144. Emma Pooley: Tour de France winner, Oat to Joy author and pro-athlete sage

0:00Robyn: So, fun pub quiz fact. The processor in the Hammerhead Karoo bike computer is about a thousand times faster than the one that put man on the moon. And it also has 64 gigs of storage to store global maps and ride data, which is literally a million times more than the Apollo 11 guidance computer had. And yet, it's smaller than a bar of soap and weighs just 118 grams, slightly less than the Apollo system, which I think was 29.5 kilos. To be fair, it took eight days to get to the moon and back, as it's about 380 ,000 kilometres, which is only slightly longer than most Audaxes, and the crew is good for up to 35 hours.

0:39Robyn: But I still reckon Neil and Buzz's minds would have been blown by the crew's detailed but simple mapping. It's all free to download, it's available offline, and it includes base maps, heat maps, popular routes, topography, and even the surface you're riding on. the Karoo can flag up upcoming gravel sections as part of its turn-by-turn navigation. It also does loads more besides. I mean, I don't know if Apollo 11 ran Spotify or could connect to Bluetooth headphones. So check out our full review of the Hammerhead Karoo at cyclist.co.uk and see why we gave it our Cyclist Recommended Award. Then head over to hammerhead.io and use the code cyclist to get a free heart rate strap with every Karoo purchase.

1:21Robyn: just be sure to add the strap to your cart then apply the code at checkout

1:30Robyn: welcome back to another episode of the cyclist magazine podcast i'm will stricks and i'm joined today by robin davison robin how are you it's dark outside it's miserable it's quite warm but we're getting towards the end of the year how are you feeling miserable yeah story of my life really um i'm feeling yeah because i feel like you know how much i love autumn and halloween and now that's in the rear view mirror and i'm like oh halloween's like your your christmas what do you do with santa like exactly and now it's the consequences of my actions and it's winter and everything's miserable outside and i hate it it's absolutely disgusting but you know well halloween wasn't great to see us like i went out on halloween and it was just like checking down with rain.

2:17Robyn: I thought that is the worst kind of trick-or-treating where the kids were really putting up a strong fight. No, that sucks. But now I'm an auntie, there's going to be an extra level to Halloween in the upcoming years. Like, we're going to go crazy. I'm going to dress her up as a pumpkin. It is what it is. But doesn't that also mean that you might look forward to Christmas more? Oh yeah, 100%. I just deeply love Halloween more than Christmas. But I am excited because I'm the youngest in my family, not that anyone listening to this cares. But as the youngest, And now I can, I'm trying to word this in a way that if there's any kids listening, nothing.

2:52I'm just excited to see Santa again, you know. There we go. Brilliant.

3:00Robyn: That's the one. We have a really great interview coming up today. And I think we'll just get into it and do some other chat in the outro for those that want to stick around that far. we have the great Emma Pooley who was you know if you don't know her achievements include include there's way more than this this is just as a pro cyclist she's also got a first class degree from Cambridge and is an actual scientist so ignoring like the really actually impressive part and going to her cycling career she she won silver in the town trial in Beijing in 2008 Olympics whilst also helping britain win the gold in the road race which was you know also pretty good um won the world championships time trial in 2010 had national championships time trial wins twice and a road race win won trofea binder twice plue fleshwell on lc jacob's montreal those are the one days she also won giro del trentino tour de britannia tour de l 'eau tour de lardache grand bruc feminina and obviously this is pre tour de france fam which we'll get on to in the conversation she also won several giro d 'atelier stages mountains classifications came second overall a couple of times post pro career she's won taiwan kom hope route she's done marathons triathlons ironmans iron men iron man's i don't know iron people iron men um ultra trails out du es triathlon she won the duathlon world championship she was an everesting world record holder and she was one of the founders of La Tour Ontier which was a key campaign in bringing the Tour de France fam to reality.

4:38Robyn: What a woman. Anyway so now alongside all of that she has got a book out, just goes on and on, it's called Oat to Joy Recipes and somewhat of an autobiography, that is a pun, which is a mixture of recipe book and autobiography as the title kind have alluded to there are 43 oat based recipes including vegan options and we'll get on to why she's done it and some of her favorite things but yeah oats amapoli great combination let's get into the interview so i thought actually we'd just jump straight into the book because you know what better place to start than the book. Do you have a copy? I'm sorry, I'm really...

5:26Robyn: We do. Oh, fantastic. Yes. It's currently in our photography studio because it's going to go, it's going to be featured in, so it'll be the next magazine which will go to press in a couple of weeks. You can tell how organised I am. It will be in our Christmas issue which comes out in November. Oh, you better. Fantastic. And then we'll feature it online as well. Oh, thank you. I also don't have a copy with me because I did have one in the office but I sold it to a colleague. what i what i do have is my postcards which i think are pretty cool so i can show you cool yes uh okay so let's start with the book oat to joy recipes and somewhat of an autobiography which is about i think it's 43 oat based recipes which includes vegan options for those that for those that need them and i think it stemmed from your wanting for more natural foods for training rather than a lot of the processed foods.

6:19Robyn: I think that's what I was reading. So what inspired you to turn your, and you've been doing this for a number of years, I think you've been making these recipes. What inspired you to turn your oat venture into a book? I like the pun. You get extra points for puns. Especially this is one I didn't think of. I didn't think of oat venture. No, genuinely, I've been making the recipes for over 10 years, probably 15 years now. And I often would make a huge batch of oat-based muffins or cake. And then I'd take them on rides and sharing with friends and everyone would say well most people say oh I can have the recipe and so I did share the recipes around and at some point I thought I had so many recipes and it was so popular like everyone who tried them liked them and the reason I wanted to make it into a book was I felt like they're quite different to what you can buy in a shop and they're quite different to the other recipes I could find out there so these days if you google like the ingredients come in your cupboard you can always find a recipe like I think there are a lot of people who don't really believe in recipe books anymore because why bother why spend the money on them I think a recipe book is a really beautiful thing I love food I love cooking I have a whole stack of recipe books which I often just look at the pictures of and then I'm like well I don't have half the things or but my recipes are all very very easy and I you can freestyle on them and a lot of people do I've heard from so many people are like oh yeah I put in egg or whatever and I just thought they'd make a really nice collection I thought they'd help other people like me who want to eat real food when they do sport, not just cycling.

7:43There are other sports available. And yeah, I just spent a lot of time refining them and making them good. And so I thought I'd put them into one nice book and make it look good. And then I thought I'd add some stories because like a lot of the recipes had something to do with my racing days and my experiences as a pro cyclist and some adventures I had. And I thought they might be interesting stories for people. And then it turned out that writing them took me like two plus hours. So two plus years, it was awful. It turns out I'm a terrible writer.

8:10Robyn: so it's a good thing i'm not a journalist so were these recipes something that you were using to fuel yourself when you're racing yeah not right well racing later not not bike racing i have to be honest here like i'd love to lie and say yeah yeah i only i won the world championships off a recipe number three no like i eat them a lot in training um which you have to train your nutrition while you're training your legs let's say um otherwise you find you run into problems when you try and eat in races. So in some ways it contributes to racing. But now in races, you didn't normally have the flexibility to sort of take exactly what you wanted to eat.

8:47Those were different times maybe. So I know that a lot of pro teams have chefs and things. But I'd certainly eat them for breakfast before racing. But often, you know, at a stage race, you don't have facilities to cook. You eat the bars and jars that are available. And I'm not totally against the sort of commercial sports nutrition. I just um I felt like you know I'd eat it in certain training sessions to practice but other than that I wanted to eat real food in my life and there's a time and a place for gels and fancy bars but um yeah but that's not every day and I did you know I used to do a lot of training I trained every day and now that I don't race so much I definitely don't want to eat gels they're really expensive as well and uh and they're kind of gross so obviously the big theme is oats what

9:32Robyn: makes oats so i was going to try and do another pun but you can't really make great into oats um yeah so why oats and are they potentially i think or even though they are everywhere are they the most underrated food i think they're one of the most underrated foods because um they are incredibly nutritionally like rich and they're really cheap so no one really calls them a superfood like quinoa gets all the gets all the love and it feels like it's a superfood but is too cheap to be a superfood so people don't market it like um there isn't a lot of money to be made from oats unless you dress them up in fancy packaging and sell them as power porridge or something and um yeah they just they've got like a great balance of carbohydrate complex and and also protein and they're a whole food they're also cheap and to us in the northern like unless you live around the equator they're like they're local so also ecologically really good that require a lot of water yeah they're wonderful things so I do think they're underrated and I for me it's just kind of accidental that I use them in my recipes I I did try various other things so um I was quite inspired by the feed zone cookbook and my idea was to write a book that's similar but different obviously because it's me writing it and um and I wanted my recipes to be easier than the feed zone cookbook recipes um they're already pretty easy but um I want them to work I like I I don't like things that fall apart in my pocket when I'm cycling.

10:55Yeah, and oats just works really well for me. So I tried rice. I tried a few bean-based recipes. Not a great idea during sport, turns out. I don't recommend. But at least, you know, it was really, it was 10 years of innovation that went into testing the recipes. And also the flavor profile, obviously, is very important. So oats just turned out to be the thing. And I live in Switzerland, and they're really into beer shemisli here. And they invented beer shemisli. And they don't really do porridge, sadly, but we're working on that. And yes, you can always get cheap oats. You know, I think there are some places in like France and Spain where to get oats, like the fine oat flakes, you have to sort of go to a health food shop.

11:31And yeah, it's just that here where I live and they really used to get hold of. And with the book as well, I sort of have two questions. Which is your personal favourite, like maybe the one that you go to to cook more often? And which one do you think that people listening to this right now would appreciate the most? I think I've got two favorites. The one I go to the most often is just the really plain, like the very first recipe, which is just basic oat loaf, because it is so easy. And if you work out the cost of the ingredients, it's less than three quid for a loaf of bread. And it's not got any sugar or fruit or anything.

12:11And it's just oats and yogurt and baking powder and a bit of salt. And it sounds so boring. But honestly, I actually really like the taste of it. And I often eat it with meals instead of bread like you can mix it up and have it in the oven within four minutes and so that's my go-to just because it's easy and I really like it and I don't have time to do as much exercise anymore so I want to minimize my sugar consumption really and then my also favorite is the carrot cake poffins one because I really like carrot cake and I'm a little bit proud of the innovation I did because I love the frosting on carrot cake like cream cheese frosting but there's no way really to carry that on the bike without making a mess because you get frosting all over your pocket or the cling film or whatever and um and i realized that you could like put the frosting in the middle of the muffin like you like a jam donut and then put more of the muffin mix over the top the oat mix over the top and then it bakes into the middle and then you have the delicious frosting but it doesn't make a mess and as an engineer i'm quite proud of that as an if i could have patented it i would but sadly i don't think it's possible anyway watch out next season i reckon everyone will be making stuffed muffins and that will be that will be my invention really but um those are the two that i'm most that i most like and i think yeah i think readers might really like the carrot cake one too because it's such a such a delicious flavor and it's so healthy that there's there again there's hardly any added sugar in it it gets the sweetness from carrots and raisins which aren't the most sweet things and um and they're really easy to make like i think i've classed it as like a middle difficult recipe but none of the recipes in the book are like proper hard so i think one reviewer was like yeah i don't really agree with the the easy to hard ratings because they're all easy, which I'm relieved at because I'm not the best chef.

13:51So to me, putting the frosting in the middle of each muffin is already hard, but it's just using a teaspoon. So it's not that difficult. Yeah. So I think people might like that. And I've got quite a few on that theme with a filling that doesn't make a mess. So chocolate filling with a banana muffin and stuff like that. So they're all kind of the same idea, really.

14:11Robyn: And talking of oats, what's your coffee order? Are you oat milk to keep on the oat thing or are you not? And sometimes, like oat milk in coffee is one of the plant milks I do genuinely like. But I have to say that I've gone through phases of trying to be more vegan. But milk in my tea and coffee, like real milk, is one thing that I really struggle to replace. And I get a lot of hate from vegans for that. But I really do my best in terms of the environment. But yeah, oat milk and coffee is okay. But I'm not very good at making it. And when I make coffee at home, I can't get the froth on the oat milk very good.

14:43and I have tried the recipes with oat yogurt because I thought like the vegan options but it feels a bit wrong to put the oats back together with the oat yogurt I don't know it just feels like like a lot of work just separating them and then put them together so actually I find soya yogurt works really well and if you don't like buying processed soy products then you can just make yourself at home with soy milk that's fairly straightforward and um it really they taste really good with soy yogurt I find so yeah the vegan options are normally pretty good

15:11Robyn: And then on a similar nutrition thing, you said obviously you did have to use gels and stuff even more recently in your racing when you went past cycling, even though you still carried on winning, which we'll get to. How much has the process, the classic branded nutrition, changed since when you started racing? I think towards the end of my racing career, there were some pretty tasty bars out there. So I felt like there was a big change over the course of my racing career. I think I first did a road race in 2005. Oh my goodness, the gels were really gross. And one year, it's in the book, but there was one year, my second or third year racing, I was on a team that had these gels that, there must have been something about the balance of fructose to glucose and they gave everyone on the team wins, not just me.

15:58And this is quite a common problem. Well, people don't talk about much because, you know, who wants to talk about wind? But basically it made you extremely uncomfortable during the race and even the drive home in the team car was awful. And they tasted like crap. But now I think there's more than two or three brands. There's several brands making quite tasty bars and gels. I do still occasionally use a gel in a running race if I really have to. Because eating an oat muffin while trying to run a 330 day is not going to work very well. Apart from space in the pockets. But most of my sportly status is quite a lot slower paced.

16:35And so I take real snacks.

16:38Robyn: Yeah. And you can stop at a cafe if you're not racing. yeah i do think i think when there's been a lot of progress in since i stopped racing which i don't follow it too precisely but i've heard that there's a lot of people putting a lot of study and then practice into trying to take on more carbohydrate per hour so basically the more you can take on that you minimize the losses in terms of energy and um and you hear these numbers like oh so and so can take up like absorb 120 grams an hour of carbs and that is that's as impressive as six to watch the kilo that's a lot of training has gone into that and um you're probably pretty fed up of rice and stuff by the end of it so maybe when they're doing all those carbs they need a stuffed muffin and that's the way they do need a stuffed muffin i mean everyone needs a stuffed muffin in their life i mean that's that's enough to sell it for me i one of the i think the key discussions around around this about the book about healthy eating about gels is about this discussion around weight in pro sports a lot of it but cycling especially has a big discussion how has that changed throughout the time you were racing so obviously you're a climber so that's probably well time trial this class is read all sorts of abilities but you were a very good climber probably still are um no sadly not you know what but you'll be better than me but I can remember I can remember how good it felt so obviously that's the part of the sport where the weight discussion really ramps up what was that like when you were racing and how did that change develop over your career because it's probably it is still an issue now it is an issue and it i'm afraid it will always be an issue in sport not just in cycling but in all sports where weight is a component of performance which it unavoidably is like if you race then power to weight is often a deciding factor not in all races but in anything that involves acceleration or uphill and um and And, you know, it's really unfair because some people can, in a very healthy, not necessarily natural, but can very healthily lose weight to be, let's say, racing weight.

18:39And other people, the way they do it, it's probably really unhealthy for them. And you can't really tell from the outside. So you can't really look at someone and say, oh, they're skinny. They must be unwell. They must have an eating disorder or they must be damaging their body. And so as an outsider looking at the sport, a lot of people look very thin and it's easy to sort of judge it very negatively. or and possibly even worse to say oh well to be a good cyclist i've got to be really skinny and that's the most important thing and and both those things are not true i i think what what upset me when i was racing was um very unscientific and unprofessional ways of looking at it like i had team directors who would say oh you know basically the skinnier the better and you should all be skinny and he'd say that to the sprinters who frankly it was totally irrelevant like because like power to weigh obviously it matters at some level but what matters then was their sprint power And it was way more important that they were happy and at a weight that kept them happy rather than that he sort of mentally bullied them about being not skinny because they were never going to be a climber.

19:39They won sprint races, like massive races. And I just think that's quite damaging. That kind of attitude is very unprofessional. It's not scientific. It's a form of bullying. I think that happens less. From what I've heard, I think most of the teams are way more professional about how they deal with diet and weight. And that's great. I'm sure there were still some teams run by bastards, like the people I describe in the book with their dumb attitudes to bread and you weren't allowed to eat the inside of the bread because it would make you fat. But for some reason, the outside of the bread was fine.

20:08Anyway, idiots. But I think most of the teams now have a way more professional attitude because you win more races as a team if you have a healthy and professional attitude to diet. And I think we heard a lot of the discussion around the women's, the Tour de France femme this year with weight. I just think we've got to be realistic that the fastest weight is not necessarily a long-term healthy weight for men or for women. And I think we talk about it more in women's sport, Funneline, but I suspect there's a lot of male cyclists who, when they're like at their best racing weight, they're not long-term healthy.

20:41And we just need to be honest that that shouldn't be a role model for most of us who don't live off cycling. And I think that discussion is more honest now. I just wish I saw more understanding in like grassroots cycling about how yeah skinniness is not the be all and end all and it shouldn't be our goal it really shouldn't be our goal and unfortunately it's quite easy to look at the appearance of a sport and think oh well if i want to be like them i've got to look like them which is uh yeah it's really uh it can be a bit destructive especially at the grassroots level yeah we've um so we previously spoke to people like emma finucan um the track cyclist who admitted that she had her own struggles and she spoke about on this podcast for you when when you were racing do you think that potentially that it could have been beneficial to maybe have sort of an outside figure maybe not attached to the team so as you say maybe like not the the bastards in charge um just to sort of have that scientific look but not influenced by already like negative perceptions like for example you need to be super skinny blah blah blah do you think that there should have been something in place like that yeah and and look I'm not saying that all the people who ran the teams I was on were idiots about nutrition like I was on some teams really good support there's just a few examples that were really really bad and um yeah you're right like an external like basically a nutritional expert advisor that nowadays I think is mostly within most good teams anyway.

22:18And I actually had that through British Cycling. So they had really, really good nutritional advice from British Cycling. And, you know, I never lived in Manchester, so I would see them tops once a year. But I mean, they had brilliant staff around strength and conditioning and physios and nutrition. So I did have that. It's just that the day-to-day is hard. And I also had a great coach, I should say, but he didn't really get involved in nutrition. And maybe I would have benefited from more support there because I mean I also have my struggles uh based on comparing myself to others and being told that the skinnier the better I actually found out it took me a few years but I found out that the more I ate the better my results um so weights like being overweight was never my problem being under fueled in training and or racing but especially in training was much more of a problem so yeah I had to find out for myself but I probably would have benefited from that but but life was busy and yeah there's only so much time so do you think that discussion then about

23:19Robyn: eating 120 grams of carbs per hour has actually helped in that department then yeah i think so i think it's really cool because it like it makes consuming more aspirational rather than um the conversation was previously a lot about limiting and and and now it's about like oh this is what we're training to this is the goal like or look at this this pro who wins stuff like wow look at how much and um i think it's it's an sort of inspiring way of showing what i discovered for myself that often the more you eat the faster you go and like to be fair if you're like on a coffee ride you don't need to be stuffing down 120 grams of carbs an hour um but but then you also don't need to be riding an aero cervello but sometimes we do on coffee rides and that's cool like it's cool as a grassroots amateur cyclist to be inspired by the pros and i just um i have to say that if I'm on a coffee ride, I'd rather eat cake than a gel.

24:10But you know, that's what I want to everyone. Yeah, no. And I really think that the conversation has turned to like, the performance benefits of nutrition, rather than the performance benefits of not eating and self-denial. And I, I hope that we're reducing slightly the conversation, like, it really pisses me off when people say, Oh, yeah, you've earned that pizza, or you've earned that piece of cake. And I feel like I don't need to earn a pizza, like pizza is food, and I wouldn't eat pizza every day. but there's nothing inherently unhealthy about it you know you roughly keep your calorie balance okay and um i don't need to i don't need pizza as a reward for sport or ice cream or whatever it is but like i love sport and i love food and those two things they work together really well but you shouldn't i think it's really a bit screwed up let's say to like to like deny yourself a certain food until you've done a certain thing in sport and then you allowed it as like a as like a reward it is like victorian children with bread and jam or something it's ridiculous like we're adults you know we can decide and and okay it's a bit of a silly joke among cyclists like to earn the pizza but um or whatever it is but but i think it can be really destructive to younger people or kids in the sport to have this like this weird like reward system like semi-religious denial thing and um yeah i think it's greatly improved in the sport jumping off that you get a lot of times when

25:32Robyn: especially at more attritional races, get referred to as an eating competition. Because, you know, like we're saying, if you can keep up eating that many carbs per hour, then you're more likely to win the race. And then for amateurs, I guess that's where we get the, if you're not training that constantly, that's when you get the fatigue of eating too many gels or bars and stuff. And I guess that's where people should be eating stuffed muffins and things like that. yeah uh you don't maybe you have to i don't know how often you have to train it like the last time i tried really seriously to train it taking on carbs whilst racing was in was two years ago and it was in running and i i didn't certainly didn't do it in every training run but like the longer runs i'd practice the nutritional tactics as well and yeah it's really important because it's not even that you um you just don't absorb it it's that when you eat a certain amount of food but you don't absorb it you end up with an upset stomach which can cause like considerable grief let's say on a on a sportive or a tattoo tour or whatever it is um i've been there although in in ironman and it was uh really quite unpleasant and they have a lot of of like portaloos on ironman but it was still grim so um yeah you don't necessarily want to be using those portaloos so if you can avoid it you don't want to no you never want to use the portaloos do you like it's not the highlight of anyone's life i don't think it's still better than not having a toilet at all but yeah that's true yeah so yeah you do want to practice it if you're um if you're going to do it do and just for the listener the context on you mentioned the Tour de France fan weight discussion just to outline that for anyone that missed that listening so obviously um the race was won by Pauline Ferran-Provost who there was a lot of comments about how much weight she'd lost going into the race but she then did dominate the race so it kind of brought back in a bit of like well she lost the weight which dude then she won is that healthy for people watching is that a good example and obviously that brings a lot of questions in the media to not just her but to other riders um i think demi vollering said 80 of her post-race press conference was about her weight and she also had some comments that i think people tried to run off and make them into a negative thing saying that she was trying to win in a healthy way and be a good example which i think people tried to use in a toxic way twist twisting it how can we approach as media and as public the conversation about weight like that because obviously the fair and provoking she won the race she's clearly doing in a very controlled environment but she won the race how do you talk about that in public without antagonizing the discussion yeah it's really hard and i think that um unfortunately a lot of post-race media is kind of deliberately antagonistic because you get a much more fun comment as your headline if you manage to get something a little bit bitchy let's say and that used to upset me when I was racing and they would try and get me to say anything negative about my teammates on GB and I just thought, let's talk about the bike racing but in general, talking about weight is tricky and I think what Pauline did in speaking out openly about how, yeah, she did lose loads of weight but it was temporary and it's because she wanted to win the bike race and she really wanted to win the bike race and it's her job and she doesn't plan to stay like that and it's not healthy and it's very important, I think, that she said that it's not healthy for her long term and it's not her goal to be that weight.

28:49I think that's absolutely brilliant because she's the hero here. She's the role model and the one who's going to inspire. I mean, all the women racing will, but she's really inspirational. And I think what she said was really important. I think in terms of how the media interacts with athletes, you've got to bear in mind that there's a huge history and backstory to women and weight and body shape around for women. And sometimes as a woman, you feel like whether pro athlete or amateur athlete or whatever you feel like you cannot win because you're either too fat or you're too skinny or you're too musty or you look like a man or oh wow you've got such big calves and like and and it has made me personally very sensitive to any comment about my body so i quite often get people saying like something about my calf muscles and i'm really sensitive like apparently i have huge calves and it really upsets me i don't want to be told that even if it's meant as a nice thing so i think we just need to be bear in mind that you know women's bodies are you know if you're a professional athlete then you know it's your tool let's say but the conversation needs to be kept quite professional and also just you know in post-race interviews it sometimes it really surprises me what is said to women compared to what is said to men and i don't know if anyone ever asked bradley wiggins after he won the tour whether he thought he was setting an unhealthy example to young boys because he lost a ton of weight because boy did he lose weight i'd say his weight change to win the tour was more dramatic than Pauline's, you know, he totally changed how he was as a rider and no one criticised him for setting a bad example.

30:17So I think, yeah, without wanting to sound too feminist about it or like, I just think we need to be aware that there's a different backstory for men and women around body weight issues. And yeah, just keep it professional. It's, you know, they're professional athletes. And yeah, it's definitely a tricky one. It's certainly, you know, food is rightly emotional because it's delicious.

30:39Robyn: yeah exactly and a similar weight but not body weight conversation as a shorter rider what's your view on the uci bike weight limit is it outdated oh it's so unfair yes it's so unfair yeah when i was racing so i think to go back to body weight like i am my lightest i was probably 47 kilos so the the minimum bike rate was one seventh of my weight and i would have been racing some people who were 70 kilos probably we might not have been racing each other for the same thing because we might have been different kinds of riders but that's a 10th versus a 7th that's a huge percentage difference and if you think like how hard you train how hard you have to train to make one percent improvement in power numbers over an hour like it yeah it is outdated and it it was outdated even 10 or 15 years ago like I had weights in my bike um even then and it's supposed to be for safety but most of the bullshit rules the uci comes out with are supposed to be for safety and like the hands of our wits thing is another one and you know there are some brilliant people at the uci but you do feel like some of the rules that come out are just total crap really um so yeah that's one of them but it is tricky because you do need to have some kind of safety test for bikes but you have it for cars and there's no there's no minimum weight for a car is there and they do crash testing on cars and so you could um conceivably do crash testing on bikes for racing and strength testing i mean like there's lots of lots of tools from engineers for testing things for strength and rigidity so and we have that whole thing with handlebars as well which i think they announced recently that they were scaling back it is almost like they forgot women's cycling women's cyclists existed yeah exactly exactly or smaller guys like it's yeah it really um yeah that was hilarious um i raced on the 36 in case anyone's interested sending me to handlebar and i feel like i've like really grown up now because on my gravel bike i have a 38 and it feels huge yeah

32:48Robyn: So fun pub quiz fact. The processor in the Hammerhead Karoo bike computer is about a thousand times faster than the one that put man on the moon. And it also has 64 gigs of storage to store global maps and ride data, which is literally a million times more than the Apollo 11 guidance computer had. And yet it's smaller than a bar of soap and weighs just 118 grams, slightly less than the Apollo system which I think was 29.5 kilos. To be fair it took eight days to get to the moon and back as it's about 380 ,000 kilometers which is only slightly longer than most Audaxes and the crew is good for up to 35 hours but I still reckon Neil and Buzz's minds would have been blown by the crew's detailed but simple mapping.

33:35Robyn: It's all free to download, it's available offline and includes base maps, heat maps, popular routes, topography, and even the surface you're riding on. The Karoo can flag up upcoming gravel sections as part of its turn-by-turn navigation. It also does loads more besides. I mean, I don't know if Apollo 11 ran Spotify or could connect to Bluetooth headphones. So check out our full review of the Hammerhead Karoo at cyclist.co.uk and see why we gave it our cyclist recommended award. Then head over to hammerhead.io and use the code cyclist to get a free heart rate strap with every Karoo purchase. Just be sure to add the strap to your cart, then apply the code at checkout.

34:20Obviously, we want to talk about your career as well. If we go right back to the start, according to the internet, which famously never lies, you were a runner first and then took up cycling at university. What got you into cycling at that point in your life? Yeah, I had no plans to be a cyclist. I got a stress factor running when I was, I think, 20 or 21. And so my second year at university, and I was devastated because it sounds really sad, but like, I've always loved running. And it was also a big part of my social life. And I think I realized afterwards that it was kind of, I don't say I was addicted, but like, it was a form of self care, I think is the modern way of putting it like, like meditation or antidepressants basically and I really didn't cope well with not being able to run every day I had run like literally every day so I I brought a bike as cross training because I got I mean I tried swimming but you know there's only so much chlorine I can take in my life and so I um I brought a bike and um which was too big for me and I hated the saddle and so I I really hated cycling I think it was also winter it was really cold I had running gear and not even like good running here like scruffy but i sort of had to because i had i think it was eight weeks i wasn't allowed to run and um i went and i found it miserable alone so i went on um on like a club ride with the cambridge cycling club and and that was also pretty miserable but it was slightly less miserable with other people and they knew where all the cafes were and so it was the first time i'd done a sport where you stop for coffee which was like well this is pretty impressive and but it sounds really lame but i was just like get through the eight weeks and i can stop fucking cycling and get away from this saddle um and um by the time eight weeks were up there were some things that i liked about cycling so i i kept at it and um i got a new saddle which made a big difference and um yeah i think it was mostly because it was they're just not such lovely people in a club and it became a social activity as well and and not like i don't want to say i'm anti-social but like i'm not like into parties and like big group hangouts but there's something about the way you socialize on a bike that i've realized like many years later that maybe it really suits me.

36:26Like you, it feels sociable to ride alongside someone for hours and say nothing. And so like, for me, that works really well or to talk, but you know what I mean? Like it's quite a, it's quite a special form of interaction and it's, it's quite different to like sitting face to face to someone with someone and like talking at them. So, so after eight weeks I was into cycling and, um, as well, I was still more of a runner. And, um, yeah, a few years later I got a bike that really fitted me and, um, did a bit of triathlon, uh, before I did cycling and a friend persuaded me to go to a road race. And I guess what got me to racing was that it turned out I was much better at bike racing than at triathlon or running.

37:03And that was really exciting. When I say better, like I was mediocre, but yeah, I came fourth at nationals in my fourth race or something. And that was super exciting and a way better level than I'd ever been in running. And so, yeah, so I did a bit of racing, but this was all alongside a job and I moved countries for my job and I lost the same Cambridge Cycling Club because I was somewhere else. And so it wasn't like a direct path to racing or racing well. I just did a bit on the side. And it really was a series of lucky coincidences that I got some results and ended up at the Beijing Olympics and got a result there.

37:36It wasn't planned. And if you'd ask me, after four weeks, I'd have been like, no, I can't wait to stop cycling. I hate it.

37:44Robyn: When you say you got a result at the Olympics, wouldn't that be you got a silver medal? I think that's, yeah. It's definitely a result. it was a result yeah it was particularly good because i didn't expect to even be there a year before right so and then i was selected really as nicole's domestique she needed climbers to help her in that race it was had a couple of decent climbs in and then it was so many lucky coincidences like um the worlds the year before nicole dropped out of the time trial i got to ride the time trial with one week's notice and probably the ride of my life probably the best result of my life in comparison to my experience and equipment because I came eighth at Worlds on a bike and this is how the bike did not fit me I was on a proper team then it was an awesome team but we didn't have much budget it was a little a little specialized team in Switzerland and we had two time trial bikes for the whole team so I had the smaller one that day and and it wasn't very small and like you know the week before we were like changing things trying to get it to fit me and there's no way it really fit me but i came eighth at worlds on that bike with like kind of no specific training just a lot of willpower and enthusiasm and if you get a top 10 at worlds the year before at the olympics it qualifies another spot so then we had two spots in beijing which meant i got to wear the time trial as well because otherwise nicole would have had the only spot because she was you know she was clearly our headline rider she'd just got gold in the road race and um and then the course in beijing really suited me because it was just up a big hill and downhill and so i'm not like i'm very happy with the job but i'm just trying to explain that i was incredibly lucky like i had to be a series of just incredible coincidences for that to work out yeah i'm very lucky i'm very uh lucky and very grateful to nobody even faked but i'm grateful that it happened yeah yeah i mean that pretty good pretty good year for that team if you got silver on the time trail go on the road race that must have been pretty special to be a part of it was amazing yeah and the funniest thing is that um The year after, so that would have been 2009, I was getting the train back from a race in France, a race called the Tour de Lode, which was like the hardest race and the best race that no one's ever heard of.

39:47It was like our Tour de France before we had a Tour de France. Ten days, really hard. And don't ask me why I was getting the train back. Well, I know I was getting the train back because it was the easiest way to get back from a race. And I met this British family on the train and this is the year after the Beijing Olympics and they're like, oh, you're into cycling. Oh, you're English. Oh, did you see the British team? Oh, aren't they amazing? didn't they do well at the olympics and i was like yeah they did really well and it was so funny because i was a little bit sad that they didn't recognize me and then i spoke to my coach and he was like well one you were wearing like an aero helmet and a like tinted visor like who's gonna see your face anywhere when you're racing and two no one expects you don't expect to see like an olympic medalist on the train like they go in helis or limousines and shit like that so um but it was really funny i had a great conversation with these these people about how great i was and they didn't know and how so how then beijing obviously you've done a lot of races between

40:45Robyn: olympics but then going into london 2012 which i think you came sixth in the time trial how how was that experience compared it was like night and day it's so funny because um it you know that Do you know the saying, expectation is the thief of joy? I think that's the perfect example of it. Beijing, I had no expectations. I was so happy just to have the Olympic uniform. I was overjoyed to be part of the Olympics. By the time London came around, I had reasonable expectations because I still wasn't actually racing full-time. I was working part-time, but not much. But I had raced at the highest level.

41:24I'd won a load of World Cups. I'd won the World Championships in time trial. And so, and the home Olympics thing, and there was obviously a big focus from British cycling, a lot of investment in gear and training. And so I felt like I expected to do better. Like I would have been happy with just one place better. That would have been fine. but um but I didn't of course I came sixth instead of instead of first which is what I wanted and and at the time that felt inexcusable and I just felt like I'd let myself and the team down which is it's kind of ridiculous because I'd done everything quite well like I'd I think my training and everything was spot on and you just you you can't make up for courses like the course was different it was basically just a flat course and and that was is is hard to get over the physiological differences of different courses in different years you don't get that in many sports um that the course can be so different from one year to another and I'm not trying to use an excuse like I just I don't think I could have won on that course in London and I think like now from where I am as Jekka most of my cycling is commuting I'd be very happy with six of the Olympics I think I was in pretty good shape but I was pretty upset at the time because I you know I wanted to do better and it felt there was a lot of media scrutiny and um and the the rider who won kristen armstrong she had won in beijing as well and actually she'd been my teammate in between so i know her quite well and i really admire her um but she'd she'd actually quit after beijing to go and have a baby oh no it was after 2009 i raced with her 2009 and then she quit to have a baby so she must have had a baby in 2010 and most of us were like fantastic kristen is no longer on the seen so many chances of winning to be brutally honest and uh then she bloody came back despite having had a baby and won in london and which is obviously i mean i didn't i wasn't going to win anyway but some journalist asked me in the media mixed own straight off the race you know when you're you're most upset and emotional he's like oh so you know so chris and armstrong went off and had a baby and she won you know how do you feel about that and i felt like he was just saying like she can win after having a baby and you know you don't even have kids and you can't bloody win the race so that's what I mean about you know um you're quite emotional at that point and um and I think I said something like what are you trying to say you're like nothing yeah you feel like I'd really let the side down at that point and you mentioned as well obviously riders now are kind of finding themselves but cycling is a a full-time job but back then you mentioned that you know you were going to the Olympics and you were still holding down a part-time job and even then the financial side of women's cycling was less than it is now how on earth did you balance that like what kind of job did you have I didn't balance it very well and and that was even like I just had years and years of not enough sleep and not a proper holiday let's say like so my holidays from work were training camps and racing and my holidays from biking were in the lab but I was very lucky because there's a lot of jobs you couldn't do that with um so I um I was I had a research job at um I was doing a PhD which should have taken four years and it took eight so you can see how part-time I was roughly and I was really lucky because my professor who is a quite a famous athlete in her own right Sarah Springman um she was one of the first women who went to Kona as as an Ironman athlete actually and um quite amazing anyway I was it was one of those coincidences I mentioned that just incredible luck that she was my professor and she was incredibly supportive and she said look I'll make it I'll make it work you can go part-time I'll make it work she was so supportive and um and I think it meant a lot to her that I got that medal in Beijing like it really did and I I would have happily ditched the PhD and not bothered writing it up I felt like I had to finish the thesis because she'd support me and leave her in the lurch but yeah and and so I had I had a very cushy job a lot of people don't like even if you work in And most people in research, certainly in Switzerland, they work really hard because they have to teach alongside their own research.

45:22And I got let off teaching at least one term a year. And so I had it really, I was very cushy. For most people, it wasn't possible. And so a lot of people had it a lot harder than me. And I'm really glad to see the increasing professionalization. Like it's really important for the sport because inevitably people will always compare between the men's and the women's sport. And you can never be a totally one-to-one comparison, but it's even worse when 95 % of the peloton has a part-time or full-time job. How are you supposed to train enough for a sport like cycling that is super, super long? So yeah, it's really cool.

45:56And I hope that it will progress even further so that all the domestiques also don't have to work because that makes a big difference because then the range within the peloton is tighter. And I would like to just mention there that Cyclist Alliance, they've done amazing work on wage surveys and improving conditions generally in the sport, but especially because, you know, I never knew one of the other people, like you heard rumours, but you didn't dare discuss it. And that helps to suppress people in underpaid positions, let's say. So it's really cool. Cyclist Alliance, they do amazing work. A lot of the improvements we've seen in women's cycling are down to the Cyclist Alliance pushing for it and for better media coverage.

46:36So, yeah, we can thank them really for the women's tour and stuff.

46:40Robyn: But you're also, you were part of the Tour on TA campaign campaign that was trying to bring back the women's tour de france so how was it for you especially like considering the kind of variety you were you could these kind of races that you know women's tour de france probably suit your mix of the no time trial and climbing how did that feel for you obviously part of it's probably a bit of like i wish this happened during my career but how did that feel for you to be part of that movement for it to finally you know get pushed through um yeah that's a good question because a lot of people just assume that it like weirdly mixed feeling so um i'm really really glad it's there but yeah there's there was a bit of me that's upset that i never got to race it myself um and some friends said like oh but you could you could go back to it and like no no you don't understand it's not even just the age like i have a different life now and i love my job and i found racing really stressful and there's so much to catch back up it would take me five years to get there but it's more that like yeah there's this there's this strong like oh what if or if only I could have raced that and um and so I haven't apart from following people who I know who race I don't watch cycling that much but I did go um to the final stage of the women's tour this year I've got friends who live near Morzine and I went with friends and um I watched them on the on the juplan as they came over and and I cried like it was absolutely amazing like um it was like it was everything I ever dreamed of like um that women's I think could be and that I would have loved to have been a part of and so it was like this weird like happy and and like regret at the same time and it was like overall a very positive experience like I'm super glad I got to watch it but it was um yeah it wasn't like unadulterated joy but overall like it was a very deep experience and I've like for me I think now like I'm really glad I went because now I I feel like I've like laid it to rest you know like yeah it's amazing to see and just the number of people and it was it gave me goosebumps so yeah I'm incredibly happy that it exists and that it's growing every year and yeah I do really wish I could have missed it especially on the shoe plan the level is so high now as well I feel like every year the race has been getting better and better yeah it will and it will keep doing that because like we were saying about wages and professionalisation like you know the top riders there's a physiological limit how much better they can get, but their riders number, 5, 6, 7 on the team or whatever, as they get better supported and more time to train, the teams as a whole will become stronger and it'll become an even more exciting race.

49:18Yeah, awesome to watch. Yeah, and I've still, you know, there's people who I think are heroes of mine who race and I really enjoyed cheering for them on the Duplan. So that was awesome.

49:28Robyn: What do you think is the end goal for this kind of thing? there's lots of discussion about where women's tour de France should go in terms of what you know started off as one week they sort of added a couple of days and a lot of opinions on whether it should be a three-week race to be the same as the men's or whether that's just too much what what's your opinion on that yeah look it's really tricky like cycling has a load of background and traditions and you can't just like steamroll the whole of the calendar as it exists we had this discussion even um how long ago was it now 12 13 years ago when we were doing the talk on ta and for me it was always quite clear there shouldn't really be any difference in men's and women's sports in terms of like the the physical challenge of them and you know having come from running and um triathlon like it's one of the things that's super cool in running like a marathon is a marathon is a marathon and then ironman or a ultra distance or an olympic distance is and no one no one questions whether women can because it's clear that they can and at the elite level you know you get women who like Chrissy Wellington came in the top 10 in Kona amongst the men so to me it's clear there's not enough of a physiological difference between men and women there is a difference and you wouldn't race men against women because there are those differences but the the more of an endurance event it is the less the differences are and there's no there's no physical reason why women can't do a three-week race just like the men whether it's a good race to have that's a different question but i think that eventually the goal um and i i will be misquoted i'm sure all over the place about this but like the goal should be for them to be the same i i quite often get people saying oh yeah but the men's race is like the stages are long and it gets a bit boring and i think well that's not that's a problem with the men's race like why don't you take that to aso and say can you make the stages a bit shorter it's get it is kind of tedious sometimes like they just roll around and everyone notices the women's race is exciting because the stages are shorter and it really you can race right from the gun which is, to be honest, as someone in the race it's really stressful but for a viewer I think it's probably more interesting but there's a whole load of other stuff that goes into it like the stage starts and finishes are paid for by host towns and host cities and the more of the French countryside you can show maybe, I don't know, whether they're sponsored by a French tourist board or something but yeah, I do think they should be the same eventually And during your career, there was and part of it during when I was researching I mean, those articles as recently as 2023, talking about how good you were at climbing and then you sort of weren't, at the beginning at least, were less good at descending.

51:59I was terrible, like terrible.

52:03Robyn: Was that a fear thing and how did you overcome that? Because one of the big stories in the women's peloton this year was Sarah Gigante, who had a massive breakthrough year, one of, if not the best climber on the road, but then struggled and lost a lot of places on the descent. What would your advice be to her from your experience? i don't think she should take my advice i think she i'm sure she's got really good i do a lot more directly but i've i'm a bit of a fan of sarah giganti so um and i know a really good friend of mine is good friends with her and um i so i've kind of followed her career a bit and i've i've always been a fan i think she's amazing and um she doesn't need to take my advice because her descending is really not that bad like compared to mine it's just the level of the very in the front group, the level is very, very high and they're taking risks.

52:49And what might look to her, to viewers, like being not good at descending is actually like the sort of mental block you get when you notice that you're gaining drops. So a bit like when an actor forgets their lines on stage, when you slightly panic because you're getting dropped, then you get worse at descending because the fear sets in and you start to feel bad about yourself so I'm pretty sure that even if it looked like um she was having a bad time descending I'm sure she's a brilliant descender but me I was like really bad like I could not I really didn't know what to do partly because I didn't learn to cycle as a kid and and I crashed a few times and then I was you know a lot of people they might go fast but have bad technique or they might have good technique but go slowly but I had both bad technique and I was slow and I kept crashing and I kept losing races and I had a really good coach who didn't really realize because he didn't see me race.

53:42And then he saw some footage from me at the, what was then the women's sort of tour, the Grand Boucle. He saw me descending the Tour Malay. And I had like a two or three minute gap at the top. Like I dropped Nicole Cook and like the best in the world. And the commentators thought I was going to win the overall. And they caught me within six kilometers on the descent. I was like, I was standing still. And the commentators said, Oh, la pauvre poulet, elle est pétrifiée par peur. She's like, oh, the poor chicken. Because poulet sounds like chicken, right? And my coach saw the footage and he was like, yeah, okay, we have a problem here.

54:14But it's okay, we can deal with it. And he was one of the few people who taught technique because he coached triathletes. And most, like I had, there was a coach at British Cycling who I won't name, but his surname runs with Button. And he told me, never win a bike race because I couldn't descend. And he was wrong because you can learn to descend just like, I mean, mountain bikers learn skills training, right? And that's way harder. tim and i my coach tim williams he's still a coach by the way if anyone's looking for coaching and descending he i was his test case and um yeah we spent quite a few weeks um riding up the downhills sometimes in mallorca sometimes where i live in switzerland and i got good enough to not lose races and um this is not advice for sarah gigantic because she's way better at descending than me but for anyone i know there are people who really are scared and i meet a lot of them that's why i wrote the chapter about descending in the book because i think it's important to know that you're not alone because it's actually quite a common problem the important thing is not to worry about going fast to start with you've got to get the technique right and you've got to start to enjoy it and you kind of feel the flow and then you can think about speeding up but i had people trying to tell them make me go faster when i was doing all the wrong things and it felt awful and so that's just dangerous like it's dangerous and people crack that's why i crashed a lot and um and then you just go slower and slower so focus on technique and enjoyment and then worry about the speed later That would be my advice to anyone listening who's nervous on descents.

55:35And also, unless you race, it doesn't matter. Don't be worried about it. Who cares? If your friends have to wait for a minute at the bottom, you probably waited longer at the top, so don't worry about it. Who would you say, I guess, who do you see yourself in in the peloton? I know you don't watch cycling every single day of your life, but is there someone that maybe you look at and you're like, oh, bit of me? I don't think there's anyone who descends as badly as me no I don't know to be honest I look up to all the riders now like I don't think I'd compare them to me it's really cool to see a rider who I used to race against winning you know like obviously I race against Pauline and Voss and yeah I try not to do that I think they're all better than me quite a few people have compared me to Sarah Gigante and I take it as a huge compliment, but again, she's way better.

56:30She's been racing since she was a kid. But I know that Sarah Gigantic also really likes training and gets scared in the peloton, so I guess there are some similarities there. But yeah, I think she's a lot better and will be better.

56:44Robyn: When you look back on your career, and I'll frame this in both cycling and non-cycling, what are the two favourite races that you've done? Maybe wins, maybe not wins. because we'll mention we've mentioned in the intro which people will have listened to but you've not listened to yet um your many other accomplishments outside cycling um so what would you say is your favorite cycling and then non-cycling uh so before in road cycling terms my favorite race always used to be this race called cura rosa in switzerland which goes from a place called core to a place called a rosa and it's all uphill it is like an amateur obviously road race so like a mass start and it was really steep at the start and then a flat section and then uphill the finish and that for obvious reasons i really like that one um i was a bit upset because i never came in the top 10 of the men um because obviously the people who showed up were all the like specialist climbers and i never quite made the front group on the on the flat but but then a few years later so in 2018 i did this race um in the pyrenees called further which was a I guess, I'm not sure to call it gravel, like an adventure race with ultra cycling.

57:54And it was one of the, I think it was my happiest experience on a bike. It was like crazy long. I didn't eat enough. I was stupidly badly prepared. A lot of hiker bike, which I love. And it was just really amazing experience. And yeah, I love that. And I would say that was my favorite race ever in terms of the experience I had. I've never been back because I didn't want to spoil it. And then running yeah my first 100 kilometer race was in 2021 i think and that again was just it was something about the experience of like weird flow state a bit like the further race in the pyrenees i got so hungry and tired that i stopped um worrying about anything except just keeping on moving and it was um it was a really amazing experience and it was beautiful beautiful weather beautiful place and yeah i had a great day i think those are two of my happiest life experiences ever Yeah.

58:48The 100k was called the UTMR. It was the special corona route. But mountains, basically. The common theme is mountains. And our last question for you, which is so annoying because we could talk to you until the cows come home. Who is the best rider that you've ridden with? Against? Do you mean like in the peloton with or on the team with? Yeah, in the, well, it could be either, actually. Against in the peloton and then team mate.

59:23Voss, easy answer. Like, she's the best ever. And I'm still a big fan. Yeah, I'll always be a fan. I think she's amazing. And, yeah. And then with, oh, I rode with so many amazing riders who taught me so much. I think, I don't know if you've heard of her, but Claudia Häusler. so she won the Tour de L 'Ode and the Giro in 2009 and I was one of her domestiques so I helped in a small way and 2009 I actually wore the pink jersey for one day and then lost it on a descent but she won overall so it didn't matter, I thought I lost it and she was a really amazing rider and she retired before me, she was younger than me but she retired before me to go and have kids I think, I haven't stayed in touch with her sadly but she was tactically smart but she also had this like this lightness to her about like you could tell she really she was really good at finding the joy in it even when you know race was stressful things were going wrong and it was arguing with the teammates like yeah i think i learned a lot of her of domestiking for her and riding my ass off for her basically and i also because i um i speak german obviously but um our team was like a weird multilingual um would speak english together and i remember i taught her some english expressions and it was so funny because um i taught her the bee's knees um because i just said it and she's like ah that um and then she learned off me she learned because of the descending thing like so when the day i lost the pink jersey um i was describing it i was like yeah it scared the shit out of me and she's like oh yeah it was so bad it scared my shit out and i just thought i mean her english was really good but like you don't yeah she's uh she's a really amazing writer yeah well emma thank

1:01:11Robyn: you you've been an outstanding guest uh thank you very much for giving up some of your precious time i know you've got you've got work to do so we'll uh we'll let you go thank you very much thank you so much it's been so nice to chat i really appreciate your time thank you

1:01:30Robyn: well what a woman great book go buy the book it's also if you want to read more about it there's little snippets of info about it in cycles magazine although you probably just read it why do you need to see it again on the page when you can just buy the book yeah and poorly fantastic great interview hopefully we can talk to her again at some point maybe she has another book more oat recipes maybe non-oat recipes robin how'd you find that oh it's brilliant she's just so she does everything and we were talking about this at the beginning but she's won so much and yet is probably one of the most level-headed people we've ever spoke to that's incredible she's done so much like wow i can't i can't wrap my head around it like it's incredible yeah brilliant yeah let's have her on again let's let's talk to her again next week please um so i hope you enjoyed that interview we'll get on to a couple of a couple of quick extra points for those that you want that some extra juice especially because we've got robin here you know robin of now of roadbook fame which you could i don't know when you can go buy that maybe now you can pre-order it now yeah let's get get some pre-orders in good plug yes robin is is a contributor to this year's roadbook so buy that one as well lots of books on the christmas list this year and robin i asked before we recorded I gave you a little a little task and hopefully you're ready I'm prepared so I asked you as sort of a little sort of briefer getting the the audience excited for I can't be excited for the off season but excited for the season to then begin in eight months time so obviously a lot of transfers go on a lot of I mean especially this year because I feel like it's been so busy so drama filled so I asked for you three transfers you're really excited about for next season give it to me imagine if i just sat here and was like actually i don't want to answer that and then that's how the podcast ended i okay number one i want to see how red bull borough hands grow manage so many talented riders because obviously remco evanapol is going there away from sudal quick step and I I just I don't know because it seems to me you have obviously the two young riders Pelizzari and Lipovic Pelizzari you put him in a giro to tell you he's gonna get top 10 and from this point onwards probably podium Lipovic podiumed at the Tour de France I feel like it is the beginning of the end for Primoz Roglic I'm not saying that like I want that to happen i'm just trying to look at things logically and trying to see how they all fit in and it feels like one piece too many yeah it's like you just got a roomie of one maybe or maybe he could just pivot and become a really incredible you know he steps away from grand torrent suddenly he's tearing up one day races like you know maybe he should get into like some different sport i don't know like ski jumping or something no he'd be a terrible ski jumper Who'd want to do that?

1:04:43That's number one, because I want to see how they manage that. Number two, one Ayuso to Little Trek. I am very interested. I would like to know how Ete Skelmos thinks about that, what he thinks, because he was, alongside Chikoni, I would say the past couple seasons been regarded as a GC man, even though it's not necessarily panned out that way. And when you come in with someone like Juan Uso, he just steps in as like a ready-made GC contender. So it's interesting.

1:05:21Robyn: I don't think he'll be very happy. No, no, I don't think so either. And I'm just like, how do you manage that? He'll be at UNOX in a couple of years and we'll be laughing about, haha, Juan Uso falls out with another team. But Uso will still be there. I think Aiso will be good, I think. Yeah, I think it was a point where he just absolutely needed a change of scenery. And yeah, he's incredibly young. I want to see him reach the potential that he can do. He's obviously very talented. And just not get stung by any more bees in Grand Tours. So true. Also, I think it was pretty unfortunate that his place was kind of very quickly taken by Del Toro.

1:06:04Oh, yeah.

1:06:04Robyn: Even like came in leading a team at the Jura that not only did he drop out and Del Toro did his thing, but then the rest of the year, Del Toro looked like a much better rider than we've seen from Ayuso, which has been interesting to see how he does outside of UAE. And then number three, you have a guess. What do you think my third one will be? Let me think. It's on the men's side. I was going to go for Alison Jackson to whatever random French team she signed for. She was up there. Shh. I was going to put that in, but then I remember it's one that happened fairly recently. Recently? Who's going recently?

1:06:43Robyn: I'm going to take that as a... Is it someone from a team that won't be in existence in 2026? Fuck, 2026. What year are we in? No. Yeah, I've got no idea. I was going to say Vodka Land, but I don't think it was that recently. As in the team continues. The team will continue. it's not okay uh it's not the lotto intermarché merger no idea okay well it's victor lafay i there was so much there was so much talk about whether he would retire and i really i didn't want to see that no it was to make cheese though from a purely selfish reason right and that is i was going to bring that up because that is such a strong reason to leave the sport if you want to go in the cheese business listen I'm fully on board with that I want to get involved with the cheese business so so you know let's let's pool our resources but he's gone to Unibet who are craving towards that Tour de France wildcard spot I would very much like to see them there I think it looks pretty nailed on at this point it does look pretty nailed on I would like to see them there and i just i want to see him win a stage on a grand tour again maybe roglitz should go to uni bit as well yeah there you go that kind of that works for the year after yeah i think what watch that space he's great he's great for youtube what would you say is the one you're looking forward to the most so i tried to write down three i ended up with i think six oh my god so my two locks were letizia borghese and so we're going for some women here which is good for balance she's going from ef to sudar quick step she came second at roubaix this year and looked excellent not even sudar quick steps aging insurance sudar on that side but aging insurance had a fantastic year this year they've clearly you know got some geniuses in probably danny christmas because she is excellent you know they had great success in the classics with Kim LeCourt, Pienaar, friend of the show, and Sarah Gigante, friend of Robbins.

1:08:52Robyn: You know, they've had a really good year and I think they're just going to keep going and Borghese is a fantastic signing. And I mean, secondly, it's a positive sign. My other lock was a bit of a semi-wild car, but Margot van Pachtenbeek from Volker Vessels to Little Trek. I was watching those results in the spring and I was like, damn, she is punching above her weight. she was very good very consistent four volca vessels which you're not necessarily going to expect and yes a little trek assigned her she might starve as domestically she gets a go and be uh she's very good so then on the men's side i had four that i was like okay one of these can be in but i like all of them right so i'm gonna pick one i just say all of them so i'm gonna go as my actual selection as Quinton Hermann's going from Alpsin to Q36.5.

1:09:47Robyn: I think Q36.5 made some really good moves. Most of them are British. Just try and bring big cops and friends. Some mates. He's got his brother, but let's beef it up a bit more. Because they've got signed, Fred Wright, Eddie Dunbar, who's not British, he's Irish, remember that. But yeah, a lot of good English-speaking riders on that team now but hermann's is underrated he's second at liais a few years ago how did that go under the radar this guy can win races he's got talent in the classics he could win a grand tour stage and they'll probably be in a few grand tours next year in fact i think they're gonna be in three so watch that one but my other ones were probably bigger name signings so uh less exciting to put on a list i look less clever if they if they do work out um but bruno amurai to vis malisa bike that just seems like annoying signing because he's gonna be really good similarly benoit cosnefoix to uae he's gonna be really good put that one in uh and then matthew rickitella going to decathlon insert several letters here what they're going to be called next year i can't remember what they are but six of them he had finally had his breakthrough grand tour at the Welter and now he's going to an actually good team so I'm really excited to see what he can do and yes that was the other ones the other one I kind of had an eye on was uh friend drama going to Jayco depending as long as Jayco pay the bills but yeah there's a lot of um there's a lot of things going on that I'm excited for so after uh after all that I could have had Alison Jackson anyway because you just had about eight people bonus round so bonus round Alison Jackson but I've only got three like actual choices the others are just they're just names they're just names trying to get away with it but when Margav and Pactinbecker wins a big race in spring you had it if I was call me up send letters on an email you can find our emails at cyclist.com somewhere I think pretty simple email format so please do write to us let us know whether you think Robin was absolutely spot on tell us what you think about Robin's roadbook appearance tell us what you think about this podcast that would be great as long as it's positive if it's negative don't want to hear it, maybe send it somewhere else send it to James just bin it okay right on that note on that note Robin it's been a pleasure thank you to Emma Pooley who is not here right now obviously she's probably talking to other people about her book she would have zoned out She would have been like, can I leave these two people?

1:12:34My goodness.

1:12:35Robyn: She's got far, far better things to do. And that is a fact. But thank you to Emma. Thank you to Robin. Thank you to me. Thank you to you all for listening. Thank you to our great producer who is also listening. Yeah. See you next time. Goodbye. Nice. That was a game show.

1:12:56Robyn: Hello, lovely listeners. I just wanted to tell you that Cyclist isn't just a podcast. No, Cyclist is also a beautiful print magazine. It's packed full of all the best rides from around the world, the newest bikes and kit, and loads of in-depth articles featuring guests just like on today's show. So head on over to cyclist.co.uk slash subscriptions and check out our latest Cyclist magazine subscription offers.