145. Alistair Brownlee: triathlon legend, gravel racing demon and sportsmanship superstar

0:00So, 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.

0:39But 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.

1:21just be sure to add the strap to your cart then apply the code at checkout. Next year is the 110th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme so to commemorate our Heroes of Yesterday and fundraise for the Armed Forces community today Help for Heroes will take on a special four-day 250 mile route across Belgium and northern France via the poignant scenery of the Somme. Taking place between the 23rd and the 28th of June 2026 the big battlefield bike ride winds its way from Ypres to Amiens. Along the way, you'll visit historical First World War sites, hear stories of the courageous soldiers who fought for our freedom and have the opportunity to participate in the last poster ceremony at Meningate.

2:03Wrap up with a ceremony at Europe's largest Commonwealth Memorial in Teatval before receiving your medal at the end of ride dinner. This is more than a ride. It's a journey of remembrance, camaraderie, and a chance to support the veterans and their families to live better. Visit helpforheroes.org.uk to find out more about the big battlefield bike ride 2026. Help for Heroes is registered with the fundraising regulator.

2:34Welcome back to the Cyclist Magazine podcast. I am your host, James Spender, and with me, just about to sneeze, I'm hoping he will. Will he? Won't he? We could take a nationwide bet a little bit like Liz Truss the Lettuce. It's Will Strixen. Will, did you stifle that sneeze? Yeah, I think I've shaken it off. You shook it off? Yeah. That's even worse. Metaphorically. It's like when you're reaching for something and you don't quite want to touch it, but then right at the last minute you just want to grab that nettle and then you've backed off. That saddens me. I hate missing out on a sneeze, I've got to say.

3:09It's achingly disappointing, but we'll get there eventually. It is achingly disappointing. You did it for the right reasons. Anyway, you're wearing a fleece. I'm wearing a fleece. That can mean only one thing. Cold. Yes, that's right. The weather has flipped. Who knows when this goes out, if it will have flipped back, but it dropped 15 degrees in old Brazil over the last couple of days. That's quite incredible. Celsius. Of course. We're not Neanderthals here. We're Celsius. Fahrenheit is such a strange way of measuring temperature. It means nothing to me. It sounds better. I mean, it's the American way, isn't it?

3:45Make things sound more exciting by using higher numbers. Yeah, it's like, wow, it's 100 today. Whoa. Yeah, and 100 is probably like about 15 degrees, isn't it? No, it's about 38. It's body temperature. Body temperature. I mean, I remember when it was the USA World Cup in, I'm going to say, 1994. And then Jackie Charlton's boys were playing in the 103 degree heat. and you really felt for those Irish lads because that is not a temperature that Ireland tended to reach back in those days. Probably does now because of global warming. But that was massive headlines and they had to have water breaks during the matches.

4:21Didn't happen before. And that is so relevant to the news considering that Scotland have just qualified for next year's World Cup which is also in America for the first time since the 90s. So those wee boys will be struggling. Comes full circle. And welcome back to the Cyclist Magazine podcast where we will be discussing at some point, shall we just do it now? we can discuss today's guest. I think we've strung this out long enough. Today's guest is a gentleman who you will know as one half of the most successful pair of triathlon brothers in existence period, but also the, I don't want to sort of say it too loudly, but the more successful half is Alistair Brownlee.

4:58Alistair won multiple Olympic golds, well, two Olympic golds, multiple medals, multiple titles. So first Olympic gold, 2012, those Halcyon days in London. That was also a hot summer, I think. Another gold in 2016. He's also won four triathlon world championships, the triathlon world champs twice, world team champion twice, four-time European champion, 2014 Commonwealth champion. The list goes on, but he's also done pretty damn well in Ironman. He's won a couple of Ironman, 70.3, so that's the half. And he's also sort of just run this tangential, tangential, is that how you say it? I need to spell that one phonetically too.

5:41Career in gravel. That is gravel cycling. So there is, you know, it all comes back down to cycling eventually. He was British national gravel champion at the first ever British national gravel champs, which is, didn't know that happened in 2021, but it did. And since then, he has competed in some seriously difficult gravel challenges. Most recently, the Nedbank gravel burn in South Africa, which is around 800k over a week, which he did with the likes of Tom Pidcock and Pete Stettina. So, you know, it's a pretty classy field that was out there. Also, in Badlands, another incredibly long gravel race.

6:20So it makes sense that Alistair has moved into performance nutrition because he is still competing in even more enduring endurance sports than before. So he needs those electrolytes. He needs those carbs. And he's also got an incredible sports science background as well as an academic background. So he's put all these things together and he has launched True Fuels. And there's a great little Instagram post from, I say little, it kind of belittles the whole experience. Instagram post of Alistair finishing Nedbank and running through his hydration and fueling strategy. And he had 62 gels, which is quite a lot of gels, isn't it?

7:00So he is a man that has definitely worked out how to make gels palatable because you can't have 62 nasty gels because that is going to cripple you. So that's his kind of current endeavor, plus a whole heap more. We get into it pretty soon. But just to say, Will, have you ever done a triathlon? I've done a sprint triathlon, which is short. And how did you find that? I enjoyed it, actually. I was going in, I didn't really have like expectations for a time and I think they really know what I was doing. But I did it with my brother. So I was trying to beat him and I did. So it went great. Fantastic.

7:34And how can you remember how long it took you? No. No. Well, okay. You've done a few triathlons, haven't you? I've done a few triathlons in my time. At one point, I thought I might try and get relative, you know, within my own limits, try and like make triathlon my thing because it It just turned out as I got older, I became worse and worse at football. And those weird like 20-year-old estate agents that used to mark you smelling of booze because they'd clearly been down the pub before just would run rings around me. So I thought, yeah, I'll move into cycling. And then from cycling, realized I'd never be that good at it.

8:07But did a couple of triathlons. Like maybe I could just do this because if you can nail a run and you can get through the swim and you've already got a bit of bike base miles, you can kind of do okay. in an amateur event because most people are just really good at one thing and are trying to adopt the other two. But that actually turned out to be my case as well. I was quite good at cycling and tried to get better at swimming and did one piece of swim coaching. And the guy said to me, I don't know where to start. You do about nine things wrong. And he had like a GoPro on a stick that he'd walk up and down the pool with filming you.

8:41So he then put together a kind of show reel about how shit I was and that kind of put me off swimming forever. So there we go. Anyway, we can move into the interview now because Alistair has some serious expertise, which I do not, and I've belabored this intro already. So without further ado, welcome to the show, Mr. Alistair Brownlee.

9:06I, doing my due diligent research, couldn't help but notice not only have you recently done the Nedbank gravel burn. You've also done quite a lot of gravel races before that. I did see the Nedbank on your Instagram at the beginning of the month. And it did occur to me that that was basically a year between you announcing on Instagram that you were retiring from triathlon or, you know, kind of being a pro athlete, because obviously you're doing Ironman and stuff like that too, to you finishing the best part of 800 kilometers racing across South Africa through the great Karoo and just really bloody gnarly riding.

9:47Was there a moment when you kind of crossed the line in South Africa and you thought, this is kind of crazy. I'm supposed to be retired, but I've just done arguably one of the hardest races on two wheels out there? That's a good question. And there was lots of those moments. Not when I was crossing the line, though. That was always, yeah, I'm happy to be here now. It's over type thing. No, it was mostly it was brilliant. Like any challenge, I think anyone who's into endurance sport, and I'm definitely finding this, that there has to be some hardship there. It has to be, I actually enjoy doing hard things and pushing myself, whether that's riding in a gravel race in South Africa or going out with my friends and kind of pushing it on the local group ride.

10:32You can't remove all of that from your life, even though I don't have to do it anymore. But yeah, the gravel burn had everything. You know, there was times where I was literally cruising along on a perfect bit of South African gravel. There was one memorable bit that was just like perfect gravel, about 20 kilometers with the tailwind slightly downhill between these mountains. There was just, you know, a slightly winding track going into the distance, you know, like perfect, thinking this is amazing. And there was points going up a climb where it was both too hot and too cold at times or when I'd got a puncture that I was thinking, you know, what am I doing this for?

11:09And how, on a kind of scale of 1 to 10, does it compare? I mean, the distances are completely different from triathlon, and therefore the intensity will be different. But as you say, there'll be moments where you're doing something like Nedbank and going up a 15 % incline on loose terrain is a highly intense cycling moment. But how kind of much harder or easier is one than the other? I think it's impossible to say what's harder and easier because they're both really hard and they're different and you're doing different intensities at different times. Long distance triathlon tends to be a relatively constant intensity, although not always.

11:52And obviously shorter distance triathlon is very different intensities. You can be going maximum and then a bit easier, you know, kind of a bit more like quick racing or road racing. say gravel racing is kind of an interesting in between because there tends to be very little really easy time time spent under say 200 watts and there's a lot of time spent in that kind of middle ground because you obviously have to kind of push even in the group to to keep moving forward so there's a lot of like middle intensity and not very much kind of sprinting it's never going to be as jumpy i don't think as a road race because you can't really jump you break a race up i guess by going hard over one to five minutes or on a climb, you know, sat down power.

12:36So I think that's the difference. But yeah, it's different in triathlon in that the length may be similar. I guess I've done triathlons that are long as well. The intensity is very variable. There's always a massive kind of unknown in gravel in terms of the course, who else is going to be racing, really high risk of puncture and mechanicals so you're always trying to actually look after your tires and not puncture so that's a big difference and the challenge of the conditions like you know no exaggeration i think one day on the second stage we set off and it was really close to zero and the bikes had literally frozen overnight and we're setting off at 7 30 in the morning i think and uh by the end of that day i think it could have been over 30 degrees you know i was getting in a swimming pool at the end because it was so hot so yeah that that challenge in South Africa of how how much the condition changed was was pretty crazy as well.

13:36What got you into racing gravel because obviously I'm guessing you've you know been riding on the road for you know your whole life considering you know your professional career but you were racing gravel even before you'd stopped doing your triathlons I mean what year were you a British gravel national champion probably wasn't on your normal triathlon career path but what was it that made you start actually rather than just riding in your spare time competing in these races? I think I've always enjoyed sport and endurance sport and racing and having fun in that way. Even though I did my first triathlon when I was eight, but just after then I was also doing local cyclocross racing and I always did a bit of crit racing and road racing.

14:17So I've always raced bikes. And yeah, I think it was during COVID. I got a gravel bike, started riding for fun. I can't remember whether I did that first British Gravel Champs in 2020 or 21, but it was one of those years. And yeah, I just enjoyed it. I enjoy racing. I enjoy being outside exploring new places. And gravel seemed to fit all of those. But your transition into it seemed really incredible, prodigious even, I'd say, given as though kind of your first big gravel race, I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, was 2021. one, you were potentially hoping to have gone to an Olympics that year, ended up racing the first British national gravel championships in September, the beginning of September.

15:06And then two weeks later, I think it was that way around, you were then riding Badlands, which again is up there. It's monumentally long for anyone that hasn't heard of Badlands. It's 750k and it's through the Tabernas Desert and the Sierra Nevada in Spain. So again, wildly hot, potentially very changeable conditions really insanely tough like 15 000 meters total elevation and you finished seventh so was there a point where you thought i should just move wholesale into gravel and i'm going to add to that that you know who you beat um at netbank some names of some pros that you beat you finished 23rd um no i don't i don't know who i beat anyone who i did beat at no bank i I don't think we're taking it that seriously, to be fair.

15:52So I'm not sure if it counts. But yeah, just to go on Badlands for a bit. I mean, that's a completely different type of challenge. So whereas the National Champs, I think, was over like 70k a couple of hours at the time. And it's longer now in its current iteration. But Badlands is over 50 hours and becomes about a completely different set of skills, lack of sleep and all that kind of thing. and yeah that was the end of the year I had some really bad injuries had actually had an ankle operation I think probably a couple of months before and I was just a bit fed up and I was just like I just need to do things that are completely different and you know find the love of uh competing and and ultimately why I do sport and I as I said before I do sport because I like pushing myself I like exploring I like competing and so I thought padlands ticks all of those boxes i think i literally got in it two or three weeks before and i had to last minute kind of prepare what i was going to take with me and all that kind of thing and yeah i don't know how many people or a fever of you have done those kind of long multi-day things but they're a completely different kettle of fish really i completely recommend people to do it because yeah it's amazing riding through the night uh i think you learn a lot about yourself but very very different to a to a three-hour gravel race it was probably one of the only places in endurance sport where you could probably find some unknown territory you know triathlon extends into ironman distance but yeah you were exactly doing multi-day triathlons so how different was that for you to then start going and say okay no it doesn't end in one day i'm gonna have to keep going day after day well i'd never done anything that i think was longer than eight hours long at the time and I didn't really know what I was doing at all I think I did one uh long ride beforehand I just thought right I'm gonna go out all day in Yorkshire and planned a route and just set off at seven o 'clock in the morning and got back at like 10 that night or something uh and just did a lap of the Yorkshire Dales as much off-road as I could and yeah I was thinking at the time I was thinking you know what are going to be the challenges here obviously mechanical so how are you going to mend a puncture or chain in the middle of nowhere nutritional there's long periods of time when you go into the tabernas desert area which is super crazy hot and water is a problem and i remember thinking oh i'm going to be really worried about my fueling here and i think water and actually electrolytes were a way bigger problem at one point i had the cramp so bad in my hand i had to open a zip with my mouth to get the get some more salt tablets out of it because my hand was cramping so badly um so there's this like a whole bunch of challenges in that kind of thing that I think as much as you're preparing of course you've got to prepare and prepare and prepare as well as you can you're always gonna face things that you can't prepare for and I think that's that's part of the beauty as well as so that's kind of exploring your you know your kind of limits but exploring the world around you that's an amazing part of spain that you would literally never go to otherwise you know i've never met anyone who's been to grafe which is an incredible part of spain that um there's all these kind of red rock valleys that you see and then the bernes desert which is a i think europe's only desert and you know you literally at one point you cycle past a western film set and then i think you climb up on a mountain range over 2000 meters and you know through pine forests and cycle along a big ridge and and and then later on you end up back down along the coast you know I think that night I cycled all the way along the south coast from the part of the coast that you start on all the way through Almeria and I remember it being really funny I remember getting to the coast in the first little town that I got to it was kind of dinner time there's people having dinner and a bit further on you know there's people out having a few drinks and ice creams and by the time I got to the the end of that coast section in Almeria there was basically four or five o 'clock in the morning it was just drunk people on benches and so you know I've seen this entire kind of uh evolution of people going out on an evening where I just cycled 50 kilometers along the coastline in that time and then carried on up there was a track then that climbs straight out the back of the city that's just is the worst type of track because it's just about rideable it's you know quite big loose rock you know whatever it is five or six percent so you can ride it but it's just really nasty to ride and i remember seeing on my uh bike computer that you know it said whatever it was 10 kilometers and i was thinking flipping out 10 kilometers up here it's gonna take me all night and i could see i think two people in front of me of just light miles and miles in front of me up this climb so yeah you just have to put your head down and get on with it.

21:00Was it a kind of fork in the road for you around 2020, 2021, where you, I mean, as you've alluded to, serious ankle injury, and I think you had your, eventually had your bone spur removed, which I don't know what that is, but that sounds insanely painful. Can you tell me what is a bone spur? Just a little piece of ankly bone? i guess an extra yeah an extra bit of bone in my case i had uh the spur was called an os trigonum which is uh just an extra bit of bone on the back of your talus i think of it as sticking into the back compartment of your ankle going backwards towards your achilles tendon and that irritated some of the tissue around it and yeah i had to have it removed so yeah i mean yeah it was tough and being able to do other types of sport well was definitely really good for me.

21:54And was it that something like gravel or just generally riding was easier on you on your feet because yeah it's not the ground and pound of running? Yeah absolutely and at the time I just absolutely couldn't do I couldn't run so I was looking for other things to do to that were active and competitive to keep myself safe. And did anybody sponsor-wise come knocking at your door and just for anyone that's still wondering who i know you're you're being incredibly self-deprecating and saying people weren't racing ned bank but a race is a pin a number on somebody i'm pretty sure they're all kind of going for it you beat pete statina who is a you know once upon a time wild tour pro moved into gravel kind of early doors real force he's won tracker 360 which is another insanely difficult ride lachlan morton again long distance extraordinaire tom pidcock still racing world tour level and camworth who is an absolute machine who did quite a lot of triathlon and ironmans as well as uh spent time at inios um so there's a lot of you have pedigree and i wonder if people have at some point said hey alice do you want to come over here and do something that i'm going to also guess might be more lucrative than triathlon so in terms of thinking about uh doing professional cycling i did think about it a long time ago and went on a training camp with um team sky at the time and it was kind of on the cards i actually didn't give it too much for thought and i think my kind of decision was that you know ultimately i could go and do it maybe it'd be more lucrative or not i don't know but i i was pretty sure you know i was not going to be the best at it and at the time i was you know stepping away from being the best at what I was doing in terms of triathlon so yeah I was thinking what the best case scenario here is could be like mid-peloton and ride the Tour de France and that'd be amazing but actually triathlon is my sport it always has been and I'm kind of you know the very best at this and very very proud of that so that was kind of the thinking then then doing gravel much later a few years ago was yeah much less about a career and much more about I'm an endurance athlete I enjoy challenges this is a new challenge and something to do and yeah my sponsors at the time it was actually Scott then to start with and then I moved to BMC they've all been incredibly supportive of me doing gravel as well as triathlon over the years.

24:31I'm curious what was your reception like going into a Team Sky training camp because you know people would have known who you were but at the same time was it a bit like hang on we've spent years and years and years trying to break into this and this guy's making this sideways move and it's being welcomed in by presumably the team management was that how yeah how did that kind of go because they're big personalities back in those days yeah well as i said we didn't really get really far along that process of saying you know and johnny actually came with me as well we didn't get too far along that process of saying this is definitely what we're going to do is just it's come from um Dave Brailsford at the time and I think we talked and it was he was just like you know very welcoming come try it out you might learn something we might learn something from you be really interesting kind of thing so it didn't really go any further than that but all the riders were great at the time I guess I knew some of them anyway from similar areas and whatever cycling over years and everyone else was was really welcoming we did yeah i think i think we spent like a week maybe 10 days and did some long rides and some harder rides and some climbs and it was great because it sort of seems like when you watch especially like olympic distance and shorter triathlons that the bike kind of feels like the least important one of the three but largely because of the drafting element you know you come out of the swim you were the group you were finished with the group because you're all drafting each other on you know city circuit and then you go and you just decided on the run how did you then balance that training are you doing less cycling training than swimming and running or is that just completely run and cycling is actually way more important than it appears yeah i think to answer your first question you answered it really well with the last comment there it's much more important than it appears just watching it you You know, you see a group of people riding around.

26:23And of course, if that is just how the race plays out, it might not be that important. But also, actually, maybe it's harder than it looks. Obviously, running as fast as you can is really about getting to the end of the bike as fresh as you can compared to everyone else around you. So there's an element of that, about efficiency. Also, you know, I looked at everything, especially around the Olympics. I was going to get to go to the Olympics once or twice, and London was only going to happen once for me. I needed to be in the position to win the race 49 out of 50 times on that day you know not one in five times depending on what happened in the race scenario hoping that it all come together and I could coast around the bike I was really playing the probability game and to do that you need to be able to to ride in all circumstances so yeah you know sometimes out of those 50 times 20 of them could be a roll round 10 of them I could be chasing 10 of them I might be off the front 10 of them my best chances of winning the race might be to attack in some shape or form so I was kind of looking and preparing for all those scenarios and and racing racing on that front so yeah even though I think it has it is much more important than it looks how did I train I trained much more cycling than anything else so at my very most I would average 15 to 18 hours of cycling in my week and that was balanced with probably seven hours, seven to eight hours of swimming and up to 12 hours of running.

27:53So, you know, cycling is almost as 50 % of my training. Wow. Is it fair to say that a triathlete is potentially the most rounded endurance athlete because you're doing three really quite different things with your body, different muscle groups? I've always hated swimming yet I can cycle I know people that just can can run brilliantly and they're just no you know not much on a bike kind of thing so to be able to do all those things makes you this kind of athletic polymath but then for you specifically you're just an absolute specimen of a human being because I remember coming around at the time in 2012 is it was it I'm pretty sure it's 2012.

28:33Mo Farah wins the 10k and it's 97 seconds faster than your 10k in a triathlon and you've already done 40 odd kilometers, 42 kilometers bike plus one and a half k swim. That's incredible. Mo Farah is presumably putting all of his, well, most of his training eggs in that running basket. So not doing seven or eight hours a week. He's doing much more. and you're managing to nail world-class times with much less kind of dedication to that specific thing what gives has anyone ever analyzed you in a lab and said this is what makes you particularly special yeah i think there's a there's a lot of things there i think yeah triathlon you obviously well-rounded but as my um friends always like to remind me that means you're jack of all trades and master of none, which is fair enough.

29:27But what you are master of in terms of the, you know, you're not master of any of those disciplines. I think what you are master of is having an absolutely enormous aerobic engine. And I mean, really the size of your aerobic capacity physiologically is, I mean, the genetic, but the real determinant that isn't genetic is how much exercise can you do? I mean, pretty much sports science can be summarized as that. And you can do more exercise if you spread it out over three different sports because of the load that's going on using different muscles. Obviously, swimming and cycling are relatively unloaded, running is loaded.

30:06So I think what it really is about is cross-training does allow you to build that enormous engine, even though you definitely can't specialize in any of those three for me personally you know for for example swimming i'll be way off you know so far off being competitive you know wouldn't even be the best in leeds never mind the best in the country or anywhere near the world like athletics wise uh you know that kind of 10k you know maybe i could have got to the position where i just qualify for britain and race in the olympics but that 97 seconds or whatever is a flipping long way uh those levels you know to go from a 29 minute 10k to a 27 and a half minutes 10k is an enormous difference so yeah even though it doesn't sound that much it is enormous and cycling wise as i said probably had the you know the like numbers to be kind of professional cyclist middle of the peloton type thing i think but still a long way from those guys of what they could do put out for an hour up a climb or in a time trial or something so yeah that i mean the key in in sport is those last five or ten percent isn't it how much better people that's what really separates the very best from everyone else and yeah triathlon allows you to build that that engine and to get really geeky and maybe i'm not sure if you can remember these numbers but people just love numbers so and so do i so what was your vo2 max and what would be your functional threshold on a bike can you remember yes video 2 i definitely never had it measured when i was right at the best of my ability but even quite recently when i was retired i had it measured and it's still in the 70s so i mean pretty pretty high yeah my functional threshold i think at my best was probably just over 400 watts maybe like 410 or something and i then did quite a lot off that so for example I could do a 70.3 or T100 distance triathlon bike led aiming for 350 to 360 watts and kind of Ironman around 300 and yeah that was kind of the best I could get to.

32:22Would you then you would you just purely focus I'm assuming on that sort of longer effort rather than because the bike's the middle you don't need to sprint at the end of a bike leg what would your like three second power what sprint would you have or would you never even bother to look at those numbers i'm useless at sprinting across all three sports that's one thing that is the same um yeah i never really focused on sprinting i guess really my training was mostly around building an enormous aerobic base which i did at very low intensities and then working at what what you most people would say is threshold type work and higher more vo2 type work i think that that kind of middle the only time i did like special you know actual um training mapping out i guess the specific training of what my power would be is i did a bit of that for iron man and half ironman t100 type distance but i learned that i as weird as it sounds i didn't get any better at it by training at it um and uh i yeah i mean i pushed up my ability to do that by training at the higher intensities and yeah i mean i think there is benefits of some specificity in that like middle middle zones say of intensity but i actually think they're well overrated and you're way better off just polarizing it much more and you did sports science as a degree and also a little supplementary question to that was it a bit of a kind of curveball because uh alistair went to girton college initially in cambridge cambridge uni the university doing medicine one of the you know that's a pretty serious thing to get on and do and then after what a year you decided you wanted to switch up focus on triathlon do sports science how did that conversation go down with your lecturers who presumably went this is one of the most prestigious things you can be doing are you sure and then moving into having done it how helpful was it to be someone well versed in sports science as well as being an athlete so yeah the first question of how difficult was that decision yeah it was super difficult decision you know it was a kind of amazing to be studying at Cambridge and yeah I'd worked hard to be there and academics were important to me growing up but I thought look I've got the the Olympics at the time were the next year that was 2007 and the next year in Beijing and London that had really been on my horizon as Olympic Games was five years ago and ultimately I thought look you know triathlon and being a professional athlete is my dream I've got to give that a go and yeah my parents and my dad in particular was incredibly supportive around that he you know he said you have to follow your dream you can always go back and do academics and my plan was then always to go back probably post London and and study medicine again and that's why I then started I thought I should do something Leeds University were amazing at supporting me to study sport science and really just study kind of the little bits that I wanted to study and fitted in around my training and racing because at that point I was traveling all over the world to get points to qualify for the Olympic games and stuff so that was really good and and then yeah my plan was to go back and study medicine but then I had a career that I only retired last year at 36 and decided it was probably a bit late at that point did that did studying help me for in my sporting career I think yes but maybe not in the way that most people understand i think yeah having understanding of the the science and the literature is really important but as most athletes and coaches you know real coaches in the high performance arena will say quite often the scientific literature is is behind what um athletes are doing and that's for you know loads of reasons you innovate fast and you iterate and And that anecdotal kind of combining the anecdotal and individualized experience with evidence is obviously the way to go.

36:33And so, yeah, what I think studying and academics is really good for, especially as scientific subjects. And it probably mostly came from the earlier studying was just how to kind of problem solve, decide how to critically assess like ideas, whether that was a bit of scientific literature or something else. I think that is a really valuable skill to have in sport and performance. And has that made it easier because now one of your ventures is True Fuels so sports nutrition company has that made it easier for you or was that almost even like a natural fit therefore because you do have that scientific I guess scientific brain a way of looking at those sorts of problems breaking them down you're versed in the literature to a degree but as you say you're also someone who has trained much more at the sharper end and can maybe see things coming that other people only find out about down the line does that all feed into energy gels electrolytes understanding fueling i mean are there breakthroughs that you guys are making at true fuels that other people you know aren't doing which is why you're in this you know you've launched something into what's ostensibly a pretty competitive crowded market already that uh that was a great segue thank you um the answer is uh yes i think well absolutely um true fuels is absolutely borne out the idea that there is nutrition and performance sport knowledge that um i think i can democratize and simplify and quite often these things are really over over complicated and actually for most people you know nutrition is something that shouldn't be the thing that gets in the way to your performance so you know people whether it's a a bike race or a marathon or a triathlon or an ultramarathon you know nutrition shouldn't be the thing that means that you can't finish that race and perform to your best and with in some relatively simple guidelines with great products I think that's the problem and we can solve with true fuels and that's it really and so if you take the gel as an example um a couple of things came out with that for me.

38:42One was really simplifying the product had a big impact. When I was really trying to fuel to the maximum, I learned that fueling with products that had extra preservatives and flavors in them meant that I was getting stomach problems. And by removing those out, using really the highest quality ingredients that we possibly could, I wasn't getting those problems. And so that was the kind of idea of simplifying the product and then simplifying the process you know rather than having loads of gels and and different products to deliver carbohydrates water and salt because like why would i do that i just have it all in one bottle and so having one product that has the carbohydrates and and salt i think is a big game changer in that sense and in in some ways i've realized since that that you know seeing it so simple is almost disrupting the nutrition industry in some ways because people are it's in lots of people's interest to make this thing really complicated and it's not in someone's interest to say look just take two of these high salt gels an hour you'll be absolutely fine that's all you know we don't need to worry about trying to get 120 grams of carbs in an hour and and this much salt if you get 80 grams of carbohydrates an hour and two grams of salt you'll be absolutely fine for pretty much all the conditions we can expect on that day and yeah that's the idea behind it of course that's born out of my own experience, my own testing in labs and the scientific literature available.

40:09And yeah, one of the products we've got, we're launching next is absolutely really innovative and it's very much borne out from my own testing experience as well. Because you must have had millions of gels throughout your career. How much were you thinking about this? You know, what is available to me? what I'm having is not, well, obviously it was working, but not exactly what you wanted. You know, talk about stomach issues, but then having to have more and more stuff. How much were you thinking, I know what I need to do? Was that a later discovery in your brain? Because I guess also the industry has changed so much since you started competing.

40:49You mentioned retiring in your mid-30s. Jails have come on so much since then. At what point were you like, no, we're still not there. This is where we need to get to. yeah yeah absolutely right and that has changed enormously and also my career changed alongside it when uh you're racing over sprint distance it's like an hour-long race i mean to be honest you can get away not worrying too much with nutrition i mean ideally you probably do need nutrition but um it's not you know let's call it a five percent importance even olympic distance yeah if it's really hot fluid becomes really important and a bit of carbohydrates but But if you're really well-fueled beforehand, nutrition isn't, to be honest, super important for a professional doing it in an hour 40.

41:32Very different conversation for most people who take longer, but who are not as well-trained. But then you do half Ironman distance race, four hours, Ironman distance race, eight hours. By the time you're in Ironman distance, nutrition is not a 10%, it's like a 50 % thing now. So as I was doing longer distances, it became way more significant for me. and yeah I tried different products experimented and ultimately found that by making my own stripping stuff out of it that was best for me but yeah alongside that as you said you know the market changed enormously from if you look on a carbohydrate point of view from people saying oh yeah you know you only need a little bit of carbohydrate maybe a maximum of 60 grams an hour and then in the early 2000s and that started to feed through that some of the researchers had found that by mixing a glucose source with a fructose source allows you to have a higher rate of carbohydrate metabolism from external sources, which is a good thing.

42:30And so people then started pushing that carbohydrate numbers up. And at the same time, similar, you would hear and you still hear people say, you know, salt isn't that important. You have so much salt in your body, salt balance, apart from in the very extreme of endurance events. You don't need to worry about it but then you know anyone who has tried to do uh an event in hot conditions will tell you that salt is absolutely crucial for most people to be able to finish that and um there's very little downsides from a on a on an acute perspective for a one-day event of taking salt so yeah things change i don't think anyone can quite predict where it's all going to go next but yeah it's one of those i'm kind of a fascinated student of innovation in sport and how things change and adapt and um yeah things don't kind of innovate in like a linear line you know it's like steps um you know one of my favorite examples is running shoes basically up till about 2016 or 17 most running shoes had been pretty similar you know like adidas and nike had played around with various different foam soles with a material upper but there hadn't been a big change for like 40 years and we were trying to run in the lightest thinnest shoes we could and then all of a sudden carbon plates came in and there's this enormous innovation step change where probably help people run like 30 seconds faster over 10 kilometers and same very much happens in the bike industry so i'm always really excited to try and see and i guess even be part of what happens next next year is the 110th anniversary of the battle of the Somme so to commemorate our heroes of yesterday and fundraise for the armed forces community today help for heroes will take on a special four-day 250 mile route across Belgium and northern France via the poignant scenery of the Somme taking place between the 23rd and the 28th of June 2026 the big battlefield bike ride winds its way from Ypres to Amiens.

44:36Along the way, you'll visit historical First World War sites, hear stories of the courageous soldiers who fought for our freedom, and have the opportunity to participate in the last poster ceremony at Meningate. Wrap up with a ceremony at Europe's largest Commonwealth Memorial in Tietval before receiving your medal at the end of ride dinner. This is more than a ride, it's a journey of remembrance, camaraderie, and a chance to support the veterans and their families to live better. Visit helpforheroes.org.uk to find out more about the big battlefield bike ride 2026. Help for Heroes is registered with the fundraising regulator.

45:15So 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.

45:55But 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 crew 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.

46:37Just be sure to add the strap to your cart, then apply the code at checkout.

46:47Do you think from, and I'm not sure how much you know of this particular subject, but in pro cycling, speeds have been going through the roof, records broken that have stood for ages, decades, and so much of what people, there's lots of stuff that swells around that, but one of the big things is people say, well, riders are feeling differently. So I can think of like 10 years ago, a company like SIS might have a 20 gram gel and they'd be like, yeah, take three of these gels in an hour. Because for like an amateur rider, sort of 60 grams, maybe up to 80, 90 was considered, you know, 60 enough and 90, that's absolute peak.

47:28And maybe pros were also, you know, would be saying, yeah, we're trying to take 90 grams of carbohydrates an hour. Whereas now people say anyway we're looking at 120 140 we maybe even think there are particularly adapted athletes who could take up to 160 grams is that just a lovely marketing line and a way of explaining away some other a few other things in cycling or do you feel like no there's a real truth to that and it really does have an impact despite the fact as you said it's that five percent 10 it still will have an impact that's significant so yeah why are speeds faster first ultimately i don't know but my suspicion is it's multifactorial which is a combination of which fueling is one of them other technology is another one training better and by training better i actually probably think it's less around um like your core training and athletes being more adapted to the extreme conditions so better understanding what it takes to perform in the heat better understanding to what it takes to perform at altitude better understanding of what recovery looks like and I think all of those add up if you look at a speed over the Tour de France and and the last climb so yeah I think all of that add up and it probably all compounds so you get even if those are points of a percent they compound to make quite a significant difference in terms of that the fueling point, how much that kind of feeds into that performance.

48:55I mean, I ultimately, I don't know. It definitely does have an impact. I see it in terms of that, like call it hyper fueling over 120 grams an hour. Yeah. I mean, there is still no literature that I'm aware of that people we've kind of seen that people can metabolize much more than that of exogenous carbohydrate that doesn't mean to say it can't happen and it may well be happening an example of that is that i've done quite a lot of those tests in the lab and we're going back to this point of maybe why sometimes the the the scientific literature and research is behind what's happening in the real world you know i'd go into the lab and i know there's no way i could maintain the power output over the time that i could maintain in a race like 10 off and if and you know if you think purely of thermodynamics um that 10 % off those 30 watts that that ends up being 30 times 3.6 and nearly four that's i think 120 nearly 120 calories an hour of fueling thermodynamic fueling that is different so that's that's enormous right and so i think it's really hard to repeat those levels of intensity in a lab that you get in real life so what people find work for them in the real world could be that high.

50:14I mean, and we might not ever see actually that we might ever not see those numbers in the lab, who knows. I think with fueling, as I said, kind of about salt and carbohydrates, cycling is in some ways is a bit easier than anything that involves running because the risk of GI distress is a lot less. So, you know, I would be looking at it if I can get this much carbohydrates in per hour without the risk, I'd be doing that even though I knew I might not absorb at all the problem is with running is that if you really hyperload on carbohydrates you have it sat in your stomach and it gives you stomach problems and then is there a final word on salt and cramp because for so long it seemed that was the classic things like you're cramping because you don't have enough salt and then not so long ago I came across a study that said it's to do with your nervous system and one antidote for cramp was pickle juice.

51:08So something sharp, different tasting, almost kind of hard resets the signals being sent from your brain to your muscles. Or chili was another one. And then it also even led into the efficacy of what old, so they say, Tour de France riders used to do, which is pull out a safety pin from their number and jab themselves in the thigh that they had cramping. And it was nothing to do with some mad Chinese acupuncture. It was just you're giving your body this sensation of shock which then means it kind of resets itself so you're mr electrolytes guy now because true fuels is so much based on that tell me is that which one's right pickle juice salt where does cramp come from well i've never tried the pin strategy so i'm not qualified to comment on this maybe i should give it a go next time i have cramp out well if i if i do i'll let you know and if I can come back on, I'll let you know how it goes.

52:03But so, yes, I mean, cramp is multifactorial. If you read the literature on it, you know, people say it isn't just down to salt depletion because even though salt is maintained in quite a small range or really people talk about sodium in your blood, in your total and your interstitial fluid, you do have quite a large amount. But if you think of, you know, I know I could lose up to 2000 milligrams or two grams per liter. And if you think that's that's five grams of salt per liter, I could sweat up to three liters, 15 grams of salt per hour over four plus hour race. You know, you're losing a heck of a lot.

52:47And yeah, OK, they're quite extreme examples. But at that point, if I had replaced part of that salt or not, the question here is, I don't care about all the other factors that cause cramp, which is muscle fatigue, nervous system stress, whatever it might be. Am I more likely at that point to get cramp if I've replaced salt or not? Now, the answer to that is almost certainly yes. at the kind of next level of thinking at that point is what are the downsides to acutely replacing salt now acutely replace it we all know that chronically eating too much salt leads to hypertension heart problems absolutely but acutely replacing less salt than you know you're sweating out as far as i can tell there's no or very very low risks involved and actually there's the risk is higher if you're not replacing salt because you've got hyponatremia so and it doesn't i've also not come across with everyone i've spoken to and tested products with interesting salt doesn't seem to be the driver of gi distress so it's one of those things that in the pragmatic world do the rewards or the potential rewards upweigh the risk and i just think yes don't probably try and replace 100 of the the salt sodium you're losing but it makes sense to replace a high a high amount of it you spoke about the importance when you were competing of uh fueling more so before the event what are you eating before you go and win olympic gold pizza the night before um yeah i uh um again i think this is one of the things where people people differ and the kind of carbo loading debate is maybe another thing that's change you know if you go back 10-15 years people like no you can't overload on carbohydrates uh and and get more glycogen in your cells by eating more carbohydrates than kind of just a little bit more and probably easing off your training so i kind of would carboload but fairly simply on um normal carbohydrates just carbohydrate rich foods and in the days before and if it's especially hot really try and actually get more salt in in the two or three days before because both having more glycogen and obviously more salt drives more water into the your cells and your your interstitial fluid so starting with more fluid is is a good thing in hot conditions yeah breakfast before i would not for an ironman i could literally eat anything probably half an hour before because it don't have a bowl of porridge and start because it's pretty low intensity but for olympic distance i'd be careful and not eat anything for two hours before to let everything settle and make sure I had an empty stomach.

55:29And then how do you feel for a week-long gravel stage race in hot conditions? That's quite challenging, especially camping. Now the food at Gravelburn was genuinely amazing, you know, considering we were staying in tents on a random bit of land, you know, not even a campsite or a farm like a random really cool kind of location in the middle of nowhere that they were bringing in all the infrastructure the food was incredible so yeah I'd get up I think I had porridge most mornings and with with extra salt in it um and then I would yeah always take a a gel and an electrolyte before the start and then I had my bottle with all my gels in it so So if it was going to be a hard four-hour stage, I would really fuel with three gels per hour.

56:21So four gels in the bottle, high salt. And I actually realized I personally wasn't getting enough salt about halfway through. And on the really rough washboarded rows, I was getting cramp in my hands. And I then made a special effort to have more salt in my pre-race nutrition and during race. And that completely solved that problem. And then, yeah, it was quite amazing. You then finished. You came across the line. You handed your bike over to the guys who'd clean it for you and then have a shower. And there was a tent serving food straight away. So, yeah, get some whole food, some protein, and some good food down here and have a nap in the afternoon.

57:09Sounds almost idyllic, except for the fact that, you know, you've got to race hundreds of k's through searing heat every day. I was just thinking... It was quite a relaxing holiday, actually. It was nice. As mad as it sounds, being able to just ride your bike for three or four hours in the morning and then relax for the rest of the day is good. I genuinely really recommend it. Obviously, with that comes a lot of camaraderie, hanging out with the other riders. But I was wondering, gravel particularly, as it stands at the moment, it's a privateer sport. You don't really see teams doing it does it feel like a relatively lonely pursuit given that you spent the majority I think of your pro pro triathlon certainly career racing with your brother and presumably therefore traveling with Johnny as well how much you know how important was having him around to your overall enjoyment and performance and you know do you miss that now I mean obviously you do but like to what degree yeah well you're having uh joining around was really important we uh you know trained together two or three times every day probably 90 of our training together pushed each other uh when we needed to travel from being young people we traveled together you know all over the world for training camps and races stood on the olympic start line next to each other and you know that kind of doing stuff together was was really important and performing i'd say uh in in gravel it's my approach has been a bit more relaxed so i haven't worried about it too much i have done some gravel racing with johnny he actually did the national champs this year uh that was in dolby forest in yorkshire should point out that we have been i'm retired and he's not and we've done one race this year and i beat him at it so that's all that really matters for the year i can close out 2025 a happy man and uh but no um yeah i've taken a much more relaxed approach to gravel and i think um it's gravel burn was really nice you know a lot of those names that you mentioned earlier uh i spent hours riding with those guys actually in a fairly relaxed format at the point where either we'd had a mechanical or would be dropped for some reason and we just rode kind of hard to the finish line and the camaraderie and chatting was really cool.

59:31And with back to those triathlon days with Johnny, were there times where it was kind of team Brownlee? So, so long as one of you won, then you had both won. Or was it always a case that you're pro athletes and sure, you're brothers, you train together, your best mates, you're every, all these things, but you know the gun cracks then you're in it for yourself there was uh definitely times in fact i think um you know we were always team brownlee in terms of training and being on the start line and it was us against the world which was just amazing and then uh we could actually race together as a team as a unit through the swim and most of the bike and then of course there's by the time you're on the run it's every man for himself yeah and and kind of the winner is the winner every man for yourself until you're carrying him across the finish line apart from that one occasion yeah which is a wonderful segue to a question i wanted to ask which is you know that moment still like way up there in people's minds along with your two gold medals and countless european world championships and everything that moment of you carrying your brother who looks in agony and really bemused at the fact that you all stood next to him and kind of dragging him across the finish line in Mexico 2016, I think.

1:00:52And the world looking at that and being like, that is sportsmanship at its absolute best. Presumably on the day, it didn't necessarily feel like the outcome you wanted. And now looking back on it, does it feel like, I don't really want journalists on podcasts from cycling magazines asking me about this still because I'd like to be remembered for other things. yeah exactly i think there's you know as an athlete the approach is you want to be remembered for the races that you won and only a few weeks before that i'd won the olympics and johnny came second which is like an amazing kind of athletic achievement and then yeah that was the thing that i still get asked about and that went viral and that people know us for um you know all the time you go in and you say oh i was a triathlete i did this this and this at schools and some of the children like no i don't care and then someone will say oh you that guy that carried his brother and then all of a sudden so i think uh yeah but then there's an element of pragmatism to be like well it's really cool that actually that happened and people know both of us for that and um yeah we should yeah appreciate it it's being it's been good for us and good for the sport of triathlon did what did johnny say to you afterwards because i think that meant that you guys were then both overtaken by a South African triathlete so ostensibly one you could have potentially I don't know could you could you personally have won that race if you hadn't have helped Johnny and then if that was the case did Johnny sort of go mate you idiot like I didn't leave me you know it's fine it's 50-50 I reckon I could have won um but it was 50-50 yeah was that a case of Johnny not having enough electrolytes in the system, so getting to the end of a hot race and struggling.

1:02:39I think it would have helped. More electrolytes would have helped. It wasn't the only problem, but yeah, they definitely would have helped. And then you're not the only two Brownlee brothers, are you? How does your other brother feel about yours and Johnny's careers? Yeah, we do have... We've got our third brother, Ed. He's seven years younger than me, and he's great. He's great. He's always been super supportive. he's very different to us as as watch does and it's i always think he's a really nice normalizer you know it's always been you could be out away competing all over the world and come back to edit and he'd just be like he really didn't care about the latest race win lose or draw he just uh would be there to take the mickey and do you still um keep up with what's going on in triathlon now if so what do you make of it because it feels like just like cycling triathlon had some real boom years after the Olympics, you know, you guys were a reason for that.

1:03:37But somehow, I don't know, those sorts of sports captured the public's imagination. And then, you know, years down the line, that's kind of fizzled out. And I mean that with no disrespect. I think that's just the case. A bit like cycling, it's ebbed and flowed. So do you feel like, you know, what sort of state is triathlon in? And how, you know, what do its fortunes look like? And how could they be kind of pushed further? Yeah, that's a good question. Yeah. How do I feel about it? I think competitive wise, you know, it's amazing. I think Alex is an incredible athlete and Alex Yee and what he's doing for the sport in terms of jumping over and doing running on its own, I think is really cool both for him personally and for the sport of triathlon.

1:04:21and I think there's a heck of a lot of competitions, racing opportunities for athletes in triathlon at the moment, which is awesome across the World Series, T100, Ironman, Supertri. It's a great time. Probably, not probably, definitely the best time to be a professional triathlete for your racing and earning opportunities. For the sport as a whole, yeah, it feels like participation as a whole is maybe not what it was, but I think you're absolutely right. I think there's loads of factors that go into the ebbs and flows of sport. And it feels like to me that there's an increasing wave of people being more healthy, more active, and wanting to do more sport.

1:05:00And I think triathlon will benefit from that. Excellent. Well, Alisa, thank you so much for joining us on the Cycles Magazine podcast. Go spread your wings, win some more gravel races, and fulfill the rest of your appointments because I know you're a busy guy. So thank you. Yeah, and get those electrolytes in you. It sounds like a busy, busy afternoon ahead. But thank you so much for joining us. And yeah, best of luck with everything and with True Fuels. Thank you. Thanks very much, both of you.

1:05:27Alistair Brownlee, ladies and gents. Thanks again, Alistair. I think I've said this loads of times on this podcast. Sorry to keep you. I really hope that people don't, you know, we've got a guest on and they've committed. You know, here's some behind the scenes stuff. They basically kind of commit to 45 minutes to an hour. and often they've got busy schedules because, for example, as you may have noticed, Alistair wants to talk a lot about True Fuels. That's a big venture for him at the moment. That's kind of why he's on the podcast in a way, or that's why he's come into our orbit. So he's busy promoting that, but then I also hope that he's not just going like, guys, when are you going to stop asking me about salt i want to go and have my lunch i know there's no answer to that but what's your gut feeling will do people enjoy talking to us i think it's you have to take on a case-by-case basis because some people seem like they're very happy to chat and they say oh we got to go some people are more like oh we need to go like always always remember peter's again finishing the conversation they're happy to keep chatting it's like peter you've got to go that is a good point so peter sagan uh was a podcast i don't know finger in the wind maybe podcast 110 or something uh scroll back through because i think i seem to remember it being really good and it's also on youtube anyway we've got some time with him we had his uh manager in the sidebar chat so what we can see is a couple of windows and then you've got your little like sidebar chat.

1:07:00Unbeknownst to me, the manager had been typing out, wind it up, wind it up. Peter needs to go, wind it up for a while. And then I got a phone call from the PR liaison, which I promptly ignored because we were recording a podcast. He was telling me that his manager had been contacting this guy, Ian, to say, can you make them stop? And eventually we then stopped. And then it turned out that Sagan was just like, yeah um well while i wait for my file to upload i'll just because i was like you can go if you want mate you can just leave your laptop on and it'll upload and he's just like no i've got no to go we just chatted to him for like how are you guys i don't know peter again yeah yeah the moment where peter again asks will so how are you will it's like wow okay uh i can't remember what you said but um and not only i think we had like some quite good chats which is often the way when people stop recording the first part about that was we'd stop recording he carried on chatting for for the upload and his manager thought we're still interviewing him so just get a message like guys guys that's right yeah this is the longest interview he's ever done he said this longest interview he's done in 17 years so there we go anyway so definitely worth a listen to that one if you haven't already yeah um and we're supposed to be talking about the podcast just gone which we haven't done successfully for the last five minutes so tell me your thoughts Alistair seems happy to chat.

1:08:23He does seem happy to chat. He also seems incredibly smart. You know when in that kind of Chris Boardman sort of vein where you've got someone who's like really keyed in to how to be an athlete, to what kind of athleticism or sport means as well as just being able to do it in a kind of more kind of physical way. He just seems really smart. I can imagine him going on to being, a really good DS or fronting up some really interesting research being the head of the IOC. I don't know. He seems he's got a head on his shoulders, that's for sure. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see. I feel like he's the kind of guy that probably can't do one thing at a time.

1:09:00He's probably going to stop balancing six different technological ventures on the go. One thing that he did briefly mention at the end that I wanted to pick up on was talking about triathlon the moment he mentioned Alex Yee going into the marathon. James, were you aware, or you might be, but current Olympic gold medalist Alec Hu, did his first competitive marathon, so just marathon, not triathlon, at a London marathon this year. He did it in 2011, finished 14th, second fastest sprint. Why? Crazy. And he's talking about, oh yeah, you know, we're triathletes, you know, we're rounded, you know, jack of all trades, master of none.

1:09:38But that kind of athlete, and Alice is the same, I think they're probably just the master of three disciplines. Yeah, I reckon they are. And also, it definitely makes sense. And you know, there's no, like big headline. But cross training means that you can train more, you can do more things in a day if you're doing multiple activities. So that does make sense. So that building your big aerobic base through three versions of training. But I also think it seems to make sense to me that if you can run really, really fast, and if you train to be able to run really, really fast, after doing stuff that is also very taxing, then if you just do the running, then you're going to be that much better potentially or as good in a different way as someone who just does the running because your running comes from a place of serious hardship.

1:10:27So a bit like professional, like, you know, pro riders used to, I don't know how if it is these days, less so I think, but they used to just like train on their shitty, clunky, heavy bikes because then on race day, you just felt like you were flying and you actually probably were because you were carrying around a couple of extra kilos the rest of the time so if you unshackled yourself like Alex Yee it sort of makes sense that he's every bit as good maybe if I you know I would bet that if you gave him like an Olympic cycle just to concentrate on a marathon or 10k then he would be the best runner in the UK surely he's predisposed it's not just dumb luck yeah I've actually I've seen him competing in the national cross-country championships before and he was well he didn't win that but he came second he was very fast really um what do you think you'd be doing if uh you know because you can do loads of stuff but then where would you find yourself excelling if you just gave up all of the other plates that you have to spin and just focused on one thing I think in my actual life in your actual life would you be like the Jake Humphreys of cycling podcasts the world performance Strixen high performance Strixen you'd find me doing bamzuki with those little silly little computer generated toys that's the real jake humphrey i don't know what that is what is that that was after your time it was a bamzuki yeah it was a you should look it up it was a fantastic kids tv was it like pogs i don't know what that is before your time yeah okay right bamzuki that's what we'll be doing wasn't he the cyclist pog pog he was he is no uh you know what pogs are pogs were little little cardboard discs and then you had the plastic disc which was called the keeney and then you threw the keeney down onto the cardboard discs and if you flipped a cardboard disc over then you got to keep it or you won that round and depending on what sort of rules you're playing you were basically seeking to take all of your mates' hogs and collect them.

1:12:31So it became highly contested and was eventually banned in the primary school playgrounds up and down the country. I never heard of that one before, but it sounds great. I mean, get into it. There's some good web pages out there somewhere, I'm sure. Anyway, on that note, we should probably get back to the rest of our polymathematical day jobs. Will, what's on the cards for you this afternoon? What are you doing? Probably find some salt. Yeah. Eat it. Yeah. You know that like just table salt on Maldon, there's more than one type of salt. Well, I did notice that Truefields use Himalayan salt. Himalayan salt is a good quality of salt.

1:13:10But you need your potassium, your magnesium, your sodiums. All the salts. All the salts. And, you know, will there be any work for cyclists or cyclist.co.uk or the Cyclist Magazine podcast coming out of your fingers, your eyes, your ears or your mouth this afternoon? Yeah, loads. Too much. too much have you written your um the dotco.uk today but lots going on have you written your classic climb for uh for our illustrious leader mr pete muir yet i have that by the way uh listeners viewers is uh part of cyclist the magazine will has penned an article as part of our ongoing classic climb series which is pretty self-explanatory where he did the what was it Paso Rolo or something?

1:13:50Was it that? Rolet. Paso Rolet. And was it good? It was good. It was quite long. The best bit was at the top. It was good. You're kind of riding for a long time on like so waiting to really hit and you get to the top and it's like, okay, yeah, that was good. And where do you think it ranks in your top five climbs? Probably doesn't get into the top five. Really? Harsh. What's your top climb? What does get into the top five? I won't press you for the number one spot. I don't know because it's quite a difficult one to ask me because I haven't ridden most of the world's best climbs. I feel like that's a question that should be flipped on you.

1:14:24It doesn't matter, it's yours. It's your top 10, man. No, it'd be difficult. I'd say maybe the best one was probably I did the Kill the Hill Sportiva Mallorca a few years ago where I went up to the military base on the real top of the Puig Mayor. And that was pretty cool. That's pretty cool. Because that's normally sharp that road, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. So that's hard to beat. That's hard to beat. and you've done Monte Grappa as well, haven't you? Have you? Grappa, yeah. That's bloody tough. I come straight off a two-week holiday and that was really difficult. Riding with a former pro cyclist and it's like, this is great.

1:14:58This is great for the ego. Did you go out there, have a long Italian lunch and then suit up and cycle up after that? We had the long Italian lunch on top of the Monte Grappa. Oh, that's lovely. So that was really nice. Yeah, that would definitely be up there. also big fan of Passo Poiroui Poiroui Poiroui Dolomites and Rolais basically next to the Passo Mangan is also up there Passo Stephen Mangan Passo Stephen Mangan yeah he's a good lad he's a good lad he's a good climb well fantastic you know if anyone wants to write in and tell us what their favourite climbs are Will and I will we'll read it and we might even read it out on air but that wasn't the reason why I asked you I just wanted to know because it's nice to check in and I believe you might be doing one of my all time favorite climbs the uh vela fike in what where ali alistair was talking about in the tabernis desert or you know there or thereabouts near the sergio leone old spaghetti western sets movie sets which are still up around there and it's the out do i of the desert they call it wow yeah and yeah by the time this goes out i would have done it so i'll let you know And just one more thing to add, although the Tabernas Desert is apparently Europe's only desert, I also think that's not true.

1:16:15And I'm not going to look this up because I'm not going to take a break from saying what I'm saying. But I believe that Dungeness in Kent is actually a desert. Even though it's a shingle beach, it qualifies for reasons. And I don't know what they are. But to be a desert, you have to be a certain thing. and it's those things even though it's made of stones and it's by a beach. Tabernas is often said as the only true desert. Oh. Which it probably takes what you're saying. Well it's Dungeness then. It's like a false widow of a desert isn't it? I'm going to make you stick around while I look it up after all.

1:16:50Yeah I'm looking at it. This is the sort of stuff people hang around the cyclist podcast for. So if you go on the Wikipedia page pages in category Deserts of Europe there's only two. Mm-hmm. So Wikipedia is clearly shorter than you on this. well I don't know I just don't know Tabernas Olteni in Sahara Romania Deliblato San Serbia and Baledov these pronunciations probably all wrong in Poland no mention of of Kent in there hang about Dungeness is a unique landscape I should say this is the AI overview so who knows if this is even correct it's a unique landscape in Kent England often called Britain's desert inverted commas due to its large shingle beach and unique microclimate with sparse vegetation.

1:17:35While it isn't a true desert because it receives more than 250 millimetres of annual rainfall required for a desert classification, it has a barren appearance with shingle, abandoned boats, two nuclear power stations, and quirky often adapted from old railway carriages homes. So there we go. I'm wrong, but it is Europe's largest shingle beach. So there. Okay, right. Toss off for now.

1:18:06Hello, 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.