yeah. Um, yeah, I first, I want to highlight that. What you just said is when you have a concussion, you’re not in a spot to evaluate yourself and that’s something, you know, I, I need to say for myself as well, because being trained in this a lot of the time, I’m like check, check, check, check, fine.

Um, Like in that list, you’re more emotional and you’re more irritable also, or can be when you have a concussion. In fact, when I worked with the football team, when we told a player, they had a concussion, one of the first things we would do is we would take their helmet away one. So they didn’t try and sneak back in the game.

But also because more than once the players would get so frustrated that they would actually try and hit the person telling them they couldn’t go back in the game with their helmet because they’re just not in their right mind. And they’re frustrated. And so you can’t, you can’t try and evaluate yourself.

You come up with excuses like, well, I have a headache, well, I didn’t have coffee this morning, so it’s probably fine. Um, you need someone objectively to do that. So get evaluated. Um, even if it’s just from the medic at the race, they can really help, you know, is this an emergency? Is this not an emergency and help you at least take that next step?

If you don’t, if you’re like, Hey, I know I’m concussed, you know, W whatever. And I don’t want to go into whether or not you should go into the ER or into urgent care. That’s a decision that you need to make on your own or with a medical professional, but reasons you should go to the ER for sure, I think are a lot easier to state and that’s reasons to seek immediate medical attention in the ER is decreasing consciousness, increased confusion, increasing irritability, loss of consciousness, numbness in the extremities, repeated vomiting, unequal pupils, slurred speech, worsening headache.

And if you cannot recognize people, and if you notice with most of these things, it’s all about a change. So it’s increasing or decreasing levels of alertness or symptoms. And that’s often a sign of a brain bleed it’s because things are declining inside of you. And so you really want to be aware of that and be aware of it in the long-term as well.

Because like I said, some brain bleeds happen immediately. Some brains bleeds happen over the course of days and weeks. And so if this is occurring, don’t, don’t write it off as like that happened a week ago. That can’t be. It can be so take it seriously.

[02:05:06] Jonathan Lee: It’s always really good to remind yourself to err, on the side of caution with this too, because so first of all, you might just be super confused and think, you know, what’s going on, but you don’t.

Uh, I remember at single-track six when I came to and I was on the middle of a bridge somewhere and I was like, I have no clue where I am. I have no clue what day it is. I have no clue what anything is. And then within, I don’t know, some sort of time period after that, I was like, no, it’s it’s Sunday and I’m in Canada, so I’m fine.

Like I got it dialed. And then I remember they asked me at the 10th, they’re like, what day is it? Everything else? And I was like, it’s Sunday. And they’re like, Hey, it’s Wednesday. And then like, like I was certain that I was fine. I had rationalized myself out of it. I was like, yeah, I guess I don’t remember anything before this, but I’m fine.

Like, we’re just so far out of ourselves that even though we might recognize some of the, uh, some of these signs, the ones that are more serious, you might be tempted to rationalize yourself right. Out of assuming that you have a concussion or you’ve had enough experience with these, that you may be able to recognize this as well.

So regardless, it’s always key to make sure that you’re going to find medical personnel and work with them. But if you feel like you have one don’t second guess. Just pursue that and go and talk to a medical professional. If you don’t feel like you’ve had one, but you recognize any of these symptoms still pursue a medical professional.

It’s just worth it. Coming from a person that’s had way too many of these. It’s absolutely worth it. Nate. On-site eight, eight. Yeah. It’s a lot like too many, you know, over the course of whether it’s motorcross skiing. And I guess bikes have only given me one that I know of. So, but it’s a lot,

[02:06:51] Amber Pierce: they are all different.

So if you’ve had one concussion, you’ve had one concussion, it doesn’t mean that the next one is going to present in the same way. It might feel completely different. Um, so if, if you are in doubt whatsoever, I think it’s, you know, it’s safe to assume that you are in to seek medical attention just, just in case.

[02:07:10] Nate Pearson: When I had mine and the Cape epic and the medic on the trail, which was so lucky to see one on the trail. Right. Um, he did the, the eye test. And so it’s, uh, Hannah it’s ice stagnant. Is that what it called? When you look to the side and you’re either like

[02:07:23] Hannah Finchamp: tracks, nystagmus, nystagmus kind of shakes on the side.

Yep.

[02:07:28] Nate Pearson: That can also happen. If someone is drunk, somebody do this to my kids as they come home at night. Um, but yeah, so that shakes, and then they did the light in my pupils and they both reacted, but they, um, were very slow to react and that was also another sign. Like they put the light in and then it would wait and then it would go in rather than normally would just go down.

So then they would check me in the ambulance to what Hannah said, they kept checking the same things to see what, um, if things were getting worse and then the person would keep talking to me to see if I would, like, I knew she was doing this to, I was aware enough for that. But to see if like I started, she would ask me things about my home and that sort of stuff, but in a regular conversation.

So not to alarm me, just to see like, is this person have a brain bleed? And he is he progressively getting worse. Um, but anyways, what you said, like if you’re not a medical professional, just get your friend to a doctor. Uh it’s way better than like you trying to be like, oh, they’re probably okay. They remember this.

Yeah,

[02:08:24] Hannah Finchamp: I’m glad that you mentioned that as well. If you were aware that it was happening, um, is another thing is concentration in that list is some of the tests we do it, uh, would be say the months of the year backwards, starting in August. So pick a random splint and go backwards or count backwards from a hundred by seven.

So 193 bubble. It’s not about how fast you can do it. It’s about, can you concentrate enough to make it happen? So I’ve experienced giving people these tests where their response is. I can’t do this when I’m, when I’m not king pest. Great. I don’t care how long it takes. You can do it on your fingers. Can you do it?

No, I can’t. I can’t do that. Even when I’m loose that it’s like, well, can you concentrate? And, and a lot of the time with someone who’s concussed, they’re not willing to give that effort. And so, yeah, I just want to point that out because it’s not about how fast you can do some of these things. Um, it’s about if you’re willing to make, to give that concentration, to put that out in your.

[02:09:31] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. One of the reasons that I

[02:09:35] Amber Pierce: got a line today, there’s just some going on today.

[02:09:39] Jonathan Lee: I’m just going to stop.

[02:09:41] Amber Pierce: One of the weird things that I had happened was after I went to see a specialist, we started doing some testing and we actually looked at my reading comprehension, which was, um, a lot worse than I thought it was.

And they were asking me if I had been avoiding reading and I was like, no, definitely not. But then they asked how much I had read the past few months. And without being aware of it, I had avoided reading because it had become really difficult to track a straight line across without dropping down lines at the end of it.

And I was having to reread the same line over and over again, in order to comprehend what it was that was being, that was on the page. I wasn’t aware that that was happening until somebody pointed out to me and I stepped back and thought, whoa, actually I devour books most of the time, but I haven’t touched one.

I haven’t even looked at magazines in several months now and it hadn’t even occurred to me.

[02:10:31] Jonathan Lee: Hmm. Interesting. What about returning back to like training or back to just back to activity in sport? Yeah,

[02:10:40] Hannah Finchamp: I think that’s where. You know, erring on the side of caution is always the right answer. So the first thing I want to bring up is not to scare you, but it’s also to scare you into making the right decision is, you know, the thing that medical professionals are often most afraid of when allowing someone to return to sport is something called second impact syndrome.

And so this happens when you experience one concussive blow, and then before those symptoms are gone, you experience another concussive blow. And what can happen in that case is things get so confused in your brain that essentially without going into it, it’s almost like the wires get crossed and your brain doesn’t know what to do.

And things start dilating and constricting to the point that your brain, you have diffuse cerebral swelling. So your brain in this circumstance could just start swelling uncontrollably to the point where you don’t make it through the event. Um, you die. And so this really can be a life or death situation.

And when we’re talking about, you know, something like football, Yeah. Okay. Definitely. Don’t go back in because you are going to get hit again. When something, you talk about something like cycling, people get a little, you know, they’re willing to risk and Mark’s like, oh, what are the odds though? Crash again?

Well, there are a lot higher since you have a concussion, because your balance is compromised. Your focus is compromised. Your emotions are compromised. So the decisions that you’re making now are worse than they would be normally. So if your chance of crashing on the bike, you know, is normally whatever amount it’s now higher, because whether you’re on the mountain bike and you’re not tracking the trail, or whether you’re on the road and you’re crossing someone’s wheel, because you’re just not in it, you are increasing your risk and that risk can literally be life or death.

So that is one reason that you need to be cautious returning to sport. And there’s a whole protocol that, um, I’d like to briefly run through. But before that, I also want to talk about something called post-concussion syndrome, which, um, is a pretty common, uh, something. That people talk about commonly, I’ve heard recently that they’re trying to get rid of that language and just call it concussion with prolonged symptoms, um, to help get rid of some of the stigma around the word syndrome.

But regardless is it, if you push a concussion, it can prolong the time that it takes to recover. And in the moment it can feel like, I mean, gosh, Nate, like I traveled all the way to South Africa. Like I really just want to finish this race. I can, I’ll be fine. I can experience it. I can experience these symptoms a little bit longer.

Like thank goodness you made the right decision and pulled out because no one knows what a little bit longer is in these situations. It can be months. It can be years and everyone’s experience is going to be a little bit different as well. That’s why it’s a syndrome because we don’t know all of the surrounding events.

You know, depression is often associated with concussion. Um, things that can be really hard to live with on a day to day basis. So, you know, and, and all that to say also is post-concussion syndrome. Doesn’t only happen when you post a push a concussion, it can happen just in general for unlucky circumstances, but you’re certainly not helping your odds if you’re pushing yourself.

Um, and you know, I think. There’s also a lot of statistics about, you know, if you experience a concussion, you’re more likely to experience another cush concussion and all of those things. And there’s honestly, we don’t know all, all of the information behind that. And, and quite frankly, that’s more of the reason to be cautious.

So, um, all that to be said kind of the seven day, um, there’s a seven day return to play guidelines. That’s pretty widely used. And so the first thing I want to say is there’s a lot of science that goes into this. And now they’re saying some smaller things, uh, some things like you can get back to some small cognitive tasks earlier, or you can exercise very lightly earlier.

And they’ve shown that some of these very easy things can actually help with recovery. I only recommend doing that if you’re under the care of a medical professional and physician, because what we view as light is very different most of the time than what a

[02:15:36] Amber Pierce: metaphor,

[02:15:39] Jonathan Lee: there’s 30 thirties. It wasn’t

[02:15:42] Hannah Finchamp: exactly. So that’s why, like, I’m hesitant to even say that, but I know so many people listen to this podcast that I feel like I should just say it so that someone doesn’t raise their hand and say, actually now the science, yes. I’m aware, but I think caution is always better.

Um, so that to be set, the seven days standard return to play is that each day you can progress to the next activity. If you don’t have any symptoms with that activity, if you do have sometimes with that activity, you go back to the previous one until you don’t have symptoms. So that means from the moment you get a concussion until the time you can return back to full activity is pretty much a week.

Um, standard. If you don’t have any back, if you don’t have to go backwards at all, if you’re asymptomatic the next day. So that’s like best case scenario. So it’s best. Usually when you get a concussion to just let go of your plans and to be aware that they’re going to be fluctuating changing. So the first day after concussion, nothing, you’re just resting.

You’re just. Letting your body heal itself. If you feel good, if you don’t have symptoms next day, you can do light aerobic activity. So they classify that as less than 75% of max heart rate. I like to put this in a cycling terms of you can spin on the trainer with little to no resistance. So just keep it super easy, spin on the train or move your body.

If you have no symptoms, the next day you can do non-contact activity or activity, which excuse me, in which you don’t have any risk of contact. So I consider that to still be on the trainer. And, but now you can do a little bit more work. You can do a harder train and ride. You can get your heart rate going.

You can get your body moving day four. You can do sport with others. That’s still mostly non-contact. So I consider that going out and you’re riding with a friend. Something could happen, but it probably won’t, you’re forcing your brain to think you’re maybe doing some like pay sign work, or something like that.

With a friend they five is considered unrestricted. So I would put that as a spirited group, broad, this is where. There is risk involved, but maybe there’s no prize where you’re wanting to risk it. And then day six is full return to play. So that’s when I think you could finally return back to the start line.

Uh, if you feel ready to, once again, if you have symptoms on that, you go back a day. So just because you have this list doesn’t mean, okay, I raised on Saturday next weekend. My race is on Sunday, so I’m good to go. That’s only if every single step works out perfectly, which I hope it does. Um, but just please be very cautious.

It’s

[02:18:28] Nate Pearson: three months later for me and I still have symptoms just to know. So some people might be like, ah, Hannah says seven days I can race next week’s crit. Um, but this is Hannah. You said, this is only if you have no

[02:18:40] Hannah Finchamp: symptoms, correct. This is each act. Each one that you progress to, you’re asking yourself, you know, I think the biggest thing is usually when you start incorporating the activity.

So when you go from I’m doing nothing, I feel fine. Now I’m going to ride the trainer. I, it definitely inspires symptoms. You get that heart rate up and all of a sudden you’re like, whoa, the room is. Nope, you’re done. You go back a step, um, and you don’t get to progress until you don’t have symptoms from that.

[02:19:10] Jonathan Lee: Yeah. I’ve never had seven days recovery from, from a concussion it’s it takes a long time, uh, to get, and, and like Amber said, they’re always different. Uh, there were times with one of them, I think I went like a year or two where I was extremely sensitive to light changes. Like it was, if somebody turned out the lights, it’d be like, okay, for 10 minutes, I’m just going to live in pure darkness.

Like, well, you know, and it took so long to be able to adapt. And I then I’ve had other ones were just extremely, uh, emotional thereafter, whether it was experiencing high highs and low lows, but I had no control over emotions. They’re just always different. And this, and I’m going to reinforce what Hannah said when she says next day, she’s saying next day after you get to the point where you have accomplished that step in this seven day to return to, to, to performance, like protocol that we have there.

Um, so this is, uh, you just have to take time and really like what you said, throw your plans out the window because your health matters more than whatever plans you had for sport. For sure. This is a fantastic information that, that you share with us. Hannah. Thank you. Um, I also, uh, this is something that all cyclists should think about.

Some people might be listening to this and be like, oh, I’m scared about cycling, but Hey, like this is something that. All sports deal with, if you are in a sport that involves your body moving at any rate of speed or possibly coming into contact with something else, this is what we all deal with. We just have not known a whole lot about that over the years, and now we’re learning more and more.

Um, but it’s yeah, it’s, um, I hope that everybody feels like, Hey, I have some helpful information now to deal with this very real risk that I face in many aspects of my life, because that’s probably the case for everybody listening to this. And to many that aren’t, so Hannah, you’re raising our bar. Thank you.

Awesome.

[02:21:01] Nate Pearson: And that was awesome. I was thinking that during that, we’re lucky to have you here. That was a really cool segment.

[02:21:06] Hannah Finchamp: Thank you. It’s something I’m really passionate about. So thanks for allowing me to share my

[02:21:12] Jonathan Lee: yeah, for sure. For everybody that joined us on this episode. Thank you so much. Uh, it’s been fun, Nate.

Thank you for, uh, keeping it fun and exciting as you always do. And I hope when you listen to that stuff that you’re like, I want to go check out what Trainor road does cause you need to go to trainer or.com and go and sign up. It will make you faster. That’s our guarantee. If it doesn’t, we’ll give you your money back.

That’s what we stand behind. So, and Amber is Austin team is building super cool stuff. So we appreciate all of you share this podcast with other cyclists. That’s probably one of the best things you can do to help get other cyclists, to figure out about this podcast so they can get faster too. And then a follow trainer out on Instagram, YouTube, all the other things.

We’ll talk to you all next week. Thanks everybody. bye everyone.

[02:21:57] Hannah Finchamp: Bye.

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