165. Phil Cavell: The Cycling Addiction

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 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 0-60 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.

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 Fulgori 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, and prices start from£59 ,990, which, 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.

1:23You could have bought two brand new Maserati Gricalis 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.

1:42Hello and welcome back to the Cyclist Magazine podcast. I'm your host James Spender and it's just me today so I will crack on with the show but do be aware those of you who tune in for Will Strixen. He is fine. We believe him to be okay wherever he is in the world and I'm sure he will be back. I know he will be back. He'll be back in a few weeks time so you may tune in for his dulcet tones then. But until such time you just have me and our guest today which is a gentleman by the name of Phil Cavill who I think I want to say is a friend of the show. I think he's a friend of the show. He is. He's been on the show before.

2:18He's also written extensively for Cyclist Magazine because yes, did I mention we're a real magazine made of actual paper? And we've just released issue 179, 179 issues, which you can even buy in shops, remember shops, or online at cyclist.co.uk. Remember the internet? But I digress. Phil Cavill, I would say he's the bicycle polymath. In fact, so much so that I called him that in an episode. And it's now, I don't know if you can see this out there on YouTube, it's now on the cover of his latest book, The Cycling Addiction. It says, Phil Cavill, a bicycle polymath, the cyclist podcast. Doesn't matter that you've left out the word magazine in there, Bloomsbury editors.

3:00I did say that about Phil. And he is because Phil is a cyclist, obviously, but he's also a bike fitter, an author, a writer, a speaker, a racer, a shop owner, a bike designer. He's got his own brand, him and his business partners who land escape bikes, a wrench bike mechanic, and a genuinely very clever bloke. Now Phil together with his friend and long-term business partner Julian Walls helped pioneer bike fitting back in the early 2000s. He opened Europe's, or they opened I should say, Europe's first dedicated bike fit studio, CycleFit, in Covent Garden in London in 2003. And over the years Phil has worked with top pros like the Trek team, fitting people like Jens Voigt, and a young Tom Pidcock, two amateurs.

3:47Phil and Julian have worked with all kinds of riders from all kinds of walks of life, but all share in one thing, which is they're all trying to stay fit and they're all trying to get the best out of cycling a bike. Now, Phil has also written numerous articles for us, as I say, lots of other publications too. He's appeared as a kind of talking head. Can you be a talking head in a book? But he's often cited in other people's books as well as writing his own. And the most recent, which just held up then, The Cycling Addiction, published by Broomsbury, is what we're here to discuss today. Now, concerning suffering speed and the search for meaning on two wheels, Phil's words, not mine, The Cycling Addiction seeks to understand what it is that draws us to such a punishing sport, what functions of the mind, body, and even evolution might be responsible for athletes and amateurs, but mostly athletes, proper paid-up athletes, producing extraordinary feats of endurance.

4:43Literally, you know, tragically, sadly, we all know tales of Tom Simpson riding themselves to the point of death. But this isn't just a chat about the physiology. Phil also talks a lot about his own experiences and others from a more sort of philosophical and emotional point of view. So that's sort of looking at cycling, what it means to you, it being like a mechanism of control we touch on. Kind of a key to a cyclist is the ability to cycle as a mode of identity, as something that helps with self-esteem. We've all been there, I think. You come back from a ride and you open your phone and look at Strava and go, oh, I've got a better time on that hill.

5:22And it kind of just makes you feel better, doesn't it? I'm not sure if we are readily able to sort of admit that to ourselves, but it does. So we're all possibly addicted in our own way. But I do kick off asking, Phil, you know, who is an addicted cyclist? Might I be one? Is everybody one? So I think you'll be able to find yourself in this show because let's face it if you're listening to a podcast about bikes I think you love them quite a lot so yeah heavy stuff man but it is really good and Phil is a great talker and one thing I really love whenever I chat to Phil is how well he breaks stuff down so there's some quite difficult concepts in here some wonderful new words and some brilliant little initialisms and acronyms but Phil unpacks that so I really enjoy talking to him and I think you'll love listening to him too.

6:09So without further ado, welcome to the show, Phil Cavill.

6:17I think almost the best way in to the cycling addiction is for you to explain the relevance of Tim Crabby's fabulous quote in The Rider, of which there are many, if listeners haven't heard of Tim Crabby. I think, do you say Crabby? You've met him. Is it actually Crabby? It's got an accent on the e you see this is this is audiobook material yes yeah yeah because this is this is you know we went we spent 15 20 minutes or i didn't but the producer did how do we say crabby crabby crab do we kind of uk anglicize it and it's crabby it's crabby yeah apparently i'm just going to call him tim so tim wrote the right let's do that tim wrote the rider which is an amazing book and one of the things i love about it it's very pithy it's a nice slim volume doesn't take ages to read and it's got brilliant pace and pathos about it but it's about a guy and he's in this bike race and it's describing the kind of the mental gymnastics as much as anything you go through in order to race a bicycle and this quote which I'll read for you now is pain is no signal to stop what does that mean to the cyclist what does that mean to the cycling addicted out there and does that apply to you Phil?

7:35Yeah clearly where self-selecting cohort would be my thesis I thought that was a lovely summary of the rider by the way about the one of the best I've ever heard actually James I couldn't have done that better no seriously because it was as you said it's an eponymous hero we're behind the eyes of Tim Crabbe aren't we and in a sense the cycling addiction which I agree with you is a harder book than the rider if that's what you were saying I think it's like, sorry, that's not a compliment, James. That's not a compliment. No, it's not. It's a more in-depth book. It's much more complex in a good way book.

8:12Okay, so it's not like I've rewritten a neurobiological rewrite or perspective of the rider, but you could see it through that prism in the sense that I'm looking at all the issues that Tim Crabbe was looking at, but I'm casting my net wider as always. So I'm going into the neurobiology, the neuroscience. I interviewed and consulted with several psychiatrists, one of which was Professor LeBrenz, who is the UCI psychiatrist and Swiss team psychiatrist. So I was kind of looking at the same questions. And Tim was looking at this from a literary perspective and did a first class job. But I was looking at the same questions from a different perspective.

8:51So now and again, I bring the rider and Tim back in, because, you know, we're kind of on the same journey. So he's like one of the Venn overlaps that I'm looking at. And the other is obviously cycling sport. So I'm bringing in references from Tim, and I'm also bringing in references from cycle sport. And I'm also bringing in my own anecdotes, but also leaning really super heavily on the science. So I'm trying to tie these things in together because it's got to be a thesis that makes sense for us, the self-selecting group, the cycling addicted, or the pain addicted. to give it its full, you know, thesis reasoning, if you like.

9:31And maybe, you know, these are my words, not yours, but the pain addicted, but also the pain ignorers, the pain overcomers, the pain just get on with us. Something about a certain type of cyclist seems to display a kind of addictive personality in that way where you continue to do something beyond the point where it may even become dangerous to you, to your actual physical existence. You cite Tom Simpson, beginning of the book, classic example, that's nth degree stuff, a guy that rode himself tragically into a grave ostensibly. There are mitigating circumstances. Obviously, it's not quite as simple as he cycled so hard he died.

10:13But cycling pushed him to that limit. And other people would have gone, hmm this is not good I'm going to stop my body is howling at me to stop my brain is possibly saying this isn't a very good idea because I want to get up tomorrow morning and read the newspaper but yet there's a certain personality type that you feel you've identified in cycling that just goes beyond that did it occur to you sort of on a ride one day hey I might be this guy I need to investigate this or is this coming from I don't know reading books like The Rider or just from your clients have you sort of found an almost worrisome cohort within cycling that you felt you needed to write a book for wow that's a really complex question to which i'll answer all of the above yes yeah i mean it's it's in me and i've i've hurt myself and i've hurt other people around me because i not now but previously didn't know when to stop and didn't know when to enough was enough and didn't know how hard one should try in a race you know i just didn't have any calculus of that and i see in my clients i see it in my friends and i guess the question i'm asking is are we just people that have been exposed to this and therefore we've become really connected to it or are we actually a little bit different is one of the questions that i'm resolving and by different obviously i mean neurobiologically i mean are we actually just different different and wired yeah yeah so that's one of the questions that i'm resolving And would you say all cyclists, as in all those who are happy to spend car money on a bike and don lycra and maybe take themselves off to the Etap or Maritona or the Fred Witten, that paid up level of cyclist, does everybody have a bit of the cycling addict in them?

12:01Or actually, are there loads of cyclists who don't and are, you know, it's a spectrum and there's a very sharp end and then there's just the, no, it's not really there. yes so in in the first or one of the first chapters i talk about sofa spectrum i think so you've got the sofa spectrum on the left side of the sofa uh you've got somebody who is you know they you know they're a cyclist in name only they can't be bothered they're wearing the lycra on the sofa and they never get off the sofa and then on the other side you've got the people that you know jump off the sofa to know training and racing and they're on the turbo trainer at two in the morning after 14 expressos and you know they're ticking off whatever is in their training program whatever the cost.

12:40And then somewhere in the middle, you've got the people who are, you know, have got a really, really good balance in all this. It's a valuable part of their life. It's their third space. But, you know, they've got a control over it. So I start with that kind of, I invite people to put themselves on the sofa spectrum. Where are you on the sofa spectrum? But then I also go on to say, I don't know many people in the middle. And there are. I mean, I do know people in the middle, actually. but essentially it just seems to be something that gathers pace with us doesn't it and it's like the ones that don't become like that it falls by the wayside they find something else that maybe fits with their life better it's a bit gentler it's exercise but it's not they go walking with poles which i do now um and you know they do something else but the people that really get into it they kind of get connected to the whole story in my experience and then that brings with it an element of control and how much control do we have and how much control do we want which is one of the other areas that the book goes into so if you were to try and draw a picture with words draw a picture with words of a of a cycling addict what would they look like compared to just your regular joe or jane who's into a sport what are they doing what are their hallmarks things i mean i think i say in the book later on when the book gets a bit serious and we're talking about you know things are about you know psychology etc you know this none of this is a problem until it's a problem james if you if you train and you maybe race and you do the taps and you do this and you have projects and you have goals and it's great and you meet your goals but you also keep your relationships going and you you know your job's great and you're keeping all the dials on the dashboard are all sort of in the green zone performance is rising mental happiness is rising there isn't a problem don't think about it you don't need the book read it because you find it entertaining and you like understanding these things but none of it's a problem until it's a problem but typically problems are overtraining you know it's a problem or trying to achieve too much with too little resources is a problem so you've you know you've entered the marathon you've got the attack and you've got the mama and then you're going to do a hope route at the end of the year you've got a very demanding job you've got three kids la la la and you know you've been told by the coach you've got to do 16, 18 hours a week.

14:58It's like, okay, you know, so you've got 168 hours in the week. You know, you've got to apply 18 for those to training. You've got 150 left. You know, just do the math. At some point, something is going to give. And obviously, I see all the cases where there's problems because the people that aren't having problems generally don't come and see me because everything's fine. I see all the people where there's problems. So it might be that I've got to, you know, I think I say in the book that I've got to look at my own cognitive bias here. You know, I'm looking for problems because that's all I see.

15:31So in that sense, there are very real issues with physical health, mental health, etc., where we're just trying to do too much with ourselves. And there's a concept called allostatic load, which is all stress is stress. The body can't differentiate between physical stress, mental stress, an argument with your wife. You know, it's just stress. And that has a stress response in the body. And as an athlete, what you want is the good stress response. You don't want the bad stress response. So in a way, if you're trying to do extraordinary things with your life on a bike, you need to actually compartmentalize stress, training stress, mental stress, work stress.

16:08You need to control these things because nobody can withstand an infinite amount of stress. It's just that's not how we are configured. So in a sense, what you're saying, I think, your question, which is a good one, is what's the warning lights on the dashboard? Well, the warning lights on the dashboard, you're irritable, you're grumpy, your wife or your partner or your husband says, yeah, you're really snappy right now. You're not in a good place, you're not happy. Or your performance is plateauing or declining, or you're starting to get physical grumbles, you know, knee pain, back pain, headaches, you know, things aren't going well.

16:42And the problem is for some of us, what we will do there is double down on, you know, we were like, okay, I just need to reapply myself and get more serious about my training. I need to get more structured, more organized, more diligent, try harder. I can do this. And sometimes your body is actually screaming for something else. And I think most of us recognize that place. I haven't been there for a long time, but I recognize it. My issues personally were a bit different, actually, but they were on that spectrum. May I ask what they were? Yeah, of course. So I wasn't a fabulous trainer. I liked cycling, but I didn't really like structured training.

17:19but I really loved racing racing would be my training if you like so I essentially just was always revving my engine to 11 you know all the time you know so I because I didn't actually do the good training I never went out and did the training that I should have done and therefore I never knew when to bail you know I never knew when this is a falls errand now I can't win this race right can't do this event so I would never bail I would just and there's I think there's an example in the book of me climbing Haleakala, which is a volcano in Hawaii. It's like, I was never a good climber anyway. I said, what am I doing on this?

17:51What am I doing appended to the side of this giant mountain out of resources? And, you know, so my issues were that I never knew when to bail. And I was always physically underprepared, but my will, you know, my will to get to the end of whatever the event was, was disproportionate to my physical condition. And this is probably jumping around a little bit, and also perhaps jumping the gun. But I kind of, in bits of the cycling addiction, I sort of, as I think all readers do, you sort of try and find yourself in the protagonist in a novel, in a book, in an idea. That's sort of why you're even reading it in the first place.

18:27So I'm busy thinking like, hey, this resonates with me. Maybe I'm that guy. and you talk quite a lot about cycling having elements of self-validation control and a kind of identity that people can sort of hang themselves on but the self-validation and you know which I think lots of people can identify with because you can you can get that from coming home and seeing you've got a PB on Strava on your local loop and that can just give you that little buzz of like, yeah, go me. But the control, you know, despite what you were just saying about being pinned to the side of volcano and kind of being out of control, cycling does permit you the idea that you are in control, you're doing it.

19:12There's a relatively simple set of variables compared to real life. And you can go out there and you can beast yourself and you can get validation through your results and you can come back from it feeling better. That's how cycling often sort of appears to me. It's almost like, you know, it's a very worthy way of putting it, but it's like a sort of therapy, a kind of catharsis. But equally, you're sort of saying that can be people's undoing too, because you can go looking for that and actually not find it and then struggle with having not found it, struggle with not having got that good result, struggle with having to give up on your goal, which you've sunk, you talk about the sunk cost fallacy, you've put loads and loads of effort into this thing, into this climb.

19:57The last thing you want to do is stop. But the worst thing you could do is continue. But you just can't stop because you've already put so much into it. So that's a bit of a kind of offshoot tangent. But do you sort of feel that's how it kind of manifests for a lot of people that you're chasing a dragon, I suppose. And sometimes that dragon is highly elusive but allows you to think you might get it i think you've i think you could have written this book i mean that was a lovely summary absolutely i mean and for me the issue was about you know now looking back i couldn't trust myself to stop when i when things were adverse and harmful and clearly i didn't stop on hallie akala and you know and many other countless examples where i should and could have done but i obviously lacked the control mechanisms in myself to do that Some people do.

20:48But the issue you just raised is a really good one. I think that's cycling and endurance exercise is very closely aligned with identity. So endurance exercise very quickly becomes aligned with our identity. You're the kind of person that likes exercise, likes riding bicycles, and gets something from it. A catharsis is the word you used, which is perfect. It delivers you something. It gives you a sense of identity, a sense of purpose, and it gives you self-esteem. Now, I come from a background, I'm a lot older than you, where a lot of us started racing bicycles because we lacked self-esteem. And I go through countless examples in the book.

21:26Pretty much everyone I interviewed started in that place. Yeah, the classic horrible PE lessons. Exactly. So I come from that background. And most of my racing cohort and my era, we come from that background. If we could have played football, we would have done. If we could have played rugby to a high level, we would have done. But we just couldn't. And so we felt excluded. So we found the bicycle and my God, it just, not only can I do this, but I can escape from everybody else that is criticising me. So it was very closely tied to an opinion of oneself, to one's sense of self-esteem. And I don't think that's changed now with anybody.

22:01I think anybody who's on Strava and goes and rides their bike, I think the same thing. They haven't got maybe the same baggage that my cohort has and had. but I think it's very closely tied, endurance sport is very closely tied to identity and self-esteem. And you said something really, I think, which is extremely opposite. You said, it's great when everything is going well and you're hitting your PBs and you come back, oh, look at that, I've done another PB. My God, I need to throw my job in and go enjoy the circus and be a Tour de France rider. But so what happens when you're still putting the assets in, James, and suddenly the numbers are plateauing, are going south, and you're now putting more effort in and you're getting worse results.

22:42So what's happening to your self-esteem now? Because we've already said your identity and your self-esteem is closely allied to this, your identity as a cyclist and an endurance athlete. But now everything is going south. And what do you do then? I mean, personally, try even harder. 10 out of 10. But that won't work because, you know, you're the... It's doomed to fail. So, yeah, you're already the self-selecting kind of person that got to where you are because you try harder than most people. So this isn't failing because of a lack of effort. This is failing because of a lack of big picture thinking, you know, or system two thinking or being an analytical.

23:24So that's what this book is about. When everything is all the numbers are going in a positive direction on the dashboard. You don't need this book. You don't need you don't need to talk to me or you. good you're good and I you know every time a client comes in through the doors it's like if you're good you're good it's like I'm I'm not going to look for problems you know but that isn't my client base my client base is it was going great but it's not now and I've got all these issues and so in the midlife cyclist I was kind of laying out like a if you're kind of 40 50 60 you might want to think about these first principles and then changing your modus operandi But at the end of the book, that book, it ends with, I think, a chapter called The Mindful Cyclist.

24:06And the first chapter in this book could be like, okay, you've got to the end of The Midlife Cyclist. I didn't really quantify or understand how hard it is for you to change your behavior. And for you, I mean me, my behavior. So this book is about how hard it is for us to change. But if we really need to change, what we do about that, how we change. Of all the make my bike ride better upgrades, I'd always recommend a new set of wheels. Lighter, stiffer, and faster, they'll make your bike look great too. But to that list, Boyd Cycling, the small purveyor of handmade wheels from South Carolina, USA, would like to add affordable, durable, and pragmatic.

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25:51One of the kind of, I don't know, perverse, maybe that's the word but one of like the strangenesses and the difficulties with this whole kind of conundrum is that ability you know classically in the cyclists arsenal of kit training nutrition raw talent and power ahead of all of those we're told is mental fortitude you know bike racers I think you probably say in your book are people that can you know they have faces like poker players and they can just sort of push themselves at the same time and not really giving away how much pain they are in and they will gladly ride over the bodies of the fallen next to them.

26:29That is, we're told, central to a successful cyclist. I mean, we're obviously, I'm talking now about people, elite, elite athletes, elite cyclists. But at the same time, that can also be very much the undoing. It could lead to burnout, whether that's a pro or an amateur. So it's confusing because it's like, well, I want this. I want to embrace this. I kind of I want the trappings of the addiction without the pitfalls of it because that drive is what makes me better than my last self or it might be what wins me my race or it might be despite the fact that I'm really badly equipped to say get around the maratona that particular year it might be the thing that does still get me around it is some ridiculous self-belief that I can do this despite the fact that if you examine my muscles on a kind of micro level you'd see them tearing themselves to pieces and you might say you were never quite the same again that's an asian timid thing that we could maybe come to but it's a strangeness it's because it's it's confusing because it's almost like you're trying to turn your not turn your back but the thing that makes you great is also the thing that can be your own doing yeah so you you have to you have to have a you have to have a mission you know so what's the mission so you know if i was you and i were working together i want to know what your mission is james so what is it you want to do i want to do the hope route.

27:50I want to do the hope route in the Pyrenees or the Alps. Okay. Fine. So it's five, seven days, whatever it is, multiple thousands of meters of climbing. You know, I would go all the way back to your background, where you've come from. Did you play hockey at school? Did you do nothing? I don't know. Go all the way back. And then where are you now? And then think about plotting a route through to that. But you've also got to have some kind of feedback loop. You know, so there's no point in just, I never question my client's motivation. That's the one thing I never question. The fact they're in front of me means they're motivated up the yin yang.

28:23It's like that's the one thing I don't need to attend to. I need to attend to everything else. If we're going to get you around the hope route in a respectable time and you enjoy it and you can go on to be a great dad and a great husband and do other things, the mission needs to be thought about in a way that I didn't. And that's what I mean. And so that means you need to take some of the structure outside of your own head and it needs to come out into the outside world. And that's what the cycling addiction is saying. There is a route through this and out of this, and there's a better way to structure your cycling and your training and your racing or the events you're doing.

28:59But it involves removing things from here and putting them out there. So had my wife called me on Haleakala and said, where are you? You've gone up at four in the morning and I'm on Haleakala. What? How are you feeling? Oh, dreadful. Okay, what else is going to have water, food? No, I've got nothing. Can you feel your hands? I can't feel my hands. Okay, is it dangerous? It's probably dangerous, yeah. Okay, right. So turn your bike round or I'm divorcing you or I'm coming to get you or, you know, but it's not a strategy for you to continue. You've got too many responsibilities outside of you going up Haleakala, which does nothing for anybody, least of all you, you know.

29:43And I needed that and I didn't get it. you know and that wasn't the only time there's several examples do you think though you would genuine I mean obviously divorce is a big word so apart that one but do you think you could genuinely have been convinced in that way or would someone trying to talk you out of it even if it was your wife saying you know without putting very stringent terms on it this is not something you should be doing wouldn't that just motivate you more because I find that I think someone doubts you or you even doubt yourself and that's this perverse motivator because you go no no no no no the thing that makes me what i am and potentially makes me like moderately good at this sport compared to other people who do this sport is i have impossible to shift self-belief in my ability to finish and if you tell me otherwise that would just make me double down i feel that would apply to you phil i think you'd still get up that mountain yeah i mean i'm obviously revising this as a 64 year old man and when I climbed that mountain I was 33 or something whatever it was yeah sure I don't know is the answer to that but yes everything you say is right but if things are not going well and sometimes we need feedback things are not going well your partner says you're really grumpy and I really like the fact that you love cycling it's great you've got a passion but I have to live with the other side of it where you're grumpy and yes you you haven't been in your bike for three days because of circumstances.

31:12So, you know, it's not, you know, it's only three days to get over it. And you'll ride your bike on the fourth day. It is in a sense, we can't live in a bubble. And also, if we're an intelligent human being and everything else that we do, we're sentient, we listen to feedback, we, you know, construct missions and strategies. And we're, you know, we look at the data, we look at the research and, you know, we're prepared to be intelligent everywhere else. but then we get on a bike we want to throw that away and behave like a caveman that doesn't quite fit either in my opinion and that's definitely what i used to do so i'm the last person to criticize anybody who does do that but looking back it would have been good if somebody could have introduced the concept of a different strategy and it would my wife would have had to have said okay i can hear it in your voice she knows me so well i hear it in your voice you're not in a good place i can hear it you know you're not in a good place you've got responsibilities is how far do I have to elevate this for you to turn back or for you just to get into a safe place and I'll come and get you I mean we've had those conversations and you know she knows that she needs to push it to the you know because to stop me not now not now but you know and so it would have needed that exogenous shock James and some of us need that I mean you know I think I've given the in the book the example that me and Jules run we once ran a a little stand on the side of the Vontu in the 2009, I think it was, Etape de Tor.

32:38We pulled out the day before because it was going to be like 40 degrees. And we're like, oh my God, it's... So we just, we drove our van, loaded the van up with all the jelly babies and water and solutes and all that stuff we could, energy drink we could find in the supermarket and drove halfway up the Vontu. And it was like, it was mash, you know, probably a bit young for mash, but you know, we were like a field hospital. So no, we didn't intend this. We intended to hand out jelly babies to our friends and drinks and it's all great. Go, go go go and we're like oh my god because people didn't know when to stop and people were like vomiting in our tent because they were so dehydrated they couldn't actually take in liquid wow yeah you know so we're calling ambulances and calling in people it's like oh my god and even then people as they're vomiting like yeah i just need to get this out and i'll get back on the bike it's like yeah no you're not you know so you know i don't want to be negative it's just that it's about what's the mission and let's find the best strategy for to make the mission successful and then then you can have another mission do you see what i'm saying i do i absolutely do and this i think connects in my mind to another idea that you raised in the book well it's not even an idea it's um anecdotal evidence you talk to a lot of cyclists and they can connect really well with the data with the numbers you can say like how was your ride and they can explain it to you through empirical stats and then you say how do you feel and they just kind of cough and kind of want to move on they find it difficult to engage with their feelings and that to me feels important to the idea of kind of creating a mission and being able to sort of stick to it and have a structure around it because something that would inform that mission isn't just data it's how am I feeling and something that cyclists seem to not be very good at connecting to is the kind of feelings around stuff beyond like you know rates of perceived exertion in a kind of not a neuro divergent way because that's you know I'm massively overstepping but in a way that puts lots of cyclists I think in a kind of in a certain group of people who can just sort of become very very laser focused and single track about stuff in a way that your you know quote unquote average normal person is just not probably in a good way not capable of doing or doesn't naturally end up falling into that doesn't become their disposition if you put them in a certain stressful situation and i think let's go back to tim crabby on this one i mean he says the same thing somewhere in the rider i can't take you a quote put somebody on a bike and then you know rolling down the hill the average person and he i think he says something they'll get off at the next bus stop it's like it's what this is you know something like that you know and that was one of the things that made him think really or maybe if you introduce him cycling in the right way they wouldn't they'd love it and get on you know and maybe between those two poles his and mine is the truth i think more people would be would like cycling than probably on the crabby end of the spectrum but he's on to something i mean yeah climbing a mountain on a bicycle is uncomfortable whether you know however fit you are you know you'll make it hurt proportional to your fitness level, won't you?

35:47This is the thing. You know, there's something about it that we just really like that kind of sense of purpose and movement and freedom. And, you know, there's something about it we really, really like. And I remember when I, you know, I wasn't a particularly good racer. I was average. But, you know, when I used to win a race, you'd think I'd be happiest when I just won the race. I was happiest in the moments before I won the race. That's when I felt like unified and consolidated and that's the moment after one of the races like i don't know so i'd mission accomplished you know tick yeah next one and you you look at most pro racers or amateur races that's kind of their mindset it's not really so much the victory it's like they're it's the process it's like i'm you know in that in the struggle and the battle that's that's what they love the victory it's like okay tick good next do you know what i mean you mean can you connect to that James?

36:44I don't know I mean I've had I've had moments where I've you know I've never won a race so I'll put that out there to start with but I've put in I've left nothing on the road in a sportive and I've rolled over the line and have been very close to bursting into tears and I think at one point doing a triathlon did like there were there were tears coming out of my face crying's great by the way everyone should cry more mission accomplished so in a way actually the zenith was the finishing it wasn't the moments before and perhaps it's just because i haven't sort of won something and maybe that's the thing because your mind then instantly goes to the next thing you need to win and it makes it makes me yeah reminded of um a kind of psych psychological stat if that's not quite but anyway a piece of research that says that the happiest people on a podium are the bronze medalists because silver's thinking damn it i missed out and gold is just thinking i need to win the next one whereas bronze is just like hey i'm happy to be here so i'm a i'm a weeping bronze medalist that's sort of well i'm not even you know but i'm i'm happy to be here but i do i do understand what you mean and a lot of this which again you put front and center of the book points towards what you might loosely call and what you kind of kind of sort of cycling genotype there is just almost like a sort of cycling gene or something that's within all of these types of cyclists that unites them what does that kind of look like would you say again you know hallmarks not just about what they're doing on a bike but what they do in life what might these people do as jobs how might they approach your average challenge what might their social lives look like so i hypothecate with peter keen who i spent a lot of time with in writing this book you know i chatted a lot with chris boardman yeah the peter keen was the architect of what i say in the book there's a whole chapter devoted to both of them really i mean to me peter keen is the architect of our modern training language and structure because you know he came at a time in the late 80s mid to late 80s where you know we were still kind of very old school and he created a language and a structure around training you know when And Uli Sjober just brought out the first power meter.

38:56So they had this whole, they could measure power and then they could, he really started to think about what defining the mission and then coming up with the strategy looked like. And we're all now working with that. So Peter and I came up with this thing. I can't remember which of us came up with it. Probably him, actually. Well, we had this thing called flow seekers. We had killer winners and flow seekers. So you imagine, the book is full of spectrums. So this time I might ask yourself, if you're in a competition or any, you know, sportive or whatever. Are you a killer winner or are you a flow seeker?

39:29Are you trying to roll your eyes back in your head and just go completely internal and think, you know, think about how much pain and suffering you can put yourself through? Or are you actually looking at the other person and you definitely want to beat them? And, of course, you could be somewhere in the middle. I'm a bit killer winnerish, but I'm a bit flow seekerish. And, you know, we imagined this sort of spectrum and we thought about the famous cyclists. So where do they fit on the killer winner flow seeker spectrum? You know, and so that's one interesting idea around identity and performance.

40:00So who's an example of a killer winner? I mean, Eno would be the, I mean, he's the one I picked because, you know, it was just, it was quite, he was quite outwardly aggressive, wasn't he? And quite controlling. I mean, I think Armstrong was probably a killer winner. You know, he took a lot of kind of motivation from what was happening around him and he really wanted to kind of control and dominate and beat people around him. Eno is like that, I think. And then there's other riders who don't present as killer winners, but they probably are killer winners. I mean, I think Pogacar is a bit of a killer winner.

40:31He just presents as a flow seeker. He comes across as this kind of merry, happy, generous chap. I'm not sure he's all those things, but in him there is the will to win and to beat other people. It's preternatural. Preternatural. You know, I don't mean that as a negative or an insult. I just think that's, you know, he's drawing from that well. So Peter and I talked about this killer winners and flow seekers spectrum. Triathletes tend to be sort of more over on the flow seeking. They're just trying to, you know, it's them against themselves, if you like. Time trialists tend to be like that. You know, it's them against themselves.

41:05They don't even see anybody else. It's like it's just, you know, them against themselves. So, you know, there's several spectrum in the book, and that's one of them. So the people that come from my cohort from the, you know, 80s, 70s, 80s and 90s, I guess we probably tended to sort of gravitate towards being flow seekers, you know, that we'd found a way to tap into something. But as I say in the book, I would definitely happily navigate up to the killer winner end. You know, if I was in a really tough, rumbustious criterion, I would be very, very happy for it to turn into rollerball. and and yet when you meet me you could I couldn't be milder could I I couldn't be more hippie like but I you know give me a tough criterion I was very happy for it to you know and I think I sort of sense that Tim Crabbe is the same because that the rider kind of he kind of lays out that kind of these personalities doesn't he he's talking it from a literary perspective and I'm bringing and I'm coming it from a from a neurobiological perspective yeah I think you've um also identified the lament of the early gravel adopters.

42:12So gravel used to just be a bunch of flow seekers, maybe even wearing baggy clothes and smoking some rollies at halftime. And then you got the killer winner sharks that sort of gently swam over from the world tour and went, do you know what, we can clean up here. And gravel's never been the same since. But what it does, I wouldn't necessarily say I identify with per se, but I thought this before, a kind of, I don't know, running joke you've had a bit at work, is that a lot of cyclists were the kids that never got picked for the football team. And there's something in the early psychology of a kind of outlier kid that then gravitates towards cycling.

42:51And, you know, you just see it time and time again in people's autobiographies, biographies, you know, Wiggins most recently with the chain. He completely owns it and just says that was me. I was this outlier kid who struggled to fit in and find meaning and had problems and then sought his solace in cycling. And Pogaccia would be someone who would sort of be very different to that, who comes across as like very together, a very likable bloke, a well-adjusted bloke, I should say. I think he is. I think he is. Yeah, and I think he probably is. And then like Venapol, he could have been a pro footballer, or once upon a time was, and then bust his knee.

43:28So you've got maybe more rounded, less classically cycling cyclists at the top of the sport at the moment. there is something about the kind of individual that gravitates towards bikes as opposed to any other sport but i wonder in a chicken and egg way is cycling just in its very nature the perfect space for someone who feels like they need to kind of escape that they might need to sort of hurt themselves in a way to prove something to themselves or did a bunch of people who didn't fit in anywhere else find some bicycles go cycling together one day and go hey should we call this our sport and then they imbued cycling with that because those were the people that were doing cycling i mean can we say both i mean i think cyclists essentially are runners that don't have the biomechanics to run fast you know where we've got the engines but we just don't have the delivery system um and then we get on a bike and we kind of go oh my oh my god my body works in this environment but you know i can't run if i start to if i run i just fall over my feet and always did at school so you know i couldn't kick a ball i couldn't throw a ball you know i was the last kid to get picked at everything you know which was a bit of an embarrassment was my sister was the best sports person in school i've ever seen you know so and then i got on a bike it's like oh no this feels better i can do this so i i just think there's something about that we found our outlet we found our thing um and also we can put distance from everybody who's been criticizing us all these all these years like we can get rid of them and we can just so there's something about that.

44:59And of course, because I'm interested in always interested in first principles and science, it's like, okay, well, what's going on for us mentally that maybe isn't going on for my neighbor over there? Why is that different? And I'm always looking to connect that. That's, I guess, what this book is trying to do. But it's also trying to be a kind and helpful book. You know, none of this is negative. But if you understand it, you can probably do better with it, you know? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But you do posit a connection between, yeah, that cyclist, sort of let's call it a genotype genotype and systems that were created you know in our brains hundreds of thousands of years ago that hunter-gatherer the kind of animal which isn't the strongest in the animal kingdom but does have some guile and has an incredible ability just to wear down just to keep hunting and chasing down the prey until the prey eventually collapses of exhaustion that's kind of how homo sapiens manage to so people think kind of push through the soup and become the top of the chain you do feel there's a connection there that cycling sort of maybe could is it awakening some part of a some system in the brain i do i absolutely do because i mean essentially i say in the book you know we're now navigating this world with a with software and hardware that's 50 ,000 years old.

46:26We didn't evolve for this world, we evolved for that world. There's no change between my brain and my 50 ,000-year-old ancestor, other than their brain was bigger than my brain. So, yeah, peak brain was about 10 ,000, 20 ,000 years ago. So, our brains are smaller than our ancestors. But other than that, they're the same. So, we're navigating a world with outmoded software and hardware. So, I do think you're right. I mean, that's what I think, is that we are, we're hacking something. So maybe there was, you know, in the groups of people that we travelled around with, 50, 60, 100 people, maybe even as small as six in the ancestral environment, we wouldn't all persistence hunt.

47:03So maybe some of us persisted hunters because we were very, very good at it. And, you know, I'm slightly kind of tickled by the concept that we're those ones. You know, the ones that were out there and people going, no, that antelope's not going to drop dead before we do. We just need to turn, you know, we just need to turn back, get back, and build a fire and, you know, we'll eat dandelions. And I sort of like to think, you know, me appended to Haleakka, no, no, I'm going on. It's like I think I can outlast it. And obviously people who thought like me survived enough of the time that, you know, my genes propagated.

47:37I sort of do think that, you know, and it's idiocy really because it's probably a better chance that they were right and I was wrong and, you know, that I didn't catch the antelope, I died where I fell and they got back and ate daisies and they were fine. But enough of the time people like me were right, who just carried on regardless of the consequences, where our genes were allowed to propagate. And I sort of got a bit of a dream that we're the ones that now... And I could be wrong about that, but there is a sense in which we are... The process that we're all hacking is called the opponent process mechanism.

48:10That's the mechanism that we're all hacking. Whether we are addicted to chocolate or gambling or alcohol or exercise, it's the opponent process mechanism. we're pressing on the other side of it if i press really really really hard on pain i'll get these nice sensations i might get them later i might you know they'll be delivered in a slightly different way but it's going to make me feel really really really good and i'm intelligent i know that you know so i know that if i do this i'm going to feel better over you know in this moment over there that's the process the opponent process mechanism that we're hacking and i i mean this is this is a big step but when I've tried to sort of explain to myself or other people you know the the type two fun the reason why you go and you know beast yourself in crap weather and come home like battered and hungry but somehow that actually makes the rest of your Saturday afternoon better it's almost like some people are trying to find that outlet because life is ultimately for whatever reason humans have kind of conspired to try and iron out any discomfort so it's almost like we sort of want it somehow on some weird primordial level a load of people who've kind of been conditioned out of it and really don't want it they just want to sit on the sofa and watch a movie when it's raining outside but there's a weird number and a large number of people who go actually is almost like i'd like to i'd love to see a study like has ultra endurance popularity increased as life has become more comfortable?

49:43Is there some relationship there? The more Netflix series available to binge, the more triathlon bikes are actually getting sold and the longer, you know, the faster the Leadville 100 times have become. Yeah, I mean, that's a very interesting question, isn't it? You've obviously thought about this a lot, James. I'm really impressed. I have thought about it a lot. And there's, well, I mean, but there's other people, you know, around this sort of subject who, again, were sort of exploring, you know, James Hibbard, who is a US racer, who's kind of exploring the sort of philosophy and psychology of why we cycle.

50:18Tim Crabbe, that book is also trying to explain it. It is. It's almost like it's such a weird proposition, cycling, that it does lend itself to needing to be explained by those who do it because it doesn't really make sense. It makes you time poor, takes up bloody ages. If you go for a run, I always think you can kind of achieve a similar level of exertion and self-satisfaction, whatever, from a half an hour run as a two hour ride, like minimum two hour ride. So it's really selfish. It makes you even more time poor. It's really expensive. You're completely wasting calories and therefore in an indirect way money because you're spending money to eat more food than the average other person who doesn't need to consume as much because they're not cycling for three hours on a Sunday morning.

51:03and it can be quite selfish because you only do it with other cyclists who may actually not be your children or your partner or your you know sort of actual friends as it were so sort of none of it makes sense so it's always a all of these questions have always begged themselves to me like why why do we do it all signs point to we shouldn't be doing it unless you're getting paid that makes sense unless you're winning races and getting paid and sponsored absolutely but beyond just going out for a few hours here and there because it's nice to get a bit of fresh air it makes no sense to me that we cycle but but just yeah i mean you raised several really really good points there but the thing is if i said to you james you can't go out and exercise for a week your mental health i'm assuming absolutely yeah massively decline yes so i need to okay so you need to do it so it's a requirement for you and it's a requirement for all of us and the other thing is if you go out for a run.

51:59So your algorithm was half an hour run, two hour ride. Absolutely right. But the thing is, it's very difficult to overrun unless you're a really, really good athlete. But you can over cycle because the bike's holding you up. So you can put yourself into a really, really precarious position on a bike because you can just keep going. You know, at a certain point, most runners were like, okay, I'm really, really tired now. My knees ache, my hips ache, everything aches, and I just need to stop. You know, and then you start walking or something. But cycling, You can just keep going. And it's that element which can create the problems because you can just keep going.

52:35And so, you know, my point is you just need to have something on the dashboard where you're looking at certain dials and make sure that they're all moving in the right direction. Or, you know, you've got to do you're going to have to deal with the consequences afterwards. That's the point. And it shouldn't be necessary. You know, cycling is incredibly good for your mental health. it promotes the secretion of brain-derived neurotic tract factor in your slow-wave sleep. I mean, it's one of the few things that it's going to actually make you... Run that past me again and explain it like I'm five.

53:07So this whole thing about, you know, the brain is, you know, you've born with a certain amount of brain cells and you just jettison them through your life is nonsense. So brain-derived neurotrophic factor. BDNF is what's creating the plasticity in the brain. And one of the ways to promote BDNF growth or secretion in slow-wave sleep is endurance exercise. Cycling is brilliant for promoting BDNF. So it's very good for mental health. It's very, very good for neuroplasticity. It's obviously very good for physical health until the point where, you know, it's not. And that's why in the back of the book, there's this thing called the load curve, which I've worked with Professor LeBrens, which is looking at it's positive, positive, positive, positive.

53:50Oh, look, no, it's no longer positive. It's now negative. So the curve starts positive, positive, positive, sort of flattens off and then becomes negative, negative, negative. And, you know, it's different for everybody. But, you know, 0 to 10 hours looks like it's really, really positive. You know, 10 to 15, 16 is like, could be either way, depending on what else is going in your life, you hit over 20. And it's, you know, it's negative in terms of mental health risk for anybody who doesn't have a full time professional structure, helping them through that big stress load. Does that make sense?

54:22You know, absolutely. Yeah. And perhaps another good way of retelling that is through the eyes of the lens of Adrian Timmons, who I've mentioned earlier on, don't want to want to drop a name in and then not come back to it. So you present him as an example. and he fits here right so he's somebody who didn't have necessarily the support structure around him was he at ANC Halfords Racing he was and he rides the 1987 Tour de France which is you know that's the culmination of any pro cyclist dream isn't it is to get to that level and then you know Phil tell me the rest of the story what happens then well to Adrian Adrian is still a brilliant athlete actually i mean a brilliant athlete and he's also extremely good bike fitter so we he and i connect as a bike fitters really because he is a fellow bike fitter like me and he came to a one of our fit schools 20 years ago um obviously was a brilliant student and immediately got it completely uh but he he was recounting to me that you know the 87 tour was kind of like a deflection point for him he was still a great athlete won big races and was a brilliant athlete but it was like he felt like it was like the 87 tour put him too deep too fast because by the way i mean he before the 87 tour the reason anc half was even on the 87 tour is he won a stage i think it was the route to sol or something a really huge continental race timis went over there and won a stage you know on a completely unheard of you know this british rider and timis was a bona fide tour contender.

55:55I mean, because he was light, he was lithe, but he was strong, had a great racing brain and just a work ethic was, you know, beyond everything. And I use the example of Miller, Pippa York and Simpson and Timmis. I mean, you know, Miller was obviously an extraordinary racer, but of those three, you've got to put your money on Timmis as the raw material to win the Tour de France. Timmis was incredible. But the 87 tour put him too deep and no one around him, none of the support structures, him himself, you know, it hadn't, the sport hadn't evolved to the point where anyone asks the question, I know you can Adrian, but you know, should you, you know, is this not the moment, you know, the team structure, it seems like it's falling around apart around you, just you've got to stop, man.

56:43It's hurt, you know, you're in pain. And as he says himself in an interview with me and in the books, he wouldn't have been pulled out. Nothing could pull him out. Nothing. You know, he was going to finish the tour. It was part of who, it was who he was to finish the tour. And he was so talented. I mean, my God, so talented. He finished respectably. All the way to, if you look at the stages, all the way to the end in the time trial. So my God, he was doing amazingly. But at what cost? You know? Yeah. Whereas now I think, and this is why I pick that era as my Petri dish, because now, you know they've got the dashboard you know they've got all they're looking at everything they're looking at all the recovery rates and looking everything on the dashboard is there they could spot it faster now but then there was nothing you know didn't even have it didn't even have heart monitors back then yeah which is mad to think and it's probably it's something else you talk about um is is data and data does you know help a team see that dashboard particularly objectively equally it can be the undoing of a cyclist because you chase numbers that are for whatever reason beyond you maybe that day or at all but you won't give up because you can see where you're falling short and you can also get that very direct buzz from seeing like oh i've put a couple of watts on my ftp and that feels objective and brilliant but it can actually all of this can be quite counterproductive.

58:08Yeah, and that's right. And I've kind of softened my view on FTP a bit, functional threshold power a little bit, because it doesn't actually tie to any physiological marker point. It's not actually tying to any blood marker point or breast marker point. You know, if you're five watts off your FTP or 10 watts, I mean, it's nothing. It's not even worthy of comment, really, because it's a range and it's influenced by many things. Heat, you know, your hydration levels or how you feel that day or what mental space you're in. And so chasing that number, you know, is somewhat a fool's errand, you know.

58:40And you shouldn't, you know, and testing it, you shouldn't test it that often either, really. I mean, you know, if you're testing it three or four times a year, that's probably enough. You shouldn't be testing it every week or every month, really, because there's so many factors go into it because it's not a precise number, it's a range. So, yeah, the metrification of cycling is good, it's great. It's allowed us to make our training more structured, et cetera. But you've also got to have a policy of when the numbers aren't going plateauing or going south, what you do about it. And if they're plateauing and going south and that's a trend rather than a blip, well, then you've got to change something, haven't you?

59:17The problem with FTP is following the blips. Don't follow the blips. That doesn't help. Have you come across the idea of data being kind of sentinel versus compass? so early kind of things like a heart rate monitor just gave you a heart rate number and you had to kind of work out what to do with that so it was a kind of compass it kind of guided you some of it you made your own decisions whereas now you know I'm wearing one now this watch this Garmin watch if I you know use it enough and put in a few extra bits of data it will basically tell me when I should train, how high my load is, whether or not today's a good day or a bad day, and even give me structured training around it.

1:00:03And so I become sort of dumb in a way as an athlete because I've got this sentinel, this other thing keeping guard, making decisions for me, as opposed to my own intuition, which once upon a time, and it was just a simple heart rate monitor, or not even that, just like how did my legs feel today? I was better off. So do you sort of see that in people? People have lost touch with their gut intuition, their ability to guide themselves, relying too much on data. Yeah, but again, I would say both, James, you know, because we can mislead and we can delude ourselves, can't we? So yeah, and I'm, and I'm, I've done that many times.

1:00:41So I think both is good. I think you should be tracking things like, you know, heart rate variability, resting pulse, you know, your sleep and how recovered you are, nutrition, I think all those things are right to track. But you also you're quite right. Because sometimes, you know, your intuition also is is a good triangulation point. So I would definitely would not subordinate everything to the data. But I think if you're trying to improve, and you've got an event or something you're trying to improve for triangulating off more than one data point is a great idea. But what I would also do is not have you shouldn't be the only person looking at that data.

1:01:16There should be somebody else you trust, and they should be looking at that data also. And they should be saying, look, this is no longer a blip. You know, this is now a trend. Heart rate is higher. Performance is lower. It's been that way for, you know, three, four weeks. This is no longer a blip. It's a trend. So something else is going on. We're now in a disacolibrium. We're out of homeostasis. You know, your body's asking for one thing, and you're giving it another. Your body's asking for rest and recovery and nutrition, and you're feeding it something else. So I think you need to have somebody else looking at the dashboard.

1:01:49If you've got a defined mission and it's important to you, then somebody else should be looking at that data, frankly. Yeah. Well, Phil, I feel like I could talk to you for another hour because we've already done an hour. You're good. You've got this. I mean, your questions are excellent. And you know a lot about this. I mean, you're obviously thinking about this as well, aren't you? I mean, yeah, that's one of the wonderful things about cycling. It gives you a lot of time to think. And I know that for lots of people, cycling is very much a social thing and they might tend to only go out with other people.

1:02:20I'm very much a solitary bee when it comes to cycling. I use it as the one thing I do almost exclusively alone. That does allow your mind to kind of wander quite a lot into these sorts of territories as you're wondering about why your legs are turning around and whether or not you should take the left or take the right. And did you pack enough food in your pocket? But you know what? It's probably fine. You'll make it home anyway. Can I ask you another question? So is there a sense in which cycling for you is like a precursor to writing? So if you've got to write something and it's a tricky, thorny thing you've got to write about, is cycling a mechanism that you'll use to bring that on stream to sort your thoughts out?

1:03:03I would say a bit more than that. It would work for writing, but just in life. So it's absolutely tied. and this has been shown to me in stark contrast with actual therapy therapy that I've been doing over the last couple of years absolutely linked to my mental health is a wonderful tonic for me and I think a bit of you know reflection on that is I kind of go out and there's a point at which I'm aware on a ride where I'm not even thinking about thinking because I'm a classic person who thinks about thinking as well as thinking if you saw what I mean I'm a massive over-amalyzer exactly and it's and it's absolutely it's a it's a massive hamstring sometimes it can be can be paralyzing whereas cycling somehow eventually your body sort of takes over your brain you haven't disappeared because you're still making decisions like dodge that pothole squeeze that brake lever change gear but you're suddenly aware I'm suddenly aware anyway this wonderful feeling of levity where I'm like oh I haven't been thinking about the thing that was really often it's the thing that's been pissing me off maybe it's a bit of writer's block but maybe it's an argument maybe it's some insurmountable problem in life the mortgage how that's going to get whatever it is and then you're like I haven't been thinking about it and then you just suddenly feel like I've got some perspective and it's that it kind of gives you that perspective again and there's obviously something firing underneath well not underneath on top of all of that is my brain just taking on all of these different little you know dopamines and other chemicals flying around that exercise does for you so there's obviously a slight drug there's a physical drug or drugging going on that makes me feel better completely but um yeah it's a sense of it's a sense of space and freedom which absolutely i feel is lacking in the way that we all kind of live you know we all live in most of us anyway live in cities you're hemmed in you know where where does that freedom from yourself come from and i think it's for me it's from from cycling i'm with you james i'm really pleased to hear that so i very that was very articulate i think about why we do this and why it's so important and so why in a sense we have to maintain some level of control over it so we can do it more and that's the thing isn't it is you want to be able this occurs to me as well i want to be able to as we've talked about before on phil's been uh on the cyclist magazine podcast before and in cyclists with the midlife cyclist it's something we all really want to do into old age i feel that like inherently cycling is a sport that can keep you you could be was it robert marchand the french guy who was like the hour record holder into his like late hundred well not late hundreds but like 100 104 something and he's still you know faster than maurice garan was in 1903 yeah as a as a 104 year old guy i feel that could be all of us but equally you might just end up burning out and that would be a real shame so yeah gotta have a handle on it gotta pick up the cycling addiction and phil and the cycling addiction can give you some answers as to as how we can all carry on how we can meter our efforts and sort of keep things in focus or in perspective i guess yeah i hope so if i can't give you answers at least i can give you a good conversation exactly i mean we should almost do a podcast about this.

1:06:20I agree.

1:06:24Phil Cavill, ladies and gentlemen. Phil, thanks again for coming on the show. Really love chatting to you, always do. And best of luck with the future because one thing we didn't really talk about is Phil has actually stepped away from CycleFit. He's just got other stuff to do. He's got loads of other things going on in his life and he's been doing it for a number of years. So he stepped away from CycleFit, but hopefully he hasn't stepped away from writing books because I really enjoyed the cycling addiction. I think you might have been able to tell from that podcast. It really touches a nerve with me.

1:06:57It's stuff that I think about a lot when I'm cycling a bike or just in life. I often think, why does anyone do anything? And actually, Joe, as flippant as I am exploring the reasons for it, I find deeply interesting. You know, if we could only understand each other's motivations in life, then we probably all get along that little bit better. Anyway, cycling, it's a weird old sport, isn't it? But we do love it. I did enjoy that book. This book. I'm not even going to say that book. It's this book. I'll show it to you again for anyone that's watching this on YouTube. And anyone that isn't, I will read you a small excerpt.

1:07:30I'm just going to dip in, choose any page. You are now free to choose your own version of freedom. It's going to leave it at that. Right. Okay. Everyone should go and ride their bikes now. Bye.

1:07:48Thank you.