#318 ‒ Cycling phenom and Tour de France champion Tadej Pogačar reveals his training strategies, on-bike nutrition, and future aspirations

0:10Hey everyone, welcome to the Drive Podcast. I'm your host Peter Atia. This podcast, my website, and my weekly newsletter all focus on the goal of translating the science of longevity into something accessible for everyone. Our goal is to provide the best content in health and wellness, and we've established a great team of analysts to make this happen. It is extremely important to me to provide all of this content without relying on paid ads. To do this, our work is made entirely possible by our members, and in return, we offer exclusive member -only content and benefits above and beyond what is available for free.

0:46If you want to take your knowledge of this space to the next level, it's our goal to ensure members get back much more than the price of the subscription. If you want to learn more about the benefits of our premium membership, head over to peteratia -md .com forward slash subscribe. My guess this week is today Pogaccia, a professional cyclist and three -time winner of the Tour de France in 2020, 2021, and most recently 2024. For those who may not know his story, today who is just 26 years old has already been compared to the most legendary all -round cyclist of all time, Eddie Merck. He's generally referred to now as the second coming of Merck's, whose nickname was the cannibal for the manner in which he devoured the competition.

1:32Today was a very successful junior rider, winning some of the most prominent races prior to his breakthrough year in 2019. When he signed on with the UAE team, he won the Tour of California that year and won three stages of the Buelta Espanya, one of the three grand tours, en route to an overall third place finish as well as the young writer title. And then of course in 2020 he was the unexpected winner of the Tour de France. This is something we will discuss in detail in this podcast. Now since that time, today has basically rewritten the record books. He's done things that people generally have thought, frankly impossible in the modern era of cycling, largely because of the specialization of the sport today.

2:15Typically cyclists will focus on one type of race, and yet today has demonstrated an appetite to basically conquer everything he does. That means he's competing not just in grand tours and shorter stage races, but also some of the most grueling one -day races of all time. In fact, there are five such races. He has already won three of them, and of course we discuss his aspirations around the others. 2024 was kind of a momentous year. He first won the Giro d 'Italia and the Tour de France. A double feat that has not been accomplished for nearly 30 years, and he set a record winning 12 stages across both of these.

2:57He is currently the number one ranked cyclist in the world, a record that he's held for about 170 weeks and counting, and he is going to attempt in a week to do something that, again, many people thought would never be possible in the modern era of cycling, which is to complete something known as the triple crown, which is winning the Giro, the tour, which he's already done, and then managing to win the World Championship road race. I have wanted to interview today for some time, and of course the opportunity of him racing at the GP Montreal just two weeks out from the World Championship was remarkable and fortuitous, so I was very grateful to have his time.

3:36In this conversation, we talk about his remarkable 2020 season where he took the world by storm and won the Tour de France in one of the most dramatic finishes that race has ever seen. We talk about the highs and lows of his career since that time. We talk about how he trains, how nutrition has evolved on the bike, and why that allows cyclists today to do things that were previously thought impossible. This is a bit of an interesting podcast if you are not a cyclist because some of the things that he talks about are simply difficult to wrap your mind around. But hopefully my reaction to those things, for example his power numbers, will give you a sense of the fact that I'm really talking to one of the most fit human beings on the planet at this moment.

4:23So without further delay, I hope you enjoy my conversation with Tadee Pogaccia.

4:34Tadee, thank you so much for making time. Obviously you just raced yesterday. You've got a race tomorrow and we're two weeks out from the world championships. So to give us any time is amazing. Thank you. Thanks for having me. A lot of people listening will know everything about you as I do, or they're super fans, but there's also probably a number of people listening who might not appreciate the magnitude of what you've accomplished in a very short period of time. I learned about you in 2019 as the most promising young cyclist that was coming up, but I don't think many people probably myself included expected what happened in 2020 at the Tour de France.

5:07What were your expectations going into the tour that year? I was not expecting at all to win in 2020.

5:16Just many races, so not too much to prove now. In 2019 was breakthrough year for me, but then 2020 came and it was like a long period doing nothing, just training. We went to the tour with Fabio Auro and me as two leaders. Yeah, it turns out in the end I was fighting for podium plays, for second place in the last week. I was really happy with that and the final time trial came and it all turned the table around and I wanted to have a humble level. I think still a lot of people don't believe it happened. Well, obviously people at the time of that final time trial said we haven't seen a race like this since Lamand and Laurent Fignel in I think it was 89 when he had that come behind.

6:01But what stage in 2020 did you realize I'm going to be on the podium? On stage, Colour Rose, I think I was sure I'm going to be second because this was the the Queen stage and I come behind Roglic just 15 seconds, the Lopez win that stage on High Mountain. So yeah, that was the day I knew that. This is it, no? But I also think Roglic taught that day that he's gonna win. So yeah, you never know. Yeah, so going into that last time trial, what was your team telling you in the radio at the time checks or even before the time checks in terms of your Delta per Roglic on a kilometer basis? Roglic was starting behind me and at the time checks were I think two time checks on the flat before the final climb.

6:45I got the times, I don't know who was leading the time on the flat section. I got that time and how much I think I was even behind. Then when the climb came, there were so many people I did not hear a word on in the radio. I just went without I would go and I just went full gas to the top. Did you feel anything different that day? I mean, did it feel like better than some of the other stages? Or was it simply a matter of he had deteriorated more than you across 20 days? Because it was the last hard stage the next day. It's just, it's just, it's just rolled through. It's still hard, but yeah, if everything goes normal, your GC stage is the same.

7:24Yeah, it was okay, final time trial. I just need to be relaxed. I second place, why Jersey? They were preparing a wide bike for me for next day for ceremony and it was cool. It was dreamy. You didn't feel the pressure. I didn't feel nothing. We were really chilled out. I knew the parkour was really well because I did the recon before with Alan Piper and Mikhail Björk. We did a lot of work on that. And when the day came, yeah, I was just mad. Everybody was happy around and there was no tension, no stress, nothing. And we just rolled with it. And then it was one of the best days I ever had. Yeah, it's a little hard to believe.

7:58Do you remember what your average power was over that time trial? Yeah, on the flat I had a power meter and a unit and then on the climb I had nothing because I wanted to have a six -point -eight kilograms bike so as light as possible by regulations, on the flat I went I think 380 to 390 so nothing crazy on the flat but I guess I was just going fast enough to be in that range. What was your weight by that point of the tour were you 60, 60 kilos? I think that year and 2020 I was like 66, even I think. Really? Yeah. What did you weigh this year? I come to the tour with 64 and a half and then 65 and 65 and a half, then jumping from around 65 through all the tour.

8:46So 21 is another amazing year. And in 22 and 23, you have great race but a couple of stages where it goes wrong. In 22 I guess the first stage where it was a struggle was it 16? Yeah, I called the Grand One with telegraph, Galli Bied, Down, Vienn Son, almost to Brisson. And nonstop attacking. Vizlo attacking, constant, constant. Yeah, where I made my mistake. I mean, yeah, shouldn't follow Roglic immediately there on on the telegraph, he tech already on telegraph. I think with who was, I was Tish Benou and then Laport with him on the downhill and they just flew down and when we start the Galibier they just go one by one.

9:33I had to respond I think eight or nine attacks. And you looked very strong. Yeah, I was, I was really good but I think, yeah, if you do it sprints no, takes too much and then I tried to respond by being stupid now and I tried to drop everybody from the wheel on Galibia, but then I knew that Walt Warnart is also in front and his checkmate anyway, no? So yeah, that was just stupid for me. And how much of that, I mean, just from a nutritional standpoint, did you feel depleted? Did you feel like you didn't have enough, were you short a bottle on that stage or something? I ate enough, but you did. I think the legs.

10:11You cannot eat enough when you do do so much power, you do so much attacking, you cannot take more food than you can, no. So I think we had quite good plant nutrition, everything. But if you do too much with your body, you cannot replace that. When you're training, do you try to simulate that extent of attacking and recovering? And obviously you can't replicate that fully in a training session. since I was junior even before I knew what's gonna be per course like then find around my home similar type and then just the repetitions of one climb like how many times it's gonna be in the race and now sometimes I still do the same I just see for example here Montreal tomorrow is around four minutes climb to five minutes and two short ones So you just try to do as many as possible repetitions in the trainings as well and trying to simulate the race.

11:11What kind of climb do you like the most? What kind of climb do you like the least in terms of great interation? Well, depends on the shape also. I really like around 20 minute climbs, quite steep. 10 to 12 percent or not that steep? Yeah, I would say now that because we go really fast, 7 % to 8%, it's already a lot of drafting, but then what's more than 9%, I think it's pretty cool because there's not much draft, so you can do what you want basically. Do you have many climbs near you that replicate where you can do 20 minutes at 8, 9, 10%, no, not really, not really, but 5 to 10 minutes, yes, 9%, 10%, In Slovenia also just around 10 minutes with stipons, but 20 minutes, that's quite rare.

12:02And then how much does the heat factor into it and how much are you able to replicate that in training? I think heat training became a thing now in cycling a little bit, especially this year, maybe last two, three years. I mean, we tried to overheat the body in the training session or in a home trainer. It is a big factor, especially for me, I felt always that I struggle when it's super hot. But yeah, if you try to train this, you can be better. Yeah, I mean, I guess I could imagine if you're on a trainer at home, it's easy to replicate it otherwise you just have to find the environment at the elevation altitude.

12:39This year, 2024, remarkable year for you, winning the Giro so comfortably, winning the tour quite comfortably. But seem to be your strongest year. I mean, people said, well, Jonas crashed early in the season, but the truth of it is, Jonas's times were pretty remarkable this year. I mean, he seemed to put out very good numbers. So it seemed to be just as much a function of you writing even better this year than Jonas coming in injured as much as he was. Do you feel that that's the case? Jonas had a big injury this year. I don't know how exactly his recovery went because they kept it quite quiet.

13:13When he once got on the bike, I think he could start immediately training quite normal long for sure. It's first a little by little, but I think it affects on three week stage race. It affects that preparation and yeah, you don't have the capacity to go three weeks. You have the power, like 10 minutes best power, output or 5 minutes, 20 minutes. You can do one day, but then maybe your body is not used to go another day. So I think that was the case with Jonas this year. He had a great power. He got great numbers. But then maybe he liked this three -week extent to perform. I feel like every cycling fan just feels that we have this incredible treat where we have both of you as these remarkable cyclists.

13:58You're both so young. We're going to have many more years if you guys racing each other. Do you feel you're going to continue to race the tour for many, many more years? I mean, obviously people are saying, look, you could break every record here. you could break the five tours, the seven tours. I mean, you could do it all. Is it your intention to keep riding grand tours and specifically the Tour de France? Tour de France is the biggest race of cycling. So, yeah, to keep being on the top, you need to do tour de France. Yeah, I think battling between me and Jonas, pushing each other and always the tourist, the test, who is better now of that year.

14:31And I think, yeah, I will keep on riding the tour until once I don't enjoy this stress anymore. maybe I hung up the bicycle in garage somewhere. Something seemed different in you this year, you seemed stronger. What changed in your training between 23 and 24? Well, I didn't change only training on the bike. I also implement core training more and more outside of the bike stuff. I got more into the details of nutrition as well. I'm getting older so yeah, I'm not so obsessed anymore with training. just going cake on cake or just eating shit now. Wait, is that mean that five years ago you weren't paying much attention to your nutrition and you were kind of eating as much as you wanted?

15:17Yeah, for sure. When you're a kid, you can eat what you want and you don't gain fat. I mean, you don't gain too much because you're evolving, you're growing up. When you're a kid, you can eat what you want. So you're at the age right now because you're going to be 26 and a week. Do you need to watch your weight in the offseason now? I mean, my all year looks more or less the same. I never restrict too much or I never say, okay, I cannot eat cake or I cannot eat chocolate, but all in measurements and when the time is right, because if you restrict too much and you don't touch chocolate for a month or for six months, then one time you will break and you will go crazy now and I think that's not good relationship with food So you need to have balance also with the bad food also now then when comes off season I don't have the cravings.

16:15I'm like okay now I go vacation I have a nice food good food quality food and not crazy amount so I don't gain so much weight What's the heaviest you'll be in the half season? 70? No, like 69 maybe 70 after when you wake up after party or something, when our big, big dinner with birthday party or something, no, when you eat just a lot, but that's just also a lot of times just water weight or something, but round 69 would be maximum, maximum. Do you have a sense of how many grams of carbohydrate you can drink in an hour when you're training? You mean drink or it's both, total amount of carbohydrate.

16:54In drink we have either 30 grams or 60 grams in per bottles. Not a strong delusion then. No, I honestly, I like 30 grams of grams because then I can eat more, but when it's a hard stage, it's better having 60 grams in the bottle and then you can eat less. I mean, still, no, because for hard stages, you need to get around 120 grams per hour for easier stages from 60 to 90 is enough, so basically we aim for that per hour. Was that easy for you to get to or did you have to train your gut to be able to eat that much. At first, it seemed like five years ago, 120 grams per hour, that's impossible. It's a lot easier.

17:32But with good food, with good nutrition, what do you like to eat and drink? We have a sponsor and a read with our nutritionists. He designed really good gels and the drink that's easy on the gut. Since they created this product, I don't have any stomach problems. Five years ago, I will always go, shit my pants after the stage races. or long races and now even eating 120 grams non -stomach problems. And do you think that's more because you've gotten used to it? Or do you think it's more because your nutritionist has figured out a recipe that works for you guys? Yeah, I think it needs to be good ratio between glucose fructose and all other stuff in the gels and it needs to be good quality of what's inside.

18:19So you get used to it for sure. When you're training right now, I don't mean right now, I mean when you're preparing say for the tour, how do you define your energy systems? You define them more by heart rate, by power, by how you feel, what are you using? I've been training with heart rate monitors since I'm, I'm 12 years old, 10 years old. So I would say I know how my heart rate responds when I'm tired or when I'm good. So, yeah, I could go by heart rate only, but it's always good to compare heart rate to power, but power meters are not so reliable these days, I would say. Really? Yeah. Which one do you guys use SRM?

19:01We have Shimana power meter. Yeah, you always need to be careful with the temperatures of the outside, the calibration, everything, and yeah, sometimes it can be off. You need to be careful about this in my experiences. Yeah, the best is to train on your home roads where you can also look the speed in the VAM how fast you're moving. What kind of VAM are you able to reach when you're training? On a training, 7, 7 .5%. If you go all out, I think it's like 1700 to 1800 of VAM for like 15 minutes. That's just incredible. I know that people listening might not appreciate that. I'm not going to take time to explain what VAM is.

19:42If they know what it is, they understand how crazy that is if they don't they can look it up. I'm happy when I hit a thousand by the way. Yeah. Just for comparison. No, but it depends on the gradient. No, but what I was trying to say is you're using these other metrics. Yeah. You see all these three things, the speed, heart rate and power, then you see how you feel and in the zone, you're really in. And how much of your time are you spending at a low intensity, whether we call it zone two, whether we just call it a row big, how much of your total training time would be in that zone and not burning matches?

20:19I love riding zone two. Yeah, I run where I live in Monacoi. It's really hard to get big time in zone two because it's a lot of climbing and then you have all the downhills. Yeah, you can't make him hurt. Yeah, I tried to hit really high zone two on the climbs. They are like 20 to 40 minutes long and then you recover and downhill. But when I go home to Slovenia or somewhere else for in Spain when we're training in Calpe or somewhere where it's more flat. I really like to stay five hours in zone two. True zone two. Yeah, and some trainings I would love to do just zone two and going non -stop. What is your heart rate at zone two, approximately?

20:56When I'm fatigued, it's 140, 145, when I'm a bit more fresh, around 150 to 155. And how many watts are you putting out at that heart rate? 320 to 340. Again, I know it's just hard for people who are listening to us to understand what that means. 320 to 340 watts for five hours, keeping lactate below to keeping heart rate at 140 is really remarkable. Well, that's also another thing. In Monaco on the climbs where I can recover after, you cannot look zone two and say this is your zone two because you did two 10 minutes 10 seconds power. Because it's too much up and down. If you're doing 5 hour ride, your zone 2 after 5 hours maybe be not your zone 2 anymore.

21:44You always need to know at what time this zone 2 will not be your zone 2 anymore. Because on the flat you will not recover and 5 hours of riding of 320 to 340. For me it's also next day I'm not riding the bike. So when I go on flat for longer, I drop power to 290 to 300. Do you track your heart rate or heart rate variability in the morning? Do those numbers give you any indication of how you're going to train that day or race? Yeah, I started this in 2020. At first, I was especially in COVID time, logged down this. Me and my girlfriend were doing that. But, yeah, I did not find it really interesting or helpful.

22:27But this year, I started using more to track HRE heart rate in the night. and yeah, I must say that I quite like it now to track it, but yeah, it's not something that... It can be misleading. It can get in your head a little bit and you don't want it to tell you how you're going to train that day. Yeah, it can be misleading. It's almost better for somebody else to look at it and tell you after. Well, my girlfriend, she had a really good method for a while, especially in races. She don't open in the morning. She opened it after the race, so she checked after the race, what was her heart rate variability in the morning, not in the morning, if it would be reload.

23:01Yeah, it doesn't mess with the right. She was stress and then with the massive race. How much variation when you do look at your heart rate variability, how much variation do you have between a high day and a low day of HRV? On a really good day, I would say my HRV would be, I don't know, 120, 130, maximum some days can pick up to 150. Wow. On the lower end would be also, I don't know, 35 could be, yeah. That much of a difference. Could be, yeah. But is that from drinking alcohol the night before? Yeah. OK. In the races, in the tour, for example, Enduro was quite steady. He ran from 80 to 110 was like average.

23:43Wow. Every day. That's pretty amazing. And then resting heart rate, do you care at all about that? How much heart rate range do you have? So what's the lowest you're going to be at? And then what is your maximum heart rate now versus five years ago? The lowest I hit since I'm tracking I think was 37. My average I would say is like in the night I think 43 42. But some days I could walk up with 48 49. If you're sick or really fatigue maybe even over 50. The max heart rate. Yeah when I was junior I could hit 213 but was shorter races. And so now, for example, we can... Now yesterday, 203, so was still pretty high.

24:27So I'm pretty happy about it. How often do you guys test VO2 max? It's been a while since I tested the last time VO2 max, yeah. Interesting. Probably it's high. Yeah, I'm gonna bet it's pretty high, yeah. Do you do an FTP test out of season just as a way to track it like a true 20 minute test? True 20 minute test also, it's been a while since I've done one. I did this year fatigue test when you repeat 8 minutes of one power I mean going higher and higher power and then also all out Normally we do a home trainer test in the camp in December. It's long from one hour to one hour 30 Depends how long you want to test to which zone you want to test, but yeah normally around one hour 20 for me 10 minutes steps on the home trainer and every five minutes you take lactate from the year to check for the zones and I like to do it also at home with my girlfriend one time I do for her.

25:26You see to test each other. Yeah for people listening your girlfriend is obviously a very competitive professional cycle as well. Yeah. If you guys have kids one day look out. Oh man. I don't want to put them in cycling though. Well that would be a good idea actually because they would probably have a very hard time filling your parents shoes. So they should pick up another sport. They couldn't be better, anyone. Yeah. Okay. Changing topics for a second. If we just think about three of the most epic climbs in the Tour de France, well, for me, I would say Vantue, Alp du Es, Gelier, but what would be the most epic climbs and what I really want to know is how do they compare and difficulty, assuming you're equally fresh on all days, like same situation.

26:07If you have to race up each, pick those three if I said, Vantougalibia and Abdoez. Well, of those three in Gallibeis, they are just, then I would say, when two seconds, no, Abdoez second, and then two thirds. Vantougalibia is the hardest, also because of the nature. Because the wind at the top and stuff like that. Wind, heat can be no. Yeah, Abdoez, it's hard, but I think it's shorter. And Gallibeis is... It depends where it is in the stage too, yeah. Also this, from Brian's own side, it's like dragging up in the valley and then when you turn right, I mean it's quite high altitude but it's still quite a regular climb.

26:47From the other side you have telegraph and then small downhill and climbing again but it's like these are calls from Alps, they're all more or less the same, Galli B, Codab, and these are almost identical climbs so you're used to those. Updates is just mythical. You have way harder climbs than updates for sure. What is the hardest climb you think in the modern tour? For me personally, I call the laws. I would be the hardest. I think everybody would agree on this. Well, you had a very difficult day there in 23. Yeah. That was what stage? 18? Was it the Queen stage? It was a stage 17, I think. 16.