159. Lidl-Trek's Mattias Reck: Why are riders faster, and the resilience of Mads Pedersen

0:00It kind of pains me to admit this as a cyclist, but I rather like cars. And I think I've just been driving around in the nicest car I will ever, ever drive. And that's the Maserati Grakali, which it turns out is what happens if an Italian supercar company designed an SUV for people like me, for cyclists. Now, the Grakali is fast, like 0-60 in 4.1 seconds fast, but it is also, it's just delightful to sit in. It has the legroom of a first-class flight to Singapore. or it's arguably more luxurious inside than my own house. And yet, I kind of can't believe I'm saying it because of what it is. It's a genuinely practical car.

0:36I could happily chuck a dirty bike in the back of it, then do the shopping, and then go and pick up the rest of the family. Now, I've been driving the electric Forgory version, which has the equivalent of a 557 brake horsepower dual electric motor with a 360-mile range, which sounds incredibly impressive, I know. But let's just put that in cycling terms, which we actually understand. That is the same power output as a thousand Tadej Pogacchas all racing Milan San Remo at once and then racing back again. Now, as well as the electric version, there are multiple engine options too. Prices start from£59 ,990.

1:12Which, when you think about it, is something of a bargain, given Pogaccha's Tour de France winning Colnago from last year sold at auction for£143 ,000. You could have bought two brand new Maserati Gucalis for that. Now you can find out more and also find out where your local Maserati dealer is at maserati.com. Where else? So that's maserati.com and check out the Maserati Gricali. I reckon a while ago, the bike computer market looked all sewn up. There were two big players, end of. Kind of like how once upon a time group sets meant either Shimano or Campagnolo. So there's a wonderful synergy in the fact SRAM busted open the group set market back in 2006 and now SRAM's computer arm, Hammerhead, is blowing the doors off in the same way with the Hammerhead Karoo.

2:00My favourite thing about the Karoo is how much it's like a smartphone. So the touchscreen is really crisp and punchy, so data and mapping, which is way more like a phone's mapping than a classic bike GPS, by the way. Those things are super clear. But unlike a phone, battery life is a huge 35 hours with GPS on and your ride recording, plus it's also way smaller. It's up there with the smallest head units given what it does and it does loads from predicting gradients in real time to making routes on the fly to running apps like Spotify and it will even tell you how fast you're going. There's a whole lot more that we'll get into in other episodes but for anyone who just needs things now now now head over to cyclist.co.uk and search Hammerhead Crew 3 to read our in-depth review and find out why we gave it our cyclist recommended badge of honor.

2:49Then head to hammerhead.io and use the promo code cyclist to get a free heart rate monitor with every purchase of a karoo. Just make sure you put everything in the basket first before applying that promo code. Cyclist promo code hammerhead.io is where you can find all the gear.

3:12Welcome back to the Cyclist Magazine podcast. I am your host James Spender and joining me down that wire looking into his lap at his phone to see how you pronounce the name of our guest today is Mr. Will Strixen. Will, how are you doing? I'm good. I'm not sure I'll be able to find the classic YouTube how to pronounce Matthias Reich but we'll just go with whatever you decide. We'll go with Matthias. I don't understand with pronunciation stuff online. Sometimes you get like a really nice bit of Google and you press, you got that the kind of cartoon of a woman, press the button and it says it. You don't have to watch any adverts on you.

3:46And other times it's It's just like, no, it doesn't exist. You can go to YouTube and someone somewhere has got an AI bot or themselves to actually record anything you've ever thought of and then you have to do it that way. Depends on how big time the name or the word is, right? I suppose. Also helps now you get stuff like, I think we spoke about at the time, but the Olympics when they had the athletes do their pronunciation of the names. Yes. And Pro Cycling Stats has some of that for some. Actually, I've got a really good one, which I'll try and pick out. See if I can find out what we're doing this.

4:12But also, what really got me yesterday, I don't know much about Swedish, but you and our colleague is a very good Swedish speaker. The Swedish K is a K, but it can be a Sh, and that blows my mind. I can't imagine a K being a Sh. Well, okay, well, let's hope that it's not Rush, Matthias Rush. No, it's a CK. It's a CK. Okay. Right, hold on. Let me just play you this quickly, and we can edit it in or out. but this is so this is a French rider for Groupama FDJ United that's their code obviously not pronounced like that how do French persons say United I don't know he's called Maxime de Comble and Pro Second Stats has a little like little microphone next to some not all riders but some riders who've willingly given up some of their time and sent this audio file to help people know how to pronounce their names yes and this is how he says his name should be pronounced Maxime de Comble Max Maxime de Gaulle.

5:43on my own and I haven't watched live sport for ages and who wants this insight into my life I'm giving it to you anyway I watched the Tyson Fury fight and there's the guy I don't know his name but he's knocked around boxing for a thousand years who does the uh yeah and whoever that person is and I know that's there's different people it's always this like shaky-handed old American bloke who looks like they've wheeled him out from somewhere just to do this who looks slightly... Michael Buffer. It's Michael Buffer. And I'm sure that once upon a time, Michael Buffer didn't look like Michael Buffer does now.

6:19And, you know, fair play, whatever. He's aging gracefully, he looks wonderful. But it's just, how do you get to be Michael Buffer? And how is he the only one that does it? And is it so iconic that he has to do it, otherwise it's just not the same? Can other people mimic him? Because I think you can. AI would do it now, just to recreate his voice. AI would do everything. It's like the guy, I don't think they even still do it because film trailers are very different. But you'd always get the film trailers or teasers and it'd be the guy with the super deep voice. Yes. Like snakes on a plane. Yeah.

6:50That kind of... He's out of work now. It's you. I think so. It's AI. It's AI. Have you seen the guy who works with Disney and he can sing in both... He can just switch it from singing in a male voice to a female voice. No, but that is incredible. He does both parts of A Whole New World. And there's this amazing video of him. to see. It's freaky. I think it's genuine. It is genuine. It's amazing. Anyway, everyone's out of work because of AI, except for today's guest, because how can you cope? Well, you probably can coach using AI. No, you can't. You can't coach Mads Pedson using AI. You've got to be there.

7:26And that's where he is. He is with Little Trek. It's Matthias Rek. He's a one-time Swedish road cycling pro in his younger years, but crossed over into the world of coaching more than a decade ago before settling into his role at Trek Segafredo as they were then in 2017. That was not long after a precocious young talent who I just referenced Mads Pedersen had joined and although Matthias now looks after riders across both the men's and women's little Trek teams it's with Mads that he's formed arguably his closest bond which we talk a lot about in the show. So Mads's early spring classics campaign faced some serious difficulties he had a horrible crash at the volta of Valenciana in February really looked like it was derailing everything but you know obviously Matthias will say it's all credit to Mads but I'm sure Matthias had a massive hand in this the team got Mads back racing and he got fourth at Milan San Remo just five weeks later which is incredible and we caught up with Matthias just after Paris-Roubaix so just into April where Mads had finished seventh, which for the team was disappointing taking the long view, having looked at it from January, but for the situation, finishing seventh was an incredible result.

8:44So we've got lots of stories from Matthias about Mads' Sunday at Hell, but also from a coach's perspective because it's quite a nerve-wracking thing seeing your guys go out on the cobbles. But we also go deep on the latest fueling wisdom, what Matthias calls the paradigm shift in training techniques. and also he kind of drills down on the analysis of what makes riders so record-breakingly fast in the modern age because you know we see these records breaking left right and center and it's not just by Pogaccio you've got people that are coming in second third fourth and they're still breaking the records too what is it is it the bikes is it the nutrition is it the fact everyone sat on turbo trainers during covid and got really fast are they injecting baby serum into their legs We just don't know.

9:29So Matthias talks us through that as well. So without further ado, let's welcome to the show Matthias Reck from Little Trek.

9:42Should I have a special background instead of this? No, no, no. That looks great. Because it just looks like you are where you are, which is presumably, well, I mean, you tell me, are you at home? Or is this part of a very laid back service course that you live in? No, this is me at home in Gothenburg. Oh, cool. Are you there most of the year and then from there you go out to races? Or do you find yourself sort of almost on the road, like a kind of traveling caravan with everyone else on the team? No, I'm based here at home. But that is actually a good question because it's the question I get the most when I give speeches and lectures.

10:16Like, how is it possible to be situated in Gothenburg when you have this kind of job? But I meet the riders at training camps and races. But in between, it's nice to be able to go home. So I travel around. I mean, in this business, a lot of people travel really a lot. So I'm a bit lucky that I only travel 100 days, which is almost like part time. If you're a swineer, mechanic, a DS, normally you travel like 180 days. Yeah, like a kind of traveling circus. Yeah. So does that mean that you're in Gothenburg at the weekend or were you at Paris-Roubaix with the team? I was in Paris-Roubaix with the team.

10:58And my toughest period when it comes to traveling is definitely from December to Roubaix. Since I follow and I'm the coach that is most responsible for the Classic guys. So you have big training camps in December and January. And then there's another camp in February. And then you come to the Classic. So I've been there from Gentwebelgem all the way to Roubaix. So it's like a two and a half week. So coming home now, then you really feel a bit exhausted that you can need a little break. Yeah, and I'm just going to throw it out there. No disrespect to the countries that host the classics. It's a grim time of year, isn't it, to be out on the road?

11:39It's not like going to Italy in May or France in the middle of summer. Yeah, I mean, sometimes it can be like really that you meet spring when you're in Belgium, but sometimes it can be really tough. And I guess that's also the combination of the history, the culture, the weather, the cobbles, these roads, and the absolute fanatic fans make it like a highlight of the year. Yeah. So tell me how this year went for you. Does Paris-Roubaix get any less kind of crazy? It's just getting more and more. I think it's just getting more and more crazy. And if I just look back to our classic campaign, you cannot get by that Matt's crashed in his very first race.

12:25And he's our top guy, our leader, and the best guy in these kind of races. So, of course, it's been tough mentally, emotionally. So it's difficult to wrap up how it was. We have gone from, like, it's not possible at all to, yeah, maybe it is possible to have really high hopes and to be able to deliver, like in San Remo, he came back and finished fourth. And then, unfortunately, he got the slight cold, which was exactly what we not needed because we have been chasing for the last six weeks. And then after Flanders, which made our hopes even higher for Robert, so it's mixed feelings that he, yeah, okay, in the end he did a really good performance anyway, but it's just that some riders were better and then we just have to settle for, in the end, like, I think he was in the game for third, but in the end he finished seventh.

13:24And if you are super happy with fifth in Flanders because you're just happy to be there, then after the fifth place in Flanders, then you immediately have higher expectations in Roubaix. But I think when we look back, we are going to be happy what they did because this injury was much, much tougher than anybody understands. I think even me, it took a long time to understand how hard it hit him and how much mental energy that he had to really dig deep to be in the classics trying to fight for the wins. So what was, yeah, tell listeners who might not know what the injury was, when it occurred, and then how that affected him.

14:06I mean, you said he had to dig deep very mentally. What was he going through? Yes. So it was like the first race in Valencia in beginning of February. And this is because I was not there. So I was told by the DSs and the mechanic who, that they found him, that he was lying on the belly and he couldn't even move. So at one point they even thought that maybe there was something with his back. But in the end, like it was left wrist and right collarbone and the operation they could do already like two days after or something. and in the beginning he was quite positive he even came back to the hotel that same very evening and said okay guys i really need you now this is not the time to just go around and be sorrow and start crying now we and now we keep focused because i need you all to help me but then a few days later when he was sitting home in his in his apartment i mean he could not to even wipe his ass because you have like both sides are like totally blocked from doing anything with the collarbone on the right and the wrist on the left so it took some time and we had a few talks and it was difficult to to help him because he was sitting there and he's like totally bruised over the whole body but in the end mats is mats and then he said okay now i don't look back now I really try to do it anyway.

15:31What sort of input does the team have to that rehabilitation process? Do you find yourself personally phoning him up every day, checking in with him, having a chat, or you're giving him a slowly structured routine to get back into? Or do you just kind of go, look, he's his own guy, we leave him to it, he's got friends and family, he'll come back to us? It's very clear here because we have a good doctor that there are like four or five doctors. And one of them is working with Mats, and he was there in daily contact. And then we decided together, me, Mats, and the doctor, and actually the whole medical staff, that we wanted to keep this camp in Mallorca that he usually does like end of February.

16:14So even if he could only be on the rollers at that time, it was his way to keep motivation. So we had a cook there, the doctor came, the mechanic came, I came, and then we were like two and a half weeks in Mallorca. and the first 10 days he could actually only be on rollers so he did like three hours rollers in the morning three hours in the afternoon and then a constant checkup by the doctor and then he decided when it was possible to try to go outside and then the mechanic tried to build the bike so it was possible to go out and then it was like it was like a slow progression from only doing indoor to slowly do a bit of both and in the end he could only be on the road and of course indoor would have meant some ruvi riding i'm sure yes there was i mean when you have to ride five six hours every day then you need something to fool your mind and ruvi is actually not bad in that so it's a way to fool your mind it's a lot of inspiration and so on also but but it also bottom line it it helps you do more hours and that was really what because what i found extra helpful and almost incredible because uh i know many riders that have had difficult crashes and then it takes quite a long time until you can train hard but matt's has such incredible recovery i think so it didn't take long until we could train also hard so when i say that he was three hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon on the indoor bike it was not easy hours he did intervals almost every day and he got better out of it so the first week he did 37 hours on the indoor bike that's a lot of ruby and a lot of different intervals i can tell you that and how do you feel about it because he you started you've been um with uh little trek now as it once was, Trek and Trek-Segafredo, for over nine years.

18:13And I think that means you basically came into the team at the same time as a young Mads Pedersen first signed in 2016 and started racing in 2017. He's your guy, right? You must look at him with more, you know, in a certain almost, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but, you know, a kind of father-son style relationship, I would guess, because he's a bit of a protege for the team. he's also almost a countryman you know Denmark's next door to Sweden where you're from how do you feel when that happens to your guy it must be absolutely gutting I'm impressed that you know all this because you're you're you're totally right we are almost I mean we can speak like a mix of Swedish Danish together we came into the team in 2017 however I didn't start coaching him until 21 but okay but it's still like uh five years now and in some way it's a father and son but in some way it's also like a very a very equal but he trusts me a lot and this is a trusting business yeah so so we are friends and it feels really close and like family and um yeah it's And sometimes my emotions depend on Matt's emotions and how he feels I also feel.

19:31So it's been tough. But still, what I said, it took me a long time to understand how tough it was for him and how hard he had to dig and how much pain he had. And something that came out a bit later was that during just four or five days before Tour of Flanders, then he crashed in training. I was not there with him at that very moment, but then he sent me a voice message. And it's difficult to describe how down he was because he thought that this was the end of the campaign, that he had to go home. And then I think that was the first time that I really understood, even Mats, that is like a machine.

20:16This has cost so much for him to get back here. that but but then he's matz is matz and a few hours later then we talked and he said okay ah fuck it i have dealt with a lot of pain i cannot throw everything away because of this stupid crash i had a cold i had another crash which was on the other hand so a weak left hand and then damaged right hand and then you have to do flanders and will bear so but in the end i mean i i think matz is very good in always moving forward okay it didn't work out but he doesn't look back very much he he can suffer take the pain but then he moves on and i think he will be very happy with what he accomplished even though he didn't reach the podium for instance yeah i mean it's fantastic as you say seventh through bay fourth at milan san remo fifth at tour of flanders by any stretch that's a fantastic run but obviously not the results that you guys would have wanted but i was just thinking a few maybe last year or two ago we had on the podcast, Dr.

21:15Elisabetha Borgia, who is one of your psychologists at Trek. And I didn't realize, I don't know what other teams are like, but you guys have got a fairly strong kind of psychology element to the team structure. How much of that comes into play when, maybe not for Mads, but someone, you know, Mads or someone like Mads crashes, is it, do you spend time on that mental side sitting down with a psychologist and saying, these are my worries, how can we work through then what can i control how do we come out of this yeah you are totally right maybe mats is not the one that that needs it the most but i think that we are really one of the one of the teams that has put the most emphasis on the psychology part and it's it's a bit strange actually that it's always the last part that that comes in because we have known now for decades how important how important it is, the mental side.

22:09Even if you don't think that you need it, everybody can need it in some circumstances, but still it's always the last piece that comes in. And there I can say, I mean, this is not because of me, but I think the team did a super good job in hiring Elisabetta. And now we actually have two more. And then you always have somebody that you can reach out to in the first step. And then, of course, if you're Danish, then maybe you need to find a Danish help that can speak a native language. But just to have this first connection in the team that can help you out is super important. And we really value it a lot.

22:47And switching back to the race, this was the fastest ever Paris-Roubaix. 48.91 kilometers an hour. It's a total increase. What is it? 258k, nearly 55 meters of cobbles. How are the riders getting that fast? And obviously the answer to that is, well it's kind of everything but if you had to break it down and go this is actually the biggest you know the primary factor would you say it's nutrition like a lot of people say or would you say it's the equipment or is it the training because the riders the generational talent changes but the riders are kind of the same aren't they um you know someone like mads has probably raced his fastest roubaix ever despite having horrendous breaks all over his body and not being on the bike so how how is all of that possible yeah if you just look back if we take the last five years then the then the average speed in the world tour it has gone up it's like huge steps and i would say that the biggest reason for it i would put that at the material like tubeless tires you have everything is aero everything is more like the helmet nowadays is like faster than the TT helmets just a few years ago and you have like speed suits and you have special aero socks so everything there is faster and then the second one I would say that 15-20 years ago then it was like big news that you could take like 90 grams of carbs now it's up to 120 140 depends of course a little bit on your engine and your body weight and how long you are going to race if your output is only 250 watts for three hours then you don't need to shove in 120 grams of carbs yeah but but these pro riders doing five six hour races and they have an average power of 350 then of course it makes a difference and the fatigue resistance that we can see nowadays the power doesn't drop as much as it did only 10 years ago and i think that's the main reason uh i mean the main reason for that is probably due to extra carbohydrate intake i mean there has been a lot of training for many many years so i cannot of course training is now a little bit more specific a little bit more better in certain ways but you trained a lot also 30 years ago and this big change in only 10 years with fatigue resistance power doesn't drop at all the same as it did before a key factor in that is a lot higher cargo intake and then we should not forget about the riding style today the races are less controlled all this new generation talents they open up the race so early and that also makes for something and then you have a bunch everybody's so trained it pushes the speed even higher and this even though in the traffic You have so much more traffic islands and everything.

25:47So it's not so strange speed go up and the traffic and the roads look more difficult. And so it's not so strange that crashes also, because I think that there's like 30, 40 more crashes every year. Really? Wow. So with nutrition particularly, particularly is that something that you've then adjusted for your riders and sort of like do you have to kind of coach the ability to eat more and usefully consume more or is it just it turns out that you know rider x is just very very good absorbing carbohydrates in a in a way that rider y would just never be able to if i mean in general i think that there is a shift it's almost like a a big paradigm shift.

26:39If you look back 15, 20 years ago, then you would say you should train your fat metabolism so it is really high, so that you can save your glycogen storage so you don't bunk. Nowadays, this fat oxidation rate has become less important because you can have so high carbohydrate intake, which also means you have higher economy, higher efficiency, because it doesn't take as much oxygen. to use carbohydrates. So as long as you don't bunk, then even if your fat oxidation should go slightly down because you always eat carbs during training, then in the end, then you get faster. And when you do like, because for instance, us, both in December and January camp, also sometimes in February and in the season, then we do like tests and then we can see exactly, depending on which step, how much fat and carbs you're using.

27:34and i think that people would be surprised of how little fat you're actually using and now we're even talking about big engines high view to max and they still so it's like a common belief that in high zone two or zone three is like a fat max zone and then people think that yeah just because i'm now in a fat max zone it means that actually it's a lot of fat and like below a lt1 is mostly fat but the amount of fat that you use percentage-wise is is very little you burn a lot of carbs even with normal endurance training and i think that's an eye-opener and that's why you don't see so many pro riders now just going out on avocado and a piece of salmon and egg and just ride with water yeah and people can train harder and they can race harder and i think that's one of the reasons also that it goes faster and the power like 10 years ago if you could push seven watts per kilo for 20 minutes in fresh state in the end of a mountain stage then it would go down to maybe 6.2 but nowadays it maybe drops from seven to 6.8 it's a huge difference in only 10 years yeah and that and that that actually is that sort of moves into uh something i was going to ask you about because we're talking about watts per kilo there and I recently read something about how some group of scientists had looked at watts per kilo and gone actually what's going to be a more useful metric is watts squared per kilo because actually if we look at it although you want to have a high power to weight ratio be as light as possible but be as powerful as possible power has much greater weighting ultimately on results.

29:23And so if we square it in that equation or in that metric, then we have something that's more representative of how useful changes in weight or power can be. Is that something you've come across? Does that make any kind of sense? I mean, I don't know if I understood everything exactly right and it's also had a bit of a bad internet connection just now. But I mean, today speeds are higher and you have to have a pretty steep gradient for the calculation to be accurate with like words per kilo with a full body weight. So it's something that you have to, depending on the gradient of a climb, and then you can maybe divide it with two thirds of the body climb or something of the body weight or something like that.

30:12I guess that was your question, right? like how much does body weight then you would need to really slow down the pace and it would have to be quite steep and since the pros now go so fast i mean climbing they can do climbs of like 28 30k an hour sometimes if it's only six five six percent they go so fast it's unbelievable and then of course what's per kilo is not going to be the correlation to uh to the speed yeah But I was thinking of the Una X rider from a couple of years ago, Jonas Abrahamsen, who kind of stole some headlines because he said, I've put on 20 kilos, gone from about 60 to 80.

30:54And this bloke is over 1.8 meters. He's way over six foot tall. He's a big guy. So 60 kilos is very lean, difficult weight for him to sustain. But anyway, he puts on 20 kilos. It shouldn't, in theory, make him faster, but he has the best season of his life, and he goes from 900 watts to 1500 watt peak power, and it goes completely in the opposite, flies in the face of perceived wisdom, which is you've got to be light to be a cyclist. Does that sort of stack up to you? Does that make sense? Is that sort of theory applied to any of your riders? Do you have less of an emphasis on guys, guys, guys, cut the weight, cut the weight?

31:33I mean, I don't want to say so much about Alba Hamza because I do not really know the circumstances. It sounds totally crazy going from 60 to 80 kilos. Maybe this is also some kind of natural growth. So maybe his natural weight was not close to 60. And of course, it's a sport where you have a lot of focus on weight and it can go the wrong way for sure. and depending on what is your specialty, then the extra one, two kilos, they can definitely help. And I think that is the case then with Abahamsen that he was made not to be a pure climber, which meant that when he found his natural body weight and then he saw that he was another type of rider maybe and then it turned out well.

32:22So in general, we always have to pay attention that riders don't focus too much on losing weight. and today with dexa scans and we have power meters on everything then it's of course also easier to see if something is turning wrong and you get sick more often and so on so i get your point and it's really i think in almost every endurance sport this is a delicate matter like losing way too much there are many riders and many athletes that have dieted away a whole career because they were always low on energy really that's it yeah i mean it's it seems staggering doesn't it and i think probably you you you raced um back in the 90s would that be right yes and i'm assuming training techniques and things are very different and i've talked to different old school riders on this podcast and one that always springs to mind is um sean kelly irish rider who said that very quickly he realized that you took the middle out of all of the baguettes and you only ate the crust because the middle was fattening and no one ever had ice cream.

33:31That was really old school. Yeah and I think yeah man like things must have moved on a lot. What do you see what were those things that you thought of you know that you and your riding mates teammates did that you now would go I would never advise my riders to do that I can't believe we used to do that and used to think that would work i think i mean and i'm also to blame because i was also really thinking that only eating fat and protein cutting carbs in the morning and then just ride five hours with water and no carbs that that would help push the fat oxidation and then you are so focused on the weight that even when you know that okay now i'm going to do a harder day so i need to eat more yeah but maybe i can cut it also here and then you end up doing like cutting energy for a longer period and normally you can feel good in the beginning but after a while you are digging such a big hole and you never come up again it's the same if you train too hard too long then it's really difficult to know where you are and then it can take a really long time to understand where you are like you if you take a rest a few days and then you have a good day again and then you think and now i'm back but the body actually needs three weeks of rest but you took only three and then you think ah i am bad because i rested three days and then suddenly you you're upside down and you don't know where you are so going going a longer period feeling tired body doesn't respond that's the worst place to be and that's one of the most important thing as a coach is to tell people now it's time to stop if we stop now and then we can handle it in one week we are back but if it keeps going it can take more and more weeks and then you really can mess up the whole season just because you overdid it for a few weeks and eating less.

35:22I reckon a while ago the bike computer market looked all sewn up. There were two big players end of. Kind of like how once upon a time group sets meant either Shimano or Campagnolo. So there's a wonderful synergy in the fact SRAM busted open the groupset market back in 2006. And now SRAM's computer arm, Hammerhead, is blowing the doors off in the same way with the Hammerhead Karoo. My favorite thing about the Karoo is how much it's like a smartphone. So the touchscreen is really crisp and punchy, so data and mapping, which is way more like a phone's mapping than a classic by GPS, by the way. Those things are super clear.

35:58But unlike a phone, battery life is a huge 35 hours with GPS on and your ride recording, plus it's also way smaller. It's up there with the smallest head units given what it does and it does loads from predicting gradients in real time to making routes on the fly to running apps like Spotify and it will even tell you how fast you're going. There's a whole lot more that we'll get into in other episodes but for anyone who just needs things now now now head over to cyclist.co.uk and search Hammerhead Crew 3 to read our in-depth review and find out why we gave it our cyclist recommended badge of honor.

36:33Then head to hammerhead.io and use the promo code cyclist to get a free heart rate monitor with every purchase of a Karoo. Just make sure you put everything in the basket first before applying that promo code. Cyclist promo code hammerhead.io is where you can find all the gear.

36:54It kind of pains me to admit this as a cyclist, but I rather like cars. And I think I've just been driving around in the nicest car I will ever, ever drive. And that's the Maserati Gricali, which it turns out is what happens if an Italian supercar company designed an SUV for people like me, for cyclists. Now the Gricali is fast, like 0 to 60 in 4.1 seconds fast, but it is also, it's just delightful to sit in. It has the legroom of a first class flight to Singapore. It's arguably more luxurious inside than my own house. and yet I kind of can't believe I'm saying it because of what it is. It's a genuinely practical car.

37:30I could happily chuck a dirty bike in the back of it, then do the shopping and then go and pick up the rest of the family. Now I've been driving the electric Forgory version which has the equivalent of a 557 brake horsepower dual electric motor with a 360 mile range which sounds incredibly impressive I know but let's just put that in cycling terms which we actually understand. That is the same power output as 1 ,000 Tadej Pogacchas all racing Milan-San Remo at once and then racing back again. Now, as well as the electric version, there are multiple engine options too, and prices start from£59 ,990.

38:07Which, when you think about it, is something of a bargain, given Pogaccha's Tour de France-winning Colnago from last year sold at auction for£143 ,000. You could have bought two brand-new Maserati Gicalis for that. Now you can find out more and also find out where your local Maserati dealer is at maserati.com. Where else? So that's maserati.com and check out the Maserati Gricali.

38:37And that obviously touches on just general recovery. We often hear it said by coaches like yourself, riders, the people that win the Tour de France, for example, are the people that can recover the best as much as anything else. That's so important. So, first question, do you guys at Little Trek use all of these kind of fancy recovery aids? You know, I am a cycling journalist and I'm constantly being sent emails about new products and got one the other day. And it was like these kind of Velcro bands that you put around muscles. And it's all to do with helping recovery, apparently, through compression and blood flow.

39:15a little bit like those kind of inflatable trousers the recovery boots that yes kind of came along you saw track riders using at various olympics do there any of those sorts of things i mean do you guys go okay here's a new thing let's try it and see or do you kind of or do you use them or do you just go this is just all marketing nonsense and it's a great idea but ultimately that's that's just you know you can say x and y teams use it but realistically no i will first give an answer to parents and younger riders the most important for recovery is to take away your your handy or your computer at 10 o 'clock and go to sleep sleep is the most important thing and then it's nutrition and sleep beats everything that's really the most important thing on our level on highest level when you do everything right when it comes to training and everything of course we need to pay attention to recovery and recovery starts in the bus after the race they can take a shower they can eat they can already like put on compression socks or stuff like this like almost like you're up in space these things that you were talking about if it's really hot then you need to have trio therapy like really cold things cold baths and so on but in training just to be sure when you train then you don't want to have like cold ice bath all the time because that can cut the stimulation of training but in it in the tour de france of course the most important is not training it's racing and then if it's hot day out and day in in many races like pole and welta almost every state race from from may to august there are really hot hot days and that really kills performance and recovery so then you need to cool down as much as possible so we have like ice vests before the racing even in the neutral and then you take it off when you go to sleep at night if it's too hot it can kill your next day so you have to cool down like 24 7 because in the race it's difficult you you are trying to sometimes even drink ice slushes you get like um ice uh ice cubes down your neck and so on and you try to have everything as cool as possible but but bottom line is like recovery yes every detail matters yeah so what happens then when you go to some tiny little old hotel in France that's been given to you by ASO to stay in and it's got no aircon and it's a 40 degree French high summer day what do you do then with the riders yeah and now I'm in a team that has the luxury of having certain staff that just go around like almost the day before so they are not in the race schedule they are like before and then they make sure that all all the rooms are good and it's like cool and you have your own pillow and mattress.

42:27So it's like really next level. I do not know if it was team sky starting with it. I guess so. And now it's spread also in the teams because racing is so important, but this is for the big races. If we come to a smaller race, then of course there are so many races. We have like 30 riders. Sometimes there are three programs at the same time and then you have to prioritize but in the big races then we cannot leave this to chance that oh there was a hotel with a and i have the roof ceiling and it's super hot yeah then maybe you cannot do your work tomorrow because they had a rule didn't they that you couldn't because team sky kind of just went do you know what we'll just have these enormous buses that have the ability to you know rolling hotels and then aso said no you have to stay you can't just arrive at a bad hotel and go joe what we're going to stay in the bus.

43:20So it must be really tough. And again, one of those uncontrollable things, which as you say, completely ruins the next day. And I'm always fascinated. Sleep fascinates me. I feel like I never get enough. I'm just a regular person. I always want more. When I've done some sleep studies for Cyclist Magazine, one of the stats that typically comes up is in the UK, your average person is almost in a sleep debt of one night per week. The idea being that we should sleep maybe eight hours. Most people manage seven. So over one week, you've lost seven hours worth of sleep. That's nearly a whole night. Why there isn't more done, or maybe you tell me, maybe there is a little trek, but why there isn't more done with sleep, particularly sleep hygiene in the world tour, because it feels like if you can sleep, then you can win right yes yeah it's a good question i mean now in the last two years we have put even more emphasis on it and now i'm talking about a really like race specific details because in the big races like stage races sometimes it's one and a half two hours after the race that ends at five you're not away until six and then you're at eight o 'clock and then you need to have massage and then it's dinner and then it's too late and it's something that we now i do not know why this wasn't discussed or done five years or 10 years ago but we are really planning now to have more sleep to go to bed earlier and if that means that the whole team cannot wait for each other because it takes time for everybody to have massage maybe sometimes we should even cut massage because we should focus on sleep so it's really something that we are thinking about now how can we move to recovery as fast as possible after a stage make things a shortcut and to have dinner earlier so you can slow down the pace of the of the evening and and go to bed earlier so it's a really good point that we are working on it as much as possible even though you are limited to the race schedule and the hotel and the transfer and do you do you therefore have you started to kind of track riders day to day because obviously there's loads of different wearables now if you wanted to we are you are so would you then i mean what do you do with that data do you just kind of have it at the moment it sits there or do you analyze it and maybe with mads for example you would say hey mate you're not i feel like you need to be sleeping more it says here you've had disrupted sleep and you went to bed at you know 11 you should be going to bed at half past nine is that how it sort of plays out yeah yeah it's a balance because you don't want to get the rider are too stressed about this device as I had.

46:02And then you see my heart rate variability is low and my sleep is low and my resting heart rate is a bit higher. Now I cannot ride good. I can just say that most of the pros, they are so tough, strong, they can handle a lot. And even though they are in the Tour de France, I can tell you that if you take a three-week period in the Tour de France or the Vuelta or whichever state race. After like a week or 10 days, the average heart rate has gone down by 10%. So if they started with 200 max, they cannot reach more than 180. But the power doesn't drop. If you're a good rider, you're a strong rider, then the power doesn't drop.

46:49So if they can push 7 watts per kilo for 20 minutes on stage 3, they can also do it stage 15. So in some way, even though they sleep a bit bad, they have enough recovery to be able to do this. And I can also see that even if science say that you need at least eight hours of sleep and more is better because otherwise there is a risk of getting cold, etc., etc. All of that is true. But somehow people that end up on this highest level, they are maybe extra tough in the body because they can handle hard training. sometimes also being a bit on a diet because they have to lose some weight and they can still do it but it's not what you would recommend people to do.

47:38I'm always fascinated over because you must have all this data over a three-week grand tour does a rider end up at the end of it the same-ish or fitter or less fit? This really depends for some riders and it's not only about the rider type it's also like maybe you came into the tour a bit under trained or over trained or whatever something but in general you you can really see that for some riders mentally or physically they are done and for some others they are just getting better and better like i can just take mats as an example because i'm his coach and he's one of the most famous here then he never he never came out of the tour tired or bad he was always better or at least equally good and and the races that he did the whole august september october he was always good it's it's like he needs all this load and it doesn't tire him and then and also mentally it doesn't tire him because we this is also important for some people the tour for instance which is huge it's bigger than everything else all the riders that come to the first time to the tour gets a shock how tough it is with everything like if you need to position yourself 10k before a climb in the gyro in the vuelta you have to do a 30k before in the tour everything is tougher and mentally and journalist and the focus so of course that also makes for tired people because of this mental stress.

49:13And some just can handle it a bit better. So for some, we need to take more rest after the tour and for some less. But I cannot say like a general thing. Yeah. And typically, does a rider end up coming out lighter overall? So how much weight would they lose? Or do you maintain? No, no. That we cannot see. It's actually also sometimes the opposite, that people eat extra because oh it's a tough tour i need to keep eating and then at some points we actually had people that maybe gained a little bit too much i don't think it's a big problem and it's not so common but we definitely don't see drop in weight unless somebody wants it and switching tack a little bit now in terms of current training techniques is it kind of the same as it's always been or have things shifted in the way that you would structure a training program and i'm thinking what strikes me is fairly recently the last few years we've heard lots of talk about zone two riding um you know teams like uae saying like pogacic almost i mean this is not this is obviously sensationalist headline grabbing stuff but you know he only ever rides in zone two and then he races as fast as he can which sounds really old school a little bit like those old Belgian riders like Roger de Valmik who used to go out motor pacing you know 200 kilometers before breakfast and would do these big rides after doing their own actual races because there was a point where it felt like lots of training was structured around high intensity interval training but we've we've moved back into the low low intensity miles or so is it has it come full circle is the zone two stuff kind of a nonsense like where where are we kind of at with it how do you approach the modern training kind of schedule it it's a big question and i think also it's a bit difficult to to like to like wrap it up because it's also some coaches come from come from different like different culture and so on But if I should start to say that, I think in general that with the added recovery strategies and with now better nutrition during training, I think in general, riders can train a little bit harder.

51:38For some, it's a bit more high intensity training. For some, it's a bit more like total load with like more volume, but just a little bit more. And that, of course, gives something. If you just look to it, like a hierarchy of training. I know, for instance, Stephen Saylor has made like a hierarchy. And then the bottom line is the most important, which is total load. To have the right mix of easy training and hard training and the total load, that is most important. And that has maybe changed slightly between trends and like decades and so on. But in general, I think that nowadays you can just train.

52:21You can put a little bit of load on the body. Or more pros can train with a little bit more load. And that, in the end, makes for a better rider. Because we can really see that power is going up. If the best riders in the world could push a certain amount of power 10 years ago, it's going up. And it's not only in the races. is you can also see that in the testing, like people are stronger, but it's not the VO2 max. So there must be something else. At least I don't think that it has to do with the VO2 max. You can see really high VO2 max values like back in the decades. So I don't think that that is the main reason.

53:01So there is something happening out local. And then of course, also maybe central when it comes to like the nerve system and so on. And to try to explain, if we are coming now full circle or so on if you take a training regime everybody needs some high intensity training and everybody needs endurance training if you train very polarized that is quite easy it doesn't take so much like it's not so difficult to train a person easy endurance and high intensity because the high intensity is quite short so it doesn't make you tired and if the endurance training is not so hard easy enough and then it's also not tiring and that's a very easy combination but to be really as good as you can then you also need to find this training in the middle zones and that's what you heard about like porgy doing four or five hours at 330 watts and so on and like doing threshold works like really tempo work and that's the biggest question and that's also where the coach needs to find how much can i push my rider because everybody can do like short high intensity and easy endurance but how much of this middle work can you do and how much can you do where you combine volume and intensity and i think that nowadays maybe we have come a little bit extra because in the past there are so many differences so i saw so i cannot say too much because then maybe there will be a lot of comments.

54:32But I think that we have pinpointed a little bit better like key sessions, key intervals. But the big thing as a coach is to understand how much total load I can give and especially what you do in the middle zones because everybody needs some really high intensity. And normally you would say that to have a good stimuli of you to max and so on, then you should try to collect minutes on 90 % of VO2. And nowadays, there are a bit more dynamic intervals. So instead of doing four times four, then you do like 30-15s and you do like dynamic and spikes in the intervals and so on. And that has made for something because it both made you collect more minutes on 90 % of VO2 without extra cost or like extra fatigue or extra lactate or extra RPE.

55:27And at the same time, it also fits good to how you race. Like doing four... It more minutes the way you race. Exactly. So if you do four times eight steady pace threshold, it doesn't stimulate the way if you do four times eight, but with spikes. So it gives you extra adaption for like everything. and at the same time also the power number that you need in races. So instead of doing four times five steady, then you do 30-15s. And that gives you the chance to have power output that is at least 10 % higher. Something is going to happen in the body, in the legs, when you can push 10 % higher power doing the shorter, shorter efforts.

56:11And I think that is one piece that makes us today ride faster. i love the idea that the middle zone for someone like pogac is 330 watts which for your average amateur rider they'd be very happy if that was their ftp and i can also say pay attention because it's easy because like i always help a little bit in a cycling school here in sweden and young people then they see everything and then they just try to pick and then they don't have the theory like how the body works so if people start copy pasting doing a lot of zone three i mean now they say a zone two but i think in some schools this would be the same as doing zone three yeah like it's not threshold it's not endurance it's there in the in the middle and to push like that and maybe not eat enough or doing it too often that's the biggest mistake you can do, I would say, to do that too much.

57:11Because that can really kill a schedule. Easy endurance doesn't kill you. Short, high intensity doesn't kill you. It's too much of the middle work that can really wreck a training schedule. And just because big engines like Mats and Pogi or Fandorpool or Remco can do this kind of trainings doesn't mean that everybody can do it. No, yeah, too, right. And in regards to kind of measuring progress, measuring your guys training is power still your kind of number one metric and i say this thinking about a chat i had with hunter allen who is the american um coach who kind of wrote the original earliest books on power meters and said this is going to be the gold standard tool and he's recently sometime last year come out with a new book saying actually you know the new thing now is going to be continuous glucose monitoring.

58:06So the ability to kind of monitor what's going into your body, what's happening with your athletes, glucose basically, and then tweak how they eat to fuel them better. Do you see any sense in that or is power always just going to be number one? Maybe I'm not up to date on this glucose thing, but I would definitely say that until now i would still say that power is golden standard but it doesn't mean that i only use it and sometimes i think that we are a bit blinded by power because it's a luxury that we can measure power so easy every second on every bike like you have so much data and that's a question in itself how are we going to use all this data and that's a bit for the future but this future is now so So everybody's now trying to understand what we can do with it.

58:59But I would still say that power is golden standard, but we also use heart rate and to some extent also lactate. But I'm not the biggest fan of lactate, so don't ask me too many questions on that because I will answer in a bit more negative way than some others. But for instance, when you do intervals in the winter, then you don't need to reach a certain power. Then it's maybe more, okay, I want to reach zone five, and then you can work on heart rate. And then the closer to a race you're coming, like the race season, then it's more about aiming for specific power or like a runner. In the beginning, it's just about the intensity.

59:39And then as you come closer, then you really want to run at specific pace. And it's the same for us. I don't need to put 4020s at 550 watts. I can just say, now you're going to do this kind of interval. try to reach between 170 and 180 heart rate. And then as the season comes closer, then I start adding specific power numbers instead. And does that also happen in races? Something else I know you might be able to speak to it. He's obviously not one of your riders, but Pogaccia having a bike at one point in Roubaix that didn't have a head unit on it. And so you're like, well, how's this guy going to know his power?

1:00:20Because surely all pro riders need to know their power all the time that's how because they you know they used to say this some of the british press about say someone like chris frume he just knew his power numbers so did sky and they just worked in this very mathematical way and that was how they won races because they knew their precise boundaries and then they could almost predict what they would do next is that really the case or would most of your riders happily say i don't need a heart rate strap i don't need the power meter on race day i just race i would say in most races the most important thing with a with a computer is to know exactly how long is it to the next corner so then you need the kilometers yeah but if we take now a chris fumo whatever when you do longer steady efforts and then it's really good that you have the power meter because then you know that you don't over pace it but in like a classic race it's not i mean if you look at it you're going you're going to get crazy and maybe you can look like maybe like an average power after a certain amount but i do not think there are many riders doing it but like if you do a tt or you are alone in the front and poggi is riding a lot alone in the front and maybe then he can use it a bit but i would say that we should not overestimate how much you use power in races unless it's like steady efforts longer climbs and so on gotcha and and finally um last question is where do you see you know you've already said in the last five years cycling has changed the speeds have gone up so much the way in which riders can handle their training load has changed and the way in which you train them has changed what do you think the next five or ten years looks like have we almost reached a kind of peak now or do you predict that you know there's you know what's what's coming in our future what might look different to today i would say at the moment there is a lot of reflections and discussions about is it becoming almost at the limit like every every rider has to start at the very early age to be super dedicated and to know all the things like that you have to work on all the details already when you're 18 19 and i think that everybody is speaking about it because everybody is a little bit scared that we are coming to the point where okay and now we have to like ease back a little bit but it's also not easy to ease back because if everybody is trying to push and do more and more and more when are you going to back off but just by seeing and hearing riders coaches managers speaking about it it means that at least we are aware and then we and then we just hope that it doesn't go overboard so we're already aware of the situation and i think also agents and so on like discussing in which age you should start signing riders and so on so this is really what i can see that there we need to find a balance because this sport is now so on top top top top top and if you have to do this earlier and earlier and earlier then maybe a rider's career is over too early so i think it's something i don't have an answer and i do not know if the right thing is to like jump off because that's not realistic but we are aware of the situation and it comes out more and more like it's tough and then we just have to find a balance with it that must be a very hard team decision often a kind of philosophical decision you've got this mercurial young talent some kids arrived 17 18 and they've got fantastic power numbers and everything else usually they'd race under 23 and they slowly build up to you know elite men's and women's racing they go straight in and then you have the opportunity to win if you think you can win a few races and this this star could burn very bright but then it's over but we get to win the races as the team or we might not win those races but we might get some really good results with this this rider across a 10-year career those questions that you have to ask yourself and where do you personally fall down on that which which which side do you come down on yes uh i think so and i think this is a discussion that is ongoing and i think that is a good first step and then i i am not good enough in in predicting where this is all going to lead but i think it's a very good and important important discussion to have it's also like because the difference between riding as a junior or under 23 amateur and coming to the pros it's huge i mean it's almost to it's difficult to fathom because when you're amateur or junior under 23 and then you are riding the best riders in maybe two or three years like i do not know what they call it like old school line swedish like but but when you become pro then you ride with a bunch of 15 years of the best riders instead of only two as a junior or maybe so it's like this is super big stiff and then you need people to have time to get into it so if there is too much stress that the person that comes from amateur to pro if he should immediately be good then we are having a difficult i mean that would be very critical and not so good that would be problematic so we need to have time because this difference is so big and then we just have to find the good way of it and i hope in five years that we can say that we have found a good balance to develop this this sport and the young talents.

1:06:19Yeah. Well, fantastic. Matthias, thank you so much for the chat. Best of luck with the rest of the season. And I know that you look after more riders than just Mads, but we chatted a lot about Mads. So best of luck to him too. He had a stonking season last year. So did you. I don't know how you went from winning Gent-Wevelgum to doing three weeks in the mountains in Italy and winning a sprint jersey there and then also at the Vuelta. So big things hopefully still left to come this season. So we'll all be watching. But Matthias, thank you so much. thank you very much it was a really nice talk I liked it

1:06:54ladies and gentlemen Matthias Reck thank you very much again Matthias for giving up your time mid-season you know that's not necessarily what a lot of people appreciate right now these guys are super busy and to get some time with them is an incredible privilege for us and speaks volumes of them because I do think it is nice when teams want to talk to us lowly journalists because hopefully we all make the world go round. And hopefully, I think, I'd say that, I think me and Matthias got on all right. You know, sometimes you interview somebody and you're like, man, they hated me, but they had to sit there.

1:07:29And other times you walk off being like, I bet we could be friends in real life. Who else have you came away thinking you could be friends with, apart from Peter Sagan? I left that one hanging in the air, didn't I? Wanting you to ask me that. I thought that, yeah, I mean, we talked about it before, haven't we? That time we interviewed Peter Sagan And then we talked to him for another half an hour while it was uploading afterwards. And it was just brilliantly awkward. And his manager said afterwards, that's the longest interview Peter's ever given in 17 years. That was brilliant. I think my first interview, yeah, it was my first interview for Cyclist was Geraint Thomas.

1:08:06And he wasn't the Geraint Thomas that he became, but he was still a massive hotshot come off the back of the track. He was a name, but he wasn't a superstar. So who knows? Maybe being a superstar has corrupted him, and I definitely wouldn't have got that access more recently. But I genuinely thought he's a really nice guy, and I think he quite liked me. I think he took pity on me as well. I felt like I had some... I don't know if you used to do this back in the day, but you'd literally have... I mean, you've probably never seen Paperwheel because you've grown up with screens, but I'd have a piece of paper that I'd written questions on, and I'd almost go through them one by one, irrespective of whether the actual conversation we were having had veered off in a more interesting, more natural direction.

1:08:53I'd just be like, okay, thank you. So the next question, and I think he suffered that very gladly and I came away thinking like, yeah, I'm so good at this and he was so nice and I bet this is how it's always going to be and then it turned out it wasn't. But I think he's one of those that, in an increasingly media, savvy media, trained, neutralized world of athletes, I think he is one of those people that has kept that side of his personality, I think. Surprisingly funny and very down to earth kind of thing. I did actually speak to him briefly the other week because we went to the launch of net company Ineos, the new era of the team.

1:09:33and we had a little like sort of six or seven members of the press speaking to Geraint Thomas and the CEO of Netcompany separately. And then he was, yeah, very nice guy. And he said in their little presentation they were doing before, because the whole thing of Netcompany, in case you didn't know, they're a software company, the new co-sponsor of Ineos, bring a lot of money in and their AI software, which is going to change the world like all the other AI softwares. but they're selling it as more than just a sponsorship, which fair enough, but they were talking about the AI platform that they have and Garen Thomas was like, I mean, I only got a laptop six months ago, so this is all very new to me, which of course the software guys love that one.

1:10:17That went down very well. Do you think that's true? Could be true. Could be true, but has he been doing his podcast on his phone the whole time? Yeah, no, he's lying, isn't he? How naive of me. He's been doing a podcast for ages. Maybe he just goes to a room and sits in it, but someone else does it. But does he just call through from his phone? Could be. The sound quality is pretty good, though. Could be one of the... But it could have also been because he was always, when he was riding, I guess he was probably always getting a massage whilst doing his podcast. Yes. Maybe he was using like a Soigneur's laptop.

1:10:51Could have been using a Soigneur's laptop. Speaking of AI, as we often do, if anyone that ever listens this far in the show, let's reward them with behind the scenes you'd never get anywhere else level access to the Psychics Magazine podcast in the world of being a cycling journalist you've got to think of things to say and often I think you guys probably realize that we don't know what we're saying and we're ill prepared and sometimes we're better prepared than other times and sometimes it just flows and so I always have something up my sleeve in case the worst happens and it's going nowhere and most of the time I just ask AI these days what should we talk about so should I tell you what AI told us to talk about.

1:11:28And you can choose a topic in the end than that. Yeah, okay. Which one do you want? Has gravel lost its soul now that the pros and sponsors dominate it? That's number one. Will road and gravel bikes merge into one category? Number two. How wide is too wide for tyres? I thought you just went generally. No. I mean, just generally, how wide is too wide? Well, most modern cars are too wide, in my opinion. Does suspension belong on a gravel bike? And I'll just fast forward to the end. It's all about gravel. Why do you think it's all about gravel, chat GPT? Are aero gains actually relevant? I can answer all those questions.

1:12:03Go back to the beginning. Okay, should you do them one by one? Quick fire. Okay. This is the longest, most boring outro ever. But anyway, if you're still listening, I hope your car journey's going well. I can do it quickly, sentence or less. Okay. Has gravel lost its soul now that pros and sponsors dominate it? No. Will road and gravel bikes merge into one category? So bikes are a spectrum. We are just filling out the spectrum. Categories are enforced. Just leave it at that. Great answer. How wide is too wide for gravel tyres? This wide. Does suspension belong on a gravel bike? Sometimes. Is gravel racing just road racing on dirt now?

1:12:36It's not racing, just racing on different things. Surfaces. Kind of. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. Probably not. Isn't all sport just doing something? Are aero's gains actually relevant in 200-mile gravel races? Very much so. Is ultra-endurance, as Harry Tamfield would say, is ultra-endurance gravel healthy sport? Yeah. Do most people actually need a gravel bike? Do we need anything? Good question. Water, oxygen. Is gravel the future of road cycling? It's the future of gravel cycling. Is the spirit of gravel already dead? R.O.P. Spirit is a moving, flowing construct. What the spirit once was is not what the spirit is now.

1:13:16But the spirit is alive and well with Harry Townfield. It is. There we go. I think and Rob Britton who was on last week or a couple of weeks ago yeah no it's all alive and well don't worry go out and buy a gravel bike as well if you haven't got one because there are loads of fun the real spirit of gravel is the friends that we make along the way that's the real spirit of life that's the journey isn't it yeah yeah how many friends have you made along the way do you think three or four three or four do you find that your circle of friends particularly male friends is dwindling the older you get and more isolated and cantankerous you become sure cool that was number 11

1:13:56on that note it's probably time we should go this has been long enough long enough already hopefully I'll be back at some point without a cold in the meantime you just have to pretend that the person you're listening to is more articulate smarter more cohesive and everything else I've just run out of oomph man I've run out of oomph life is a roller coaster James you hit the lows to get higher on the way out. Yeah, but roller coasters have that brilliant winching system where it pulls you up to the top, whereas life, you've got to claw your own way up the hills, which I don't like so much. Yeah, that's good.

1:14:34And I am in a trough right now. I'm in a trough of slutty despair. Life is more like a bike ride. Life is more like a bike ride. Don't even get me started on that. I've had some crap bike rides recently. Anyway, I'm going to go. See you later.

1:14:50You