Santa Cruz Bicycle’s Keegan Swenson joins us to talk about his two National Championship wins and his unexpectedly bumpy ride at Belgian Waffle Ride, as well as answering your questions on recovery modalities and joining us for a discussion on equipment upgrades and more.
Tune in for the YouTube Live Stream this Thursday at 8:00am Pacific!
Youtube Live Video:
Topics Covered in This Episode
Nate’s learnings from Tahoe Trail 100
Keegan’s learnings from National Championships and Belgian Waffle Ride
This Belgian Waffle Ride now has 4 different races. They are very quiet about details of each race until the week before which makes it hard for us to sign up (given the price and commitment). Can you speak to what to expect for the races and communication? For example is the price worth it? How does it compare to other existing races like unbound?
Pointing out something that others have mentioned, around 26:50 in the cast, Nate discusses his training and TR use. He specifically mentions using “Adaptive Training”, which makes sense from a broader view. But then he immediately discusses two features that none of us in Beta have seen or accessed.
Progression Level Projection (what he can get to)
FTP Prediction (estimated peak via his current AT plan)
This is all well and good, but he failed to specifically mention those are limited access items only available to him and maybe other internal TR users (perhaps even a limited beta set, but I’ve not seen anyone else publicly mention these features).
I won’t hold my breath until we see the first mention from someone in the AT threads asking where they can see these features. We will have to clarify that these are not available in the beta at that time and likely get some flack for that ambiguity.
So, per prior requests, please try to make it clear which features ARE or ARE NOT available at appropriate release stages (particularly to active beta users or when they are more openly released) so we can potentially head off the confusion I expect we will see shortly.
Next level pic would have been a rolling shot with Nate… fries loaded, dipping sauce mounted in place at the head unit, and Nate causally taking a dip and chomp at pace behind Jon, Pete and the rest of the TR crew
During the Rapid Fire portion of this episode, the hosts were asked for their Olympic cycling predictions. The usual suspects were discussed and it seemed lighthearted.
What did peak my interest was the fact that two of the hosts agreed that they hoped MvP didn’t win the mountain bike event. One host then said they hoped Pidcock didn’t win either. Both wanted a ‘mountain biker’ to win.
That struck me as a little weird. Sure, this was a ‘fun’ Rapid Fire portion of the episode but, really? If either of those two cyclists can win the event, good on them. They have to ride the exact same course, on the same day, against the same field. If a mountain biker can’t beat them, surely that speaks volumes.
It was my first time doing BWR. They changed the start/finish venue due to the huge amount of entrants (4,000), but otherwise the course was nearly identical to that of 2019, so I was able to “recon” the route via Youtube.
I don’t know much about Unbound but my understanding is that the Unbound aid stations are spaced much further apart, requiring you to be self supported for fairly long distances. BWR SD had nine aid stations for the Waffle and six for the Wafer, and since part of the course is over-and-back, you hit several of these aid stations twice.
Worth the money? Absolutely, probably some of the most fun I’ve had in a long time, despite cramping early and losing a lot of time in the 2nd half.
BWR is unique due the mix of road and dirt, and the dirt is a mix of gravel roads, sandy double track, and single track. Equipment choice was wide open for the Wafer route especially, due to only 35-40ish miles of pavement. I rode it on a mountain bike and plan to do the same next year. Lots of fun keeping up with road bikes on the road and pulling away on the dirt. Not something that one experiences often in an actual race.
This is possibly better in the Olympic Cycling Thread, but I wanted to reply as I had to go back and listen again to confirm what you’d heard.
I wouldn’t take it too seriously, I thought Keegan sounded a little jaded on it (somewhat understandably having missed out). I think he’s right though, MVdP would be a big surprise win after his efforts in France and the technicality of the course. He’ll be up there, but is by no means a lock.
I don’t think it was some deep distain for the guys coming across from other disciplines, he’s allowed to have an opinion. I also hope it’s Schurter or Cooper, but that doesn’t mean it takes away from the validity of a Pidcock win.
It can be looked at as simply as age, ignoring the differences in approach that MVdP and Pidcock take. Schurter is 35, Flückiger is 32 and if you’ve been following XCO you’ve been watching their careers for a long time. This is most likely their last chance to add (another) Olympic medal to their careers. Compare that to the young guys who just got to the elite ranks, or have only run a partial schedule, and should be the favorites in 2024 as well.
Then the other layer is the fact they aren’t mountain bike focused or primary athletes. In the long run if more athletes are able to follow similar models of doing a partial mtb world cup it will dilute the sport. Cross country mountain biking won’t be a viable career if the next generation of extremely talented roadies show up and taking a couple podiums each around their primary races.
On a vaguely related note, when the guys were talking about how small the athletes are, I didn’t realise how tiny Chris Blevins is. He’s a very small dude. I was surprised given he looked bigger than many on the World Cup coverage.
Pidcock is miniature which is another factor in play on such a hot and lumpy day.
@IvyAudrain
I went to sleep a little bit hungry last night. I woke up at 3am with hunger pangs and a feeling of being wide awake.
I thought of your advice re little bit of fat and sugar (to help regulate cortisol levels?) And plan to do that next time.
Knowing there was a solution probably helped lower my cortisol level and I slept for another 5 hours!!
