138. Ed Clancy: The truth behind breaking my shoulders for aero gains, and other stories

0:00I've been riding with the Hammerhead Karoo for a fair bit now and beyond the slick screen and the 35 hour battery life I'm really getting into the Karoo's climber function. Now what climber does is show you any upcoming climb on a ride whether it's a pre-planned route or not and then when that climb comes up this data page pops up on screen and you get this little climb profile with gradients and colour coded sections for steepness and the distance to the top in length and elevation. so it's amazing for places I've never ridden like on a sportive where you've never ridden the course before but the crew guide you up a climb in this predictive way so you can pace out your effort it's like having a little team ds on your handlebars you can also look ahead at a route and see all the climbs on it so a bit like having a profile sticker on your stem like you see the pros have in races only this way it's way more detailed as you can pick out a climb and look at its specific details as you go.

0:59So check out our full review of the Hammerhead crew at cyclist.co.uk and see why we gave it our cyclist recommended award. Then head to hammerhead.io and use the code cyclist to get a free heart rate strap with every purchase. Just be sure to add the strap to your cart then apply the code at checkout.

1:23Welcome back to the Cyclist Magazine podcast. I'm your host Jane Spender and Will is trying to get himself together physically literally and also figuratively because I'm just going to jump on Bill right now and say you're getting married on Saturday so you know without pre-chat about that how's that going? Well how the wedding itself is not going yet so we don't know how that is going the preparation is going it's going well is it going well is it really going well how stressed are you on a scale of one to stressed? Because everything is under control. I mean, you're a man that doesn't really get stressed.

1:58I was hoping for something more hair-tearingly salacious, like shit, we're really worried because the caterers have fudged the brownie and we're going to have to change to the chocolate fondant. Well, isn't it ideal that the caterer fudges the brownie? That's a fudge brownie. We hope so. We hope so. Yeah. Anyway, none of that's happening. We are the Cyclist Magazine podcast. Our guest today is Ed Clancy. and I'll tell you a little bit more about Ed in a moment. But I just wanted to say, well not to say, to mention this to you Will. I've detected what I think is an alarming trend in cycling which is good things are actually getting cheaper.

2:36And I say this because I've just read a couple of our reviews that are going into cyclist issue 167 which will be in shops basically when you're listening to this and beyond. But one of the bikes is the Cube Lightning Air. I think it comes in at 5 ,200 pounds and it's not the top, top spec. That's a 7.2 kilo race bike in a size 58 with surround rival wireless group set as raced by, you know, effectively as raced by B &M and GMI and the Wanty team. So it's the cheapest world tour race bike, but also that's pretty good for a bicycle. I know that that's still a mental amount of money when you kind of pull back and go five grand g but in the world of bikes stunk in good spec for kind of what is now like or hate it mid-level money that is rather good i feel like you're getting like a few brands who are sort of making their top tier 14 000 pound bikes look like more ridiculous than you might have already thought so you can obviously get the cube you get great value on the van rice and even a Canyon can be pretty good value these days.

3:42Indeed and I will mention names because you know we're all friends here. Warren Rossiter over on Bike Radar has just put up a review for a Boardman 9.4 LTD which I assume is an abbreviation for limited although there won't be limited numbers because I'm sure they'll be selling as many as they can but it's like 3 ,400 quid or something and it's got 105 Shimano 105 Di2, weighs about eight and a half kilos, Warren rides quite, he's a size large, so heavier bike. But again, I just looked at the spec, fully hidden cables, amazing vision, Metron cockpit, like one piece cockpit, really good spec. And again, you're like, bloody hell, and it looks really nice as well.

4:22And we've also put the Oro in, the Oro Gold STC in, again, cyclist issue 167, not that I'm trying to plug that at all, but that's like £6 ,700, a bit more, but that's like Dura-Ace and Zip 303 Firecrest Reels. So I don't know. Here's a question for you, James. As someone who's been working in this job and in this industry for 13 years now, you've been around a few factories, you've spoken to quite a few people. What kind of questions do you ask yourself when you see something that's cheap? Are you questioning why and how that's cheap? Or are you just being like, we're just getting fleeced for the rest of them?

5:00I would pull back on using the word fleeced in any situation regarding the bike industry. No, I just see, you see stuff that's cheap these days and you're like, yeah, good on you. I mean, another tangent is SRAM do a 75 pound set of some really nice machined cranks. They've got little hollow bits in it and you do have to buy the chain rings. But anyway, 75 quid for a set of cranks from a big name brand. I think it's pretty mega. So stuff like that, I just feel like that's kind of in a way where stuff should be because the mechanisms industry, tooling, whatever behind making stuff is getting ever better.

5:41So the stuff it makes on the one hand can be ever more intricate and therefore more expensive, but on the other end of that spectrum can be more easily mass produced and so therefore cheaper. So I don't suspect cheap stuff at all. and I've really turned this into a massive advert for Cyclist Mag. This isn't supposed to be. It's just kind of where my brain went. But another bike we've got is that Elvis or Elves bike. It is actually Elves because the guy behind it is a fantasy fan, Game of Thrones, World of Warcraft style. And it's a Chinese manufacturer, Chinese brand, and it's called the Elves, I don't know, Vagar or something because they're all made up names of fictitious Elven tribes.

6:20And that, again, looks like a mental bike. It's got a sort of Madone-esque hole in the frame and just is pretty interesting, exciting, and cheap. And there's the other brand. Are they called X Lab? Yeah, the bikes are X Lab, yeah. Yeah, so they're, I think, a different kettle of fish. They're a big or bigger maker of bikes for other people. XDS. Yeah, and now they're making their own bikes and they sponsor... XDS Astana. XDS Astana. So there you go, a cheap bike, upstart. you know hate the word but disruptor sort of brands i feel like um maybe cheap stuff is going to have a resurgence and long may that continue one of the things that on that sort of note that i learned after i went to visit the van der isle factory at some point last year and obviously those are questions and most of the stuff when the rcl came out was like you know how is it such such good value when it seems like it's a pretty good bike and i think could be completely wrong on this that have come from somewhere else but actually they're not making obviously not making loads of money on the bikes themselves they're making way more of a markup on the kit and the clothing and stuff and the bikes are you know part of the brand and obviously they do make money on the bikes but the reason why they don't have to charge you know the same as some of these other top ones is because they can make the money elsewhere yeah i mean certainly with decathlon aka Van Riesel, you know, God rest its soul, Betwin.

7:47I think that's definitely possible. I'm sure lots of brands use different things to kind of offset other stuff. And again, this will be the last time I mention the new cyclist mag. But we've also, this is all falling into place so nicely and it genuinely wasn't supposed to. We've also done a head-to-head test with three kind of, again, inverted commas, mid-tier race bikes. So specialised tarmac, but not top spec, coming in at like eight grand that is a lot that's the most more expensive one yeah i would wouldn't i would say that's like three quarter tier yeah but then we've got trek madone the gen 8 the one with the funny hole in the frame and canandale super six evo which are more like four so that is kind of more plum in the middle so we've done a kind of head-to-head test on that and sort of try to drill down into you know what's the value there and also what are the compromises made so I think that sort of a lot of brands are making actually quite good value bikes in the middle and they get a lot of bad press sometimes because they just put out these uber expensive bikes at the top of the pile and you're just like your jaw hits the floor and you're like what like I think the most expensive version like custom spec of a Trek Madone Gen 8 is close to 17 ,000 pounds with all the fancy paint and that's like off the shelf 17 grand that's insane not even custom geometry so um you know there you go it's because the top spec price is the one that catches the headlines was actually probably need to look a bit deeper yeah anyway now let's see the zone and we've screwed up our double down promise to not make these intros long and tenuous and uncycling related Let's move on to our guest today, Ed Clancy.

9:33I would say he is absolutely a name that everybody knows. I'm not necessarily sure if everybody could tell you what he's done, which I feel is a mark of someone who isn't just great at their job, their sport. That's also a mark of someone with personality because he leaves his mark. Ed Clancy was a great person to talk to, super chatty, but he's also incredibly decorated he won three gold medals back-to-back olympics which is insane so over 12 years plus all the training that went out into the first one he's won three gold medals in the team pursuit broke myriad world records in the process also won a bronze in the omnium i can't even tell you what happens in an omnium but that's a track event so super track rider one of the most decorated Olympians in British cycling and of all time.

10:22Not many people have done that, you know, spanning those three Olympics. And he even tried to go to Tokyo. But unfortunately, a recurring back injury pulled him out of that, which was absolutely gutting, which we talk about in the show. But Ed also won loads of stuff on the track, European championships, world championships, but raced as well for Rafa Condor across all their permutations in the heyday of British cycling, you know post 2012 loads of crit racing in city centers lots of domestic teams and the kind of that level pro conti domestic level was really really strong so some fantastic riders will you talk to ed about that and lots of people may have seen those city center races and it kind of felt like those things would never go away but unfortunately they have so we also talked to ed about you know that kind of ebb and flow the rise and fall of cycling in britain and what he's also doing about it because he's been helping advise British cycling on how to kind of get those more grass-rooty parts of the sport back up the agenda.

11:21But he's also the active travel commissioner for South Yorkshire, which is a little bit like Chris Boardman, who does that, I think. Is it Manchester he does that? I think so. So, you know, he's fighting the good fight for sustainable transport. And he's also just written a book, which is Full Gas Forever, a guide to cycling further and faster into your 40s because ed has also just turned 40 in march this year and he wrote that book with cyclist yoga teacher well yoga kind of guru i think would be a word for sport lexi williamson they wrote that book together so it's kind of training manual slash how to pick apart doing things like cycling into you know your your later years in a world where it doesn't come as easily whether it's time motivation middle years james be kind to yourself you'd say middle years yes Yes, the mid-tier of the years.

12:13Anyway, on that note, I'd like to welcome to the show Mr. Ed Clancy.

12:24Do you remember Naf Naf jackets? Naf Naf, I remember. Do you remember that brand? Yeah, I don't think I was ever rich enough to afford such high-quality material, but I remember Naf Naf. Highly flammable material. Well, I think, honestly, I think that there's a line in the age group sand somewhere, something like naff naff sits on one side of it. And you and I sit on that same side, Ed, because you're 40, turned 40 in March. I was 40 last year. And Will is, I don't know, 19 or something. which segues into very neatly why you're kind of you know in our inboxes in our on our podcast at the moment you've just released a book uh full gas i've got it here for those of us watching on youtube full gas forever a 40 plus cyclist guide to riding faster and further is this your midlife crisis book did you have to write it because you turned 40 it's either that or buy a porsche is from what I've been told, yeah.

13:25But yeah, yeah, first of all, let's agree with a lot of that. Will, I am very pleased indeed. You know, I grew up when I did without social media. We had naff-naff jackets, which was great. But for me, I haven't really changed one iota. Like, you know, looking back on a big timeline, you know, I'm still very much interested in the same thing I was when I was four years old, which is just fun, freedom, exploration. it's still the best thing in my life today is a you know having a midlife crisis you know i've been watching chris oy i've attended a few mountain bike sessions with him and the boys and yeah we're just like massive kids and i think that'll always remain a part of us and you know i'm sure we'll touch on it at some point but in between then and now we went on this interesting sporting journey didn't we but um yeah yeah i i'm happy to have wrote the book and i'm also happy that it's not just a book about me and my story you know it's about a book to basically a bible of cycling for people like me and a bit older that are sort of getting on a bit and it's like well how can you enjoy cycling in um i'm going to refer to them as our prime years will so you've got another 20 odd years to go yet but what do you what do you think i mean if you could just look back over those last 20 years what would be the main things that have shifted for you in terms of your performance has your vo2 changed what your power numbers look like i mean you look incredibly lean i reckon you probably weigh the same um and you know we'll come to it in a minute but you just you know won fred witton like earlier this year so i think you're in decent shape uh i'm not sure if it's possible to win a sportive it's a bit of a blurred line isn't it but um yeah i think look in terms of me and my sort of physical prowess there's a strong word these days but you know let's go for a big journey you know you sort of hit your teens and you're very much sort of turned from a boy to a man and you know in your sort of like young mid-20s for me i kind of hit my prime around some of like the biggest most exciting races you know you could possibly have you know notably the 2012 olympics and things like that and that was great and yeah you know i was in my early 30s when i had my first back operation which is you know always less than ideal but I guess it's a sign of the times, isn't it?

15:44In your mid-20s you kind of feel like you're indestructible, you throw your bike down the road 100 times a year and it's like water off a duck's back. Yeah, I think that back operation was the first like, oh yeah, it's not always going to be this way. Of course at that point at 31 I was young enough to bounce back, got another gold medal but really, that sort of combination of a lingering injury, old age creeping in and general lack of talent and some just unbelievable super kids coming through. Yeah, that was enough to kind of seal your fate as a professional. And to answer your question as a 40-year-old, what's changed?

16:21I've got literally no idea what my VO2 is these days. I know I'm actually a couple of kilos lighter than I was as a cyclist, almost certainly down to any sort of lack of real muscle mass whatsoever. But yeah, I mean, you can still pull off a winning Fred Witton if you do things right you know and you look after yourself somewhat you eat well sleep well do a tiny bit of stretching a tiny bit of training in inverted commas and yeah i think cycling's a beautiful sport for many reasons but it rewards those that continue to do it late in life do you feel that the biggest change has had to well have you had to adjust your lifestyle more in order to kind of compensate for a lower training volume and obviously not competing or or actually were you able to transition into retirement?

17:09Because I think if you look at lots of high profile sports stars, typically, you hang up your football boots, your wheels, whatever, and you go off and get fat. Now, there's this kind of conjecture that it's because, hey, you know, that rower was used to eating 6000 calories a day, and they still eat 6000 calories a day, but they just don't row anymore. Is there a truism in that? Or is that just kind of what we'd like to think? And it's just the fact that you work so hard you're going to put your feet up so of course you're going to put on some weight yeah yeah i think so um i mean there's a lot of truth in all of that uh how much do you eat as a pro athlete yeah i mean like the rowers they will legitimately go through 6 000 calories a day not entirely sure what number we stuck on it you know when we were training at altitude but you just your body's constantly working and um you know for somebody like me was a bit of a sort of sprint endurance hybrid you know trying to keep up with geraint and brad on top of mount heidi trust me you were working hard and um yeah yeah you went through an enormous amount of calories you ate an enormous amount of food but i had like an appetite and um a sporting requirement that needed that uh yeah i haven't put on any weight whatsoever but you know i've honestly haven't put that much thought into it i you mentioned the word transition there and when you retire as an athlete you've got multiple routes you can kind of go down you know a lot of people go into commentating a lot of people will go into sort of like brand ambassador stuff and you know i had literally no idea what i wanted to do when i retired so um i kind of quickly identified two people i thought had done really quite well in the afterlife and uh yeah within sort of months of retiring really i'd been to see chris baldman i went to see chris hoy they both gave me like amazing like advice and like i just you know a bit taken back really by how much you know both of them cared but they gave me totally different advice and you know chris chris sort of gave me advice on like how you can become like the best ex-athlete you possibly can be and you've been on this amazing journey and uh i guess i did a bit of public speaking i did a bit of performance consultancy i sort of led into that advice and also chris boardman said right you've had a great run ed but park that move on to something else and just take some principles and apply it to another walk of life.

19:22And I've ended up being like an active travel commissioner in South Yorkshire. The point being is I've been really busy in retirement, in like office life and meetings and jobs and not trying to reinvent myself because I don't ever want to pretend to be someone I'm not, but I've been busy and I haven't really had time to kind of sit down and eat and get fat, to be honest. And I still love bikes and I'll still commute on a bike. I'll still ride my electric mountain bike on the weekend for six hours. And now again, I'll take my brain out and go absolutely flat out for six hours around Fred Witten.

19:56I hope for the best. That's interesting. There's something that sticks out. So in Full Gas Forever, it is a classic training manual in terms of it's about training, it's about nutrition, it's about how to kind of gain some free speed, a bit about race craft. And it's got lots of great instructionals and their exercises to do, that kind of thing. And I do got to say, I love those sorts of books because I hate looking at stuff on YouTube and trying to copy someone in that way. But one thing that makes it different, I think, and underpins it are lots of references to the psychology of being a sports person, which I think you put a lot into.

20:34And one really good quote, which I love from Steve Peters, and I'm invited to explain a bit more about Steve in a minute, which alludes to what you're just saying. The facts of life are that the goalposts move. There's no guarantees and life is unfair, which kind of sounds like good advice to help you move from cycling to something else because you just can't do the same thing in the same way anymore. And that's just life, right? Yeah, bang on. And to like paint the picture of that full story, take you on the timeline again of my sort of like cycling career but you know i had a good run through beijing through london and yeah yeah we had said back injury in 2015 and um you know you went you go into the operating knife as you do and uh you know we're only nine months out from rio and at that point you know you can kind of like you can kick your feet and you can stomp and scream and you can say ah you know life's unfair like this wasn't supposed to be this way or you can sort of have an adult conversation with yourself using the frontal lobe as steve would tell you you know the part of the brain that's like it relies on fact truth logic pragmatic thinking and exactly as you said you know sure as night follows day athletes will age athletes will get ill athletes will get injured athletes will get replaced by younger more talented riders and you know if we're lucky you know we'll all get to 40 plus if we're lucky and um you know we've just gotta deal with those inalienable facts of life that our bodies will change our metabolism will change our recovery rates will change but let's not throw in the towel because there's no better way to sort of stay active in my opinion as you get a little bit older you know if you compare like i mean i've seen some uh malcolm elliott's probably a good example he was 50 years old when i was racing with him when i was a kid and like man alive he was unbelievably strong and uh you know rumor has it he's still out there in the p district today like um you're doing some big watts and you know that story is not unique cycling is definitely a sport if you if you're interested you know you can most certainly do some exciting stuff in your 40s 50s 60s and beyond is it another sort of tourism that your endurance stays with you but it's just your top end power that diminishes as you get older i don't know to be fair i've seen a bit of evidence and research on that but i looking at myself through my own eyes absolutely believe that to be true like i am a living example of that and uh you know kind of in my terms of my own career like my sort of party trick or my joker card if you like wasn't a massive aerobic system it was like having a pretty punchy top end like peak power you know when I was 27 I was doing 1700 watts at 77 kilos like legitimately not like a pretend 1700 watts and you know that was they're big numbers for what you'd class as an endurance rider as I got older now we never saw those sort of peak power numbers again but yeah as a 40 year old here as the esteemed winner of the the Fred Witten earlier in the year yeah I honestly think like you know my climbing ability and um my endurance you know in terms of my ability to like shift blood around my body for like 20 minutes yeah that's as i wouldn't say it's as good as it's ever been but it's it's still legit i think there's another sort of part of the equation that we're i haven't touched on there is like your ability to sort of recover day to day and like for sure that's impacted too yeah and i'm assuming it's impacted negatively do you find that you need more sleep than you've ever needed or actually that's the other thing that's supposed to happen as you get older is actually people need less sleep but I can't believe that's true well I've really dorked out on the sleep thing to be honest and uh you know obviously I'm no sort of a sleep scientist but there's a there's a guy I've been listening to called Matt Walker oh yeah and he's wrote this book while we sleep and you know you might have heard of it already and perhaps some of your listeners have but it's uh he's great on podcasts and yeah I mean he kind of alludes to the fact that yes we tend to sleep less when we're older but it's not because we need less sleep it's just because we don't regulate our hormones in the same way that we can in our youth and he actually alludes to an interesting point is do we sleep less because we age or do we age because we sleep less and I was like oh that's an interesting point but anyway fundamentally the point is sleep is good and you know these people that sort of talk about oh yeah I can live on four or five hours sleep yeah you can but it's not good for you in so many ways physically and mentally do you have any uh sleep protocols team sky-esque tricks up your sleeve when you're you know from your team gb days because that would have been something that i'm sure um people identified and is that extra you know piece of armor in in in racing is can you sleep well especially the night before a big race right oh 100 oh 100 yeah yeah and uh you know just to sort of get the framing right this book isn't it's got some good ins and tips in there but it's not necessarily about like you know the the nth degree of marginal gains and like you know how can you extract every minute of sleep out of your your night hours it's not about how you can extract every single watt from a wind tunnel but of course you know when i was in uh you know my racing days yeah i'm looking for every advantage you can and yeah i was one of those people that sort of i was riding my bike when you know team sky principles and sort of like the working principles of british cycling were very much embedded and yeah i we did we'd take our pillow around we had our mattress topper from the 2012 olympics in the celtic manor for a good month and even had that bed in my own house before we went to the celtic manor just so everything feels familiar just the smell of your bed sheets hopefully that got not progressively worse as the competition rolled on you know the feel of the pillow the feel of the mattress and yeah yeah i think there is um legitimate research and evidence to suggest that it's worth investing if you're really serious you know yeah i mean this leads nicely onto a question i've wanted to ask you for ages were we ever to do this and we are because it's an anecdote that comes up time and again to illustrate team gb chris boardman secret at Skrill Club and the lengths everyone went to was that genuinely floated in any kind of meaningful way that Team GB with Chris Bordman would break your collarbones, break eggplant's collarbones in order to narrow your frontal area to give you a valuable half second in the team pursuit?

27:06No, the short answer is no. But to sort of like extrapolate on that story. So yeah, this it's quite early on in the sort of like team gb days if i was gonna have a guess it was somewhere approaching beijing or london and uh of course at that point in time dave brailsford so dave was our performance director and um i i always i really respect dave and everything he did he was an amazing leader but i was also aware that eight times out of ten if i saw dave's name pop up on my phone i was in for some sort of bollocking so i saw dave's number pop up and i was in the holiday and we get right and i was walked out to breakfast and i was like oh shit i've got two missed calls off dave something's bad's happened like we're off the squad game's up let's go home g so i rang him back and i was like oh hey dave how can i help and he said ed i'm really sorry like have you seen the the newspapers this morning and i've got no what's happened dave i've got like no idea and And this story about breaking my collarbones to find marginal gains had just gone viral, as we call it now.

28:13And I was just blissfully unaware of what happened. But what happened was Dave was doing a presentation. He was doing some public speaking. And he was talking about all the little details that you go to, checking out the ball bearings, the pressures of the tyre, the width of the tyre, what we're gluing the tyre on the rim with, and so on. and uh he threw it out there as a an anecdote and a joke but obviously the newspapers took it in a very literal sense and uh yeah the story went viral but yeah but if somebody asked me honestly would i have gone for it yeah probably would yeah did uh somebody had a good relationship with dave did he ever offer you a sky contract oh no um i don't think that's because dave disliked me or anything like that but um dave had a job to do and uh you know of course at the time you always hope and believe that you're good enough for such things uh but the truth is uh yeah that's a good question and i think the truth is you know but particularly between like 2008 and 2012 was there a potential window of opportunity where i was young enough i had an olympic gold medal to go flat out on the road and drop the track which i would have needed to do to have done such a thing i think the answer is maybe but that wouldn't have been in dave's interest anyway because he wanted me as a track rider and me and him both knew that i was probably only ever going to be good enough to carry geraint's bottles at best so you know it kind of made sense for his point of view not to encourage such a thing and uh you know looking back at my own life through my own eyes you know there was a great domestic road racing scene i was really fortunate to you know riding a bike for many many years with a guy called john herity is our team manager and you know yeah i was a big fish in the small pond but yeah it could have been worse yeah because that really was the golden age of the domestic scene wasn't it i've just written down some of the names of the raffle condor whatever all the iterations in the 2010s some absolute legendary rides in here they just go through it's obviously it's you both downings did stints there graham briggs christian house absolute legend of the scene uh dan craven world tour direct sportees these days zach dempster tom southern hill climber ed laberak andy tennant obviously hugh carphy did a stint chris opi harry tamfield stevie williams john mold chris lawless kind of done ian bibby who i can only hear in hugh porter's voice um and then even writers that are still going there like matt gibson hollywood how good was that that era of racing i don't know i mean i was listening to those names i was like wow there's some good guys there and like i i'm not even they weren't necessarily in that team but there was guys like adam blive who came back from world tour teams to ride domestically steel van hoff uh you know australian champion like Commonwealth Games champion, like proper hitters.

31:11We had a great scene. But to answer your question, I don't know if I just look back with sort of like nostalgic eyes and be like, oh, yeah, we were good, the standard was better back then. I don't know. It's not for me to say. I think what I can say with credibility is like, you know, a man alive, I look at the junior standard these days. It's a long time ago, but I think back to like the very early days of Rod Ellingworth taking the first ever iteration of the academy. So there was Geraint Thomas, myself, Mark Cavendish, Tom White, Matt Bramier, and Man Alive. We obviously all had a bit of spark, but yeah, we were absolutely useless compared to the juniors today.

31:53If you look at how fast they go, look at the track times that have been doing the junior nationals just this last week. Yeah, it's frightening how high the standard is. I mean, I've got the obvious example of like Josh Tarling that just goes straight into World Tour stuff. And, you know, he's not making up the numbers. He's winning proper races. And I'm like, you know, the riders are very, very good, very young. What do you put that down to? Is that something to do with nutrition? Is it education around training? Is it literally the fact that they just get picked up so young, they're just turned into machines from, you know, the age of 12 or something, whereas you were kind of coming into your best years into the sport proper in your 20s.

32:40What is it that's made these kids the wonder kids they are? This is a guess, but it's my best guess, and I suppose it's a guess that's been educated by people that are more connected to the junior scene than me. You know, little conversations with Stuart Blunt and the parents of Giles Pidcock's junior team, Fenton House, and I think the best guess I can give you is the junior standard is so much higher just because these days it's almost like they can access all the information they need at the touch of a button right so if there's you know back in my day let's say I was an up-and-coming 17 year old and I wanted to make it in inverted commas you know kind of the only information that existed was perhaps in the British Cycling Circles.

33:28You know, a proper legitimate coach, sort of sports physiology, aerodynamics off Peter Keane. You know what I mean? People like that, access to a legitimate race program, contacts through Rod Ellingworth. It was quite a closed office, if that makes sense. Now, if you're an aspiring 17-year-old, you get your phone out of your pocket and you just be like, right, hello, chat GBT, write me a training plan. I'm 17 years old, I weigh X amount, I've got a VO2 of this, I do school, and ChatGBT will write you a training program. And it'll write you a nutrition program, and I mean, I'm a dinosaur, but I bet these days you can probably take a side profile picture of yourself, put it in ChatGBT, and it'll tell you what your frontal area is and what you could improve based on its best guess.

34:17And I think that's a huge part of the reason things have moved on. And do you think, because I'm going to go out on a limb and say, it sounded more fun in your day. The idea that you're like, you know, sharing a flat with Cavendish and Garrett Thomas, you're putting your phone out your pocket. It's Dave Brailsford, you're wondering what you're going to get bollocked for today. And you're racing and you're still racing to an incredibly high level. You're winning three Olympic golds plus everything else. It sounds like that was pretty fun. However, I would guess vastly less well paid. So that's the payoff.

34:50do you think if you had a kind of 2.0 you'd go right i want to go in i'm going to be monk like but i'm going to make millions or would you just have your time again no i think uh i think at that age i mean i think at that age you'd take the money wouldn't you you'd just be like right if this opportunity exists and we know we can do that i mean i don't want to give the impression that we like all we did was mess around because like i mean whether we what we had no option like if rod ellenworth ran a tight ship and like you know i i love rod and when i think back to what rod taught us i don't think rod just set us up for a good cycling career i really think rod instilled like values and principles that have set me up for other things in life too you know he taught us the importance of good communication um you know what hot debrief is what a cold debrief is he literally got us to write down our own team values very early on stick it on our bedroom wall and we also got us to write down a big list of things to which we would hold ourselves accountable to so if we turned up five minutes late we wrote our own punishments and um yeah rod never let us get away with um being late being disrespectful to um other staff members he didn't let us get away with turn up with dirty bikes and i just kind of feel like he installed values and principles in us so it was tough like the academy days were tough but to answer your question no i mean i think if we realized we had the potential to make a million quid in three years like a lot of them do these days yeah we're absolutely gone for that yeah i've got to ask what is a hot debrief versus a cold debrief and what punishments did you write for yourself if you were late so yeah hot versus cold debrief hot debrief is kind of like what it sounds so imagine you finish a bike race and you jump straight off the bike and then you do a hot debrief like wherever it's hot and like the the positives of that is that you get um i always felt like you got quite nuanced detailed feedback between the team so that was the positives the downside were everyone was emotive everyone's fiery you know think imagery of uh cav throwing a bike around that sort of stuff a cold debrief you know you'd kind of like you'd lose a bit of honesty because sometimes like politics and you know people would temper what they really thought and felt you'd lose the nuanced detail but obviously like there was a lot of emotion taken out of it in a cold debrief yeah so you know we did both and we learned that there were there were pros and cons to both and uh you asked a question about punishments as well it's all it's all out there isn't it in books and geraint and cav but yeah we spent a few days cleaning cars in the car park and you know we did three hour sessions around the top of the velodrome when there was some like god-awful loop around um georgeville bank a freezing cold day in winter just like etched into my mind uh just doing six hours round and round and round and uh yeah but i for what it's worth i think it did us good so what was it like you know knowing people like mark cavendish garrett thomas and bradley wiggins when you're so young before you know everything happened and then watching you know obviously all the success they had could you have seen that coming to the extent they did especially um let's start with brad i mean because brad was already a superstar like you know when i was on the way up and um you know like for everything that's been said about brad like brad always was and brad still is like you know an absolute hero of mine and uh you know i'd encourage people to remember that anything that you might hear and see and read about him.

38:32Brad was one of the best leaders I think I've ever come across. The way he engaged and the way he implied himself but the sort of positive impact he had on his teammates me, the mechanics the support staff, the swan years the person that made his sandwich before a training ride. Brad, despite being this multi-millionaire Tour de France winning superstar that everyone looked upon and admired, he never talked down to anyone. He had his times when he was a bit reclusive and quiet but he was never toxic, he never lashed out at anyone and sort of growing up a little bit with Brad and doing Beijing with him was amazing and one of my absolute all time career highlights was being part of that team that helped Brad seal his career, finish his career, sign out in style in Rio, yeah, you know, it was a struggle that one, getting back from a back surgery and I think we beat the Aussies in Rio by one and a half tenth of a second after four years of effort but yeah that was uh that was a that was an interesting moment and in terms like cav and geraint yeah of course like you know you grow up and we spent a lot of time together as juniors under 23s and i spent more time with anyone than with cav funnily enough and you know when we were 20 21 years old we moved to germany together and we we rode for this very small german team called team sparkasse and you know he was very very good very quickly once we got out there and we knuckled down to business and uh yeah and i think at that point i kind of realized that my talents were always going to lie on the track and yeah it was great seeing cav go off and um i mean he's been on such an epic journey and uh yeah along with brad uh and geraint you know they're three people sounds weird you know despite the fact i've won gold medals with all of them i still look up to those guys i still think they're all heroes of mine and yeah I love all three of them.

40:30I've been riding with the Hammerhead Caroo for a fair bit now and beyond the slick screen and the 35 hour battery life I'm really getting into the Caroo's climber function. Now what climber does is show you any upcoming climb on a ride whether it's a pre-planned route or not and then when that climb comes up this data page pops up on screen and you get this little climb profile with gradients and color-coded sections for steepness and the distance to the top in length and elevation. So it's amazing for places I've never ridden, like on a sportive where you've never ridden the course before, but the Karoo guides you up a climb in this predictive way so you can pace out your effort.

41:10It's like having a little team DS on your handlebars. You can also look ahead at a route and see all the climbs on So a bit like having a profile sticker on your stem like you see the pros have in races. Only this way it's way more detailed as you can pick out a climb and look at its specific details as you go. So check out our full review of the Hammerhead crew at cyclist.co.uk and see why we gave it our cyclist recommended award. Then head to hammerhead.io and use the code cyclist to get a free heart rate strap with every purchase. just be sure to add the strap to your cart then apply the code at checkout

41:54what's interesting occurred to me um looking doing a bit of research in this is one of the guys you rode with steven burke that's not a name that comes readily to the top of my mind yeah he's a guy that was apparently and do correct me if i'm wrong because this is second-hand dodgy internet research. Apparently, as a junior, he was whipping cav. He was considered a faster rider. So then what happens to those two guys? What's the fork in their roads that means that one person ends up, and no disrespect, I don't know what Steve's up to now. I think he's still in cycling. He's an accountant in Burnley.

42:34Oh, is he? Yeah, I'm in touch with him all the time. I love Berkey, yeah. So Steve's an accountant in Burnley, and Cavs just won 35 stages of the Tour de France. How does that kind of separation happen? The thing with me and Berkey, really, was we were both very much like middle distance athletes. So, you know, Cav and Geraint, imagine a spectrum. And on this far right-hand side of the spectrum, you've got your endurance riders. Guys like Brad, Geraint, Pete Kenner, that are just about fast enough to get off the start line in a team pursuit. and they've got loads like aerobically you know they're relatively aero for the size and the power they have and they're great once you're up to speed and you know if you look at like guys like me and Berkey we always found a natural home in like position one position two in a team pursuit because we could you know we could get off the start line get up to 65 kilometers an hour within a couple of laps smoking a cigar and um you know that gave us a sort of strategic advantage in the front half of the race and uh you know we could rely on the other endurance-based riders so the point i'm saying is we were built different and yeah cav's a sprinter but you know cav could not do a flying 200 as as fast as me and he couldn't do one as fast as burkey so we were me and burkey were never going to win uh 35 tour de france stages i think you're sort of like alluding to this point of like sort of status in the world if that makes sense i mean like burkey was trust me like i saw the graphs i was there in person i think you know in 2012 in front of the home olympics and 100 million people that are watching it or whatever it was When you saw me, Berkey, Pete Kenner all get up on that big stage in 2012, yeah, Stephen was the strongest rider there.

44:18And yeah, he was so good at what he did, but he just didn't care. He was never one for dancing on ice, and he was happy with that. And for what it's worth, I think that's all right. Yeah. Do you feel that you sound like you've found a happy and useful path post-cycling and completely opposite end of the spectrum in terms of the pro sport side, Steve Burke also does. So Steve Burke, accountancy, look him up. I don't think he needs the business. He's already probably very successful, but, you know, here's an advert for Steve. But the point being, did you feel that people around you got the support they needed post careers or as they looked towards their retirement?

44:59And if not, you know, what more could have been done for them? Because it often looks like, and I think the tide is changing, the mood is changing around this, that athletes, particularly cyclists, get sucked up by the machine, the teams, the racing, whatever, and squeezed as hard as possible, get all that blood out that stone, and then at the end of it, you're not left with an awful lot, unless you're quite lucky. Yeah, yeah. I mean, what do I say? So, like, the transition, like, trust me, it's hard. You know, I, this isn't a brag, but like, I'm doing okay in retirement. Like, I've got, I'd say two and a half really, you know, quite significant jobs in my life right now.

45:42You know, I basically line into the mayor of South Yorkshire to his active travel commissioner. And, you know, I work alongside an ex-lawyer and we have a team of 11 people. And, you know, I've put my heart and soul into that operation over the last two and a half years. and I've just started work as well with British Cycling in a meaningful way to be the managing director of their foundation. But these job roles and these opportunities have been the result of a lonely, difficult, convoluted journey that's been full of insecurities and self-doubts and a small army of people have helped me on the way.

46:21The transition is hard. But your question was, do you think athletes get the help they need? the short answer is no I don't think athletes get the help they need but I mean having sat in this office here you know for the last two and a half years trust me and I came from a place that wasn't particularly productive to I'm not going to say it almost everyone you see making it these days is from a somewhat fortunate beginning if that makes sense you have to be how can you compete as a junior these days without two pinarellos and a camper van and a wind tunnel and a skin suit of course there's people do it but they have a significant advantage these days i'm not sure what the answer is i was very fortunate that i grew up at a time where you could make it off the back of a little bit of uk sport and sport england funding now the point i'm making is yeah ex-athletes aren't getting the support they need like neither of the kids down the road here in doncaster other and barnesley sheffield you know they can't afford racing bikes they can't afford to go racing you know speak to some of the parents and some of the kids don't do PE lessons because they can't afford to put on another wash at the end of the week and uh you know we really are talking about a totally different world here so yeah and to sort of like give you a very broad idea of what I do these days in life I I the older I get the less interest I've got in like cutting edge marginal gains elite sport and the more interest I've got in um i don't know just trying to lever this um obe or these like worthless gold medals that we kind of carry around from time to time and like try and make some sort of value of them you know if that helps me open doors to have conversations to like bring some money into south yorkshire if that means i can speak to some people that are interested in corporate donations to a british cycling foundation so we can help get kids on bikes in a challenged area yeah bang on let's let's go for it i like that then you're also on the um british cycling elite task force on you which is sort of the other end of the of the scale yeah i mean that's a project that's a that was a finite project that was all sort of started and finished within six months but yeah that's um i didn't let you finish your question sorry no no that was i was just going to ask you how that was and what what kind of you did to try and you know obviously the crit scene itself was struggled on is struggling yeah yeah i mean it was uh so i met john dutton the new chief exec when he started in his uh his role at british cycling and uh i've always stayed close to british cycling of course when the new boss came in i was like hey john um it's just a flag you know if you ever fancy having to sit down i'll just sort of like tell you the world from my point of view and like to be fair to him he responded within seconds and i was like oh great you know i'll sit down with him and i'll tell him about what I think British cycling is doing well and I think where it's struggling and uh it was great and he listened and you know if you look at where the trajectory of British cycling as a whole it's doing really really well under John's leadership but we did speak about this difficult decline in the domestic road racing scene and as you guys know it's still struggling compared to the previous glory days so basically the task force you know what were we commissioned to do we were there to diagnose a problem we were there to discover a problem as in like evidence it and put data around it we were there to like get our heads together and debrief it with the team not just the core team but the wider team and they were ultimately there to offer up some potential solutions offer some recommendations that British Cycling could either act upon or choose not to act upon depending on how they wanted to allocate their finite amount of time and resource.

50:08I enjoyed the journey and it was a very small project really compared to things I've done since. But yeah, I mean, I'll always thank John for giving me that opportunity to chair the meeting and to lead the operation. And yeah, I think we handed over some sensible recommendations, but the crux of the problem, just to really dumb down a problem statement, was money now you've got to think that you know the cycling industry did incredibly well through coronavirus however like on the other side the cycling struggling right and you know cycle sport traditionally at least is often sponsored is supported by cycling brands cycling brands had lots of kit in warehouses no cash in the bank obviously coronavirus was it literally put a physical stop to everything and then you've kind of got the additional um sub problems of uh well-known home olympic names kind of moving on getting old retiring and um the long and short of it is we we had a great problem statement but none of the recommendations came without the massive caveat that this is going to take serious investment yeah i mean that's definitely something that comes up i think time and again we've interviewed the guy who i can't remember his name who does the rutland classic which is i think the uk's only one day uci sanctioned road racing you just think how is that possible and it lends itself you know that part of the world to a real kind of like parry bay style classic and i just think like we started cyclist magazine in 2012 perfect time to start a cycling magazine and then there were these boom years and i just remember being down at canary wharf and seeing an edition of the tour series the perlizumi tour series and it was massive and you had all these guys all these bankers that are putting teams in but then you also had you possibly even racing i think you also had the proper pros doing it and that was going around the country and even though cycling was obviously buoyant so therefore these things would exist it also felt like this is it this is established now because this really works in britain because crit racing is localized it's high octane you can see lap after lap after lap the riders don't just disappear for the rest of the day once you've seen them for five seconds yeah and it seems mad that it just sort of the ass dropped out of it as it were almost overnight what what kind of happened do you think because at one point yeah Nigel Mansell was there he had his UK youth team and you think like there's got to be some attraction in it for a guy like that right more than just you know that shows you it's more than just cycling yeah i uh what can i say like yeah you're right i mean i was really lucky to sort of like ride that crest of a wave why it became so popular in such a you know relatively short space of time i'm not sure but i agree with everything you've said like you know man alive i remember going to some of the tour series you know in canary wharf's a great example and there was um there was another one further south and it's where the uh the agent put some like nerve chemical on a door and there was like some suspicious death salisbury salisbury salisbury there was there was a tour series in salisbury and i just remember hang on is this part of the tour series i missed yeah yeah thankfully not but oh man alive like the crowd was like 10 people deep at the finish line and i just remember the racing was epic and tom pidcock was sort of coming through the ranks and i was like wow this is just unbelievable and it's struggling relative to that i believed yeah the sort of crux of the problem i think a lot of it is financial you know um we've kind of gone into this almost semi-recession haven't we now you know when that happens organizations companies i mean let's think about what else funds these bike races it's local authorities and councils right yeah now i've spent the last three years working in mayoral combined authority world which is a little bit removed from that to be fair but was it birmingham city council that had to declare bankruptcy a year or so ago and i think so yeah yeah the point i'm making is the cycle trade had no money local authorities certainly weren't awash with money over the last few years i think that kind of sentiment extended to your traditional sort of like financial corporate partnerships and so on.

54:35Maybe cycling just wasn't the in thing, you know. There's a hundred other sports they could get at. Inevitably, they're going to turn the sights towards cycling, you know, when Brad's winning the Tour for the first time and Geraint and Team Sky. It's like a, it was the in thing, wasn't it? I guess what we all want to answer is, well, how do we get back there? Yeah. You know, I think you define, the first thing you've got to do in any sort of project is like what's our definition of success and i think you were pretty close there james it's like it's banging crit racing it's easier to police it's easier politically there's less stress with like health and safety and this inevitable sort of like um influx of red tape that we all have to deal with right it's entertaining it's it's it's attractive to the cycling fans it's attractive to the non-cycling fans and I think the definition of success is what you said.

55:28I just don't know the path to get there. You know, that's going to take someone smarter than me. But on the other hand, it's a bit of a weird situation at the moment where you've got all that going on, but if you look at the World Tour, there's more British riders than there's ever been. And the same in Tour de France. And it's such a weird contrast how that's sort of happening at the same time. But it might also be lending itself to what we were talking about before, or riders going from junior levels going straight into the world tour, do you think that the domestic scene needs to be more of the step up?

55:59I guess that's hampered by development teams, but you see Tom Pickock having success having done Crit Series. Yeah, yeah. I think, I mean, feel free to disagree with me, but a theme or a principle, let's say, during that task force work was, I sort of thought, right, well, you know if you can sort of like put them in two buckets it's like domestic road racing that could be seen as very much like a useful pathway for british riders right it's never you know if you look back it's never really been something that's been self-sustaining financially crit racing on the other hand it's kind of like vice versa it it has been and it most certainly has the potential to be self-sustaining financially is it a pathway to greatness has anyone ever won you know john mold won't mind me saying this but he won sort of like you know ungodly amount of tour series he had like one incredibly successful series of crit racing did any world tour teams have a look at that of course not so they kind of like they serve two different purposes and um i try not to think too much about these uh questions because it generally keeps me awake at night i am glad you pointed out though will that like overall road racing in terms of british cycling is doing incredibly well let's not forget that like we have got more male and most certainly female riders in the upper echelons you know representing great britain at the highest level across so many different disciplines road time child josh tarlin a mountain bike tom pidcock um you know it's like i said the women are doing great as well and you know we take it for granted now but wasn't always this way have you um i'm sure it won't be news to seeing that charlie tanfield is going to be doing an hour record i think about this time next week 14th of august and he replaced you at the tokyo olympics when you had to um we had to leave for injury yeah that's a crazy situation did you i mean a how do you rate his chances and b were you ever thinking like yeah those are the sorts of things that i might eye one day because they're standalone there's a lot of kind of hutsapar around them and they're pretty cool like and our records still got some magic i think oh yeah i mean first things first there is a special place in my heart for charlie tanfield i absolutely love the guy he's um i don't know what defines a character but He's one of the biggest characters I've ever met.

58:32And I'd love him to get it. I know he's not the only rider that's off to Turkey next week, is he, to try and do the business. But yeah, it's a pretty abstract sort of thing. And I sort of sit here in an office these days and have meetings and try and think about how we can fix South Yorkshire, how can we fix social impact for British cycling. I forget, it was only a few years back, I used to put a skin suit on and ride around a big wooden track dead fast with that guy. but yeah like honestly like one of my the older i get again like the lesser cared about what i won what i lost racism that didn't go to plan and i remember my journey because of the people i met and charlie's one of them and i would love chazza to do some epic stuff out there and you know whatever happens he's always going to be a great guy do you think there's any any chance that one you could be an age group hour record attemptee or would you do something like transition in the next you know next couple of years i could see you doing something like riding the cape epic you know those things that amazing engine style riders do and they just switch up and you're like oh yeah they've still got it they can still absolutely i mean as we talked about at the top of the show right you did you don't win a sportive but you did finish first over the line at the fredwitton which is arguably the hardest so definitely the hardest sportive i've ever ridden and the hardest one in the UK and I think you want it by a decent decent chunk of time too so there's still something there surely yeah well I tell you what let's talk about the Fred Witten first right so what happened was I uh I basically I heard a few rumors the night before that there was like a fast set of lads setting off um like quarter to nine or something so I like strategically set off at quarter to nine off the back of these like you know there was these teenagers in skin suits and uh i uh i don't know why but i went flat out like the first proper climb about 50 miles in and it just seemed like a good tactical idea at the time and uh anyway on the descent turns out there was only one lad that went over the climb with me right and this lad was unbelievably strong and he towed me for about 90 miles honestly i said i'm really sorry mate i just i can't give you a turn you're so strong and i literally said to him like you know if we get anywhere near the finish together obviously i'll let you have this and then we got to hard knock pass at the end and he got heat stroke and just stopped oh man and i said like mate do you want me to stop and he said no i carry on so i did and like that probably puts it in perspective you know i didn't win that on merit you know the um i can't remember his name right now but he was such a nice guy a really strong time trial and you know he should have won that yeah so to answer your question no I'm not coming back for any Rauer records I really don't have it well Ed I think that is a wicked place wicked note to end on thanks so much for your time thanks for your book I'm genuinely going to do some stretches because I am just like an old wooden tree these days sitting in a chair for so much of my life full gas forever out now also I should say it's written by Lexi Williamson as well So it's not just Ed, two authors.

1:01:43So Lexi's a... Oh, shout out to Lexi. She's been absolutely ace. Yeah, she's really cool. And she's a yoga guru as well, isn't she? You can check her out doing stuff on YouTube. She is. She knows way more than me about nutrition, yoga, stretching, gym work. So yeah, Lexi's been brilliant. Yeah. Thank you. So yeah, pick up Full Gas. And even if you will, you're going to be 41 day, mate. So start planning now because look after the pennies and all that. and the 40-year-old midlife crisis pounds were the cost themselves. Here's one to age me, Ed. So in 2013, when they brought the milk race back, Nottingham City Centre, I think you came third that day.

1:02:25I was actually there. So I'm from Nottingham and I was there. And me, my dad, my brother and a couple of my neighbours did a little relay race on the circuit before the main race. And I was the last one out. And I brought the team home to finish second to last in that race. I dressed as Robin Hood and then Mary Ann and we just beat it was us against all the local like services or against like the bloody firemen ambulance police I think we beat the ambulance and I absolutely loved it and then obviously you went and did the business but that was great and that was another you know heyday heyday period oh good lad well fair play mate and yeah yeah yeah thanks for making me feel like massively old there champion Ed Clancy, ladies and gentlemen, absolute gent.

1:03:14Thank you again, Ed, for spending so much time with us. I'm just going to massively take this in a completely different direction because we had Charlie Tanfield attempting to break the hour record. When was that? On the 14th, a couple of days ago, five days ago as we record this. And I can't do this, so I put that as my caveat here. I'm not trying to say, hang on a second, but he rode something like 53 and a bit kilometres. because Ganna's record is 50, is it 56 something? Something like that. It's a lot. Yeah. And that's huge. Yeah. Right. That's not just like a bit of a gap. That's absolutely massive.

1:03:51Yeah. Our records have been broken and taken by hundreds of meters in the past. So I would say that's an approach thing, though, because I would say most of the time when our record is broken, the aim is to just beat it. just to get the record. Whereas Gander was going, to put it beyond reach, he was going for the Boardman best human effort one. So it was like, this guy's an unbelievable time trial list. You could ride for an hour and just absolutely hammer it. And that's what he did. Yeah. Well, yeah. So, okay. That does put a slightly different bent on things. But at the same time, you're still Charlie Townfield wanting, believing that you're going to be able to break the record.

1:04:39and I just find it kind of crazy because it's so contained. It is exactly what it says on the tin and you therefore practice versions of it. I don't think riders actually ever do a private hour and see if they can beat it. You only ever do that one big effort on the day but you must do all of this testing that says this is definitely within reach otherwise you wouldn't bother. And then that's a pretty big margin to fall short by. Well, I might say for... Tanfield, it's probably more likely that he didn't think he was going to beat Ganazaro record. He might have been a fair play if he did actually think he was going to do it, because that's balls if nothing else, and he did bloody well.

1:05:22I would say that he might have had a more realistic aim on the British record, which is obviously still rather enormous, but it's not quite, which is Dan Bigham, it's not quite as much as Ganazaro. I'm just trying to find what Bigham's time was. Distance, sorry. it was an hour and bigham was 55.5 gunner 56.79 55.5 man tamfield up 53.9 so he's still you know 1.6 okay but it's still insane it's still absolutely insane and i'm what i'm trying to get out here is is not so it's not it's more just like the concept of doing our records and thinking like it seems like you should just be able to almost be nailed on to break it because otherwise why you're doing it because you should be able to work out you know it's because because everyone thinks it's so much about numbers and actually i guess what this highlights is a it's there's an approach to it and maybe your approach is to on a good day you know you're not quite sure and you're happy with that and b also shows there's so many other things you know that there's a psychology that goes into it which obviously plays a massive part there's something else there's a component that is more than just how aerodynamic is your position can you hold it and what are your power numbers there's something else and i suppose that's you know that's that's a wonderful thing because actually it makes it exciting in a way that otherwise it might not be.

1:06:40It'd be much more kind of metronomic. I mean, you see it with that Biggum's attempts and Dalsett doing it. There's all the talk of the pressure as well. And that's obviously, you also have the change of where people do it at altitude or not altitude. And obviously, you know, you just might turn up and you don't have a good day. Yeah, and that was Dalsett's thing. He got COVID a couple of weeks or a month or something before the attempt. How can you mitigate that in your training? That just is. And then if you can't bounce back in time, because everything's booked in, you can't be like, yeah, I'll just push that back because it's all tied in with sponsorship and coverage.

1:07:14He did push it back there, didn't he? Or did he get covered again? Did he push it back? No, that's right. That's true. That is right. He did push it back. But he would have been aiming for a date. It still makes, you know, big change. It still makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. But we should also mention that Will... Jörgveld. Jörgveld did break the UCI hour record for the MC5 category. so far, paracyclists. His distance was really impressive as well. He absolutely dominated the previous record. 51.471, which is, yeah, which is amazing. And he would probably also, I mean, I don't want to misquote this, but he would fit into the realm of Ed Clancy's new book's audience.

1:07:56So that is true. That is fair play. That's what I can say to that. Fair play. Amazing. There we go. That answers the question that I asked Ed. does your power drop off as you get older and your endurance can increase? And the answer would be not if you're Will Bergfeld. Yeah, 46. And he's doing that distance. That is unbelievable. That is absolutely unbelievable. But it's all unbelievable. Charlie Townfield, 53k. Unbelievable. Incredible. Yeah. Because we had one of our guys, our erstwhile colleague, Mr. Stu Bowers, try to do an hour record. Obviously, he is but a mere mortal. But once upon a time, he was a very good rider.

1:08:33and he trained and trained and trained and put everything into it and got loads of fancy pants kit and stuff and I think did like 48k, which is obviously pretty damn good. But like, that's quite far off. So it's hard. The hour record. In summary, the hour record, one hour long and hard to beat. It's also, if you think about that, you do an FTP. Yeah. And they're cooked at the end. And you're also trying to make sure you've got the right line along the track because you're not adding another several kilometres to your effort. Yeah. Whilst you're also cooked riding it, you know, with fixed gear bikes.

1:09:09I did like that. I did like that where Ed said that Rod Ellingworth used to drill them about riding just on the line. And you think, like, that's such a neat, easy win. If you can just, like, absolutely, like, drill your guys just to stay on that, just to stay on that blue line, not go over. But then every single lap, every single pedal stroke, you're making that incremental gain over somebody, you know, another team who's like slightly less disciplined. So, you know, all those marginal gains, they add up. And which ultimately, that's British for its legacy, really, isn't it? Marginal gains. That is British for its legacy.

1:09:47So we salute you, Dave. We salute you, Charlie. We salute you, Will. And Ed Clancy, one of the most underrated riders of this generation or last generation or whatever, however you define that generation. Yeah. Yeah. And I do wonder what he could have done if he just had transitioned into the road. Because I suppose there was, why not race crits? They were really fun. There was lots of racing, presumably a bit of money in it back in the day. But had his time been again, I wonder if he might have just ended up on the road and been, because I'm sure he would have just been, yeah, as in proper long road racers, not just, because he did race road too, but not fast crits.

1:10:21I reckon he would have been an absolute beast, a sort of Ian Stannard type rider. Yeah, he's got a good sprint now. I think you'd have to back him as a sprinter. and you back him in a sprint yeah good engine good sprint anyway right we'll leave it there we've done enough rambling i have once again uh highlighted the paucity in my cycling journalistic knowledge and we probably pissed off a few people in the process so it's time to go will thank you very much for joining me and listeners thank you very much for joining us and we'll be back in a couple of weeks time with another episode

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