I trained like a pro cyclist for 60 whole days. Here's the story of what happened. I thought the hard part would be the intervals, the 5-hour rides, living here in Ireland, just getting lashed out of it all the time with the bad weather.
But, the truth is, the hardest part actually had nothing to do with the bike. I was trying to train like an elite athlete while the rest of my life refused to slow down. It was airports, podcast travel, late-night edits, endless washing, and a kitchen covered in meal prep containers.
Most people will watch pro cyclists dance up the side of a mountain at Tour de France, and they think, "I could do that with enough time." So, I tested that idea. I gave myself 60 days and two world-class coaches, and I discovered a simple truth.
Pros are not just better trained, they're better at living the life required to train. It all started with a really simple question. What would actually happen if I followed a real WorldTour training structure with real WorldTour coaches and removed all the excuses about time or resources.
So, I partnered with two of the very best coaches in cycling, Alex Camier from Team Decathlon, a coach who's known for shaping Grand Tour winners, and Ian Field, who's coached some of the very best riders on the planet, including former European champion Matteo Trentin. These are two high-performance coaches, and for 60 days, they would be responsible for my training, planning every single aspect of it. Before any training started, we tested because that's what the pros do.
They test when they get started. The protocol wasn't one I'd experienced before. We planned the training on Vector.
They use a critical power protocol. So, it was a 3-minute test and a 12-minute test. The 3-minute test was absolutely torture, like pure survival, because if you start too hard, you die.
And if you start too easy, you die as well, but you just die a little bit slower. The numbers came out like this for the tests. We started off, and it wasn't too bad.
It was 468 W for the 3-minute test, and the 12-minute test was 370 W. They were solid. I was 88 kg, so look, there was no WorldTour teams uh calling looking at them.
Now, this isn't me coming off the couch before everyone jumps in the comments like, "Those numbers are crazy." I wasn't off the couch. I was riding my bike, but I was fit, but I hadn't done any structured training in a long, long time.
It was a long time since I pressed a lap button, if I even knew what a lap button was on my Hammerhead. So, the coaches looked at the results, and then they immediately began designing training block. Instead of a traditional base for structure, they put me into a reverse periodization program.
This meant intensity first, then volume later. Two to three key sessions every week where I had to hit the exact power targets. No skipping sessions, no skipping intervals, no excuses.
Then the longer rides on the weekend to build depth, endurance, durability. On paper for this program, I had unlimited time to train. In reality, I could only physically handle about 20 hours per week.
I was just creaking at the seams. And those 20 hours pushed every single limit I had. But, the training, it wasn't really the real war.
The internal battle was much harder than I ever thought it was going to be. Trying to fit training into a schedule that's filled with travel, like I was over in Nice last week recording on the podcast, meetings, and real life, it was exhausting. Most mornings began with uh internal negotiation.
Can I actually do this today? Should I pull the pin on this before anyone knows about this project? Can I make this session happen without less letting the rest of my world fall apart?
It seemed like the washing machine also just never stopped in my apartment. Like, riding in Ireland in the winter demands a lot of kit, and the meal prep also became a second job, because the part no one tells you, to train like a pro, you also need to eat like a pro. I actually have a separate video on this where I ate like Tom Pidcock for 60 days, and I break down that side of the story.
Spoiler alert, I lost 8 kg on that simply by fueling correctly and living consistently. I'm going to link that down below. But, that consistency, it came with a cost.
Training was not the exhausting part. Living the life required to train, that was the exhausting part. The first week felt amazing, because it always does, doesn't it?
First week, something fresh, that bell-shaped curve, motivation was super high, the plan was fresh, every session felt like progress. But, motivation fades, and you know what? You log into Vector, and structure remains.
A few weeks in, the fatigue arrived. There were days when targets felt impossible. I could open up the app and be like, "There's no way I can do that.
" Like, there was days when I questioned why I started this whole project, days when I felt completely alone, because, you know, all my friends aren't full-time bike riders anymore. They have jobs, so I do a lot of this mileage on my own, and I'll be pedaling through endless hours while the rest of my life feel like it was just moving on without me. You know, I'm genuinely proud of my little man cave, my escape, my safe place.
It's not glamorous by any means. It's crammed into the spare room in our apartment with bikes stacked in the corner, boxes everywhere, and the smell of chain lube is just kind of hanging in the air. But, in that corner, that's where the work gets done.
That's where I switch off from everything else, and I lock in on my training. And the centerpiece of it all, it's the Wahoo KICKR Bike Pro. Honestly, it's the ultimate man cave bike.
The thing just feels alive under you. It climbs, it descends, it shifts, all automatically. You can dial into your exact position to the millimeter, just like your outdoor bike.
And with the new setup, everything's smoother, quieter, and way more immersive. It's that perfect mix of comfort and performance that makes indoor cycling feel like a privilege, not like a punishment. And look, I'm Irish.
I'm sitting in Ireland recording this right now. I know what it's like to wake up, look out the window, see wind, rain, and sideways hail, and think, "Do I really want to be out there today?" And that's where the KICKR comes in.
You can get a world-class session done right there in your safe little space, no matter what's happening outside. If you want to build your own version of that space, a place to train hard, stay consistent, and escape for a little bit, check out Wahoo at wahoofitness.com.
They've got everything from the flagship KICKR Bike Pro to the KICKR CORE too, which gives you that same legendary ride feel at a killer price point. Wahoo, building the better athlete in all of us. But, then I did have these breakthrough moments, like a set of VO2 intervals that suddenly felt a lot smoother at that wattage than it had any right to feel.
Or a long ride, I remember coming home 5 hours deep, and I still felt like I could dig, and the legs would answer and go a little bit. And I was a feeling I hadn't experienced in years. Slowly, the block stopped feeling like training, and it became more like it became more like a mirror.
It showed me exactly who I was and who I wasn't every single day. As the block progressed, the weekends, they did become heavier, and that had a cost on social life as well. 4-hour rides, 5-hour rides back-to-back with fatigue.
20 hours a week, it it mightn't seem that extreme to this internet culture. Maybe you're following someone on Strava who does more than this. But, anyone who's lived inside that volume of structured training, they know the truth.
It's not just the hours, it's the accumulation. It fatigue becomes this permanent companion in your life. Your sharpness fades, your world narrows into this rinse-repeat cycle of train, eat, recover, repeat.
For the first time, I began to understand what the life of a WorldTour rider in this new professional era really demands. Their training's only possible because the rest of their life is built around allowing that training to happen. After 60 days, the question was simple.
Did it work? And the drum roll, well, the numbers did improve. The numbers went up, and I only retested yesterday, and I'm really happy with the numbers.
3-minute power is up just shy of 500 W, and so that's I don't know what percentage that is. It's a big percentage improvement. And 12-minute power was up over 415 W.
Big percentage improvement. So, I'm super happy with that. And, you know, anecdotally, the sensations feel like they're improving every session as well.
My ceiling lifted, my engine is stronger than it was. Climbs that I was kind of suffering up, they now feel very manageable. But, the biggest change, and this is kind of weird to say because it makes me feel a little bit or sound a little bit insecure, it was actually confidence.
And I don't mean a loud, brash confidence, it was kind of a quiet confidence. The kind of confidence that appears only when you finish a long ride alone after hours of fatigue, and your legs still respond when you ask for a little bit more. This block showed me what it truly takes to perform at the highest levels of the sport, and what it costs you to get there.
Looking back, the biggest lesson was that training like a pro is much less about suffering every day and much more about the organizational capacity. I remember having a marine on the podcast, and he talked about admin, what it takes to get ready for battle. And that was what I was left thinking about.
Pros, they're not these magical creatures. Yes, they're genetically gifted, but they're also super consistent. Their lives are engineered so their training becomes the center, not something that's squeezed in between obligations.
And I was surprised by how much I learned about myself on this journey. I was surprised by how much the discipline simplified my mind. surprised by how demanding the lifestyle became, even when the training itself felt quite manageable.
The rewards on this journey have been very real. Like, I lost 8 kg. I got fitter.
I feel much sharper now than I have in years, and more capable on my bike. But, the costs were real, too. Social life shrank.
My world got very, very narrow. Energy wasn't the same. Like, the new way of fueling definitely improves your energy, but there's an energy cost.
And every single day became a choice between pulling out of this, the comfortable way and the commitment I made. There's that saying that commitment is doing what you said you'd do long after the mood you said it in has left you. And I was struck with that a lot and commitment was hard.
If you want to experience what this feels like to be a pro, to ride like a pro, not necessarily pro errors, but with that pro structure, pop me an email cuz I'd be really curious to hear from you. My email's anthony@roadmancycling.com because I'm building something really cool.
It's a community of riders who aren't ready on their cycling dreams. I'm not talking full-time guys and girls, people with jobs, with real-world responsibilities. What unites them is riders who, and we're calling it not done yet, riders who aren't done yet.
I'm going to plan their training, their recovery, their nutrition, absolutely everything. So, if you think your best chapter on the bike is still to be written, please pop me an email and or subject line in it not done yet coaching program. Tell me a little bit about yourself.
Maybe you're suitable for this. Excuse the brief interruption to my conversation with Sam impy. Since this video has been recorded, I've actually lost the weight.
I've gone from 88 to 80 kg. I can't actually believe it because the crazy thing is I'm eating way more than ever before. Some days my jaw is actually getting sore.
I'm eating so much. But I feel amazing on the bike. My power numbers are not quite back to my best, but I'm trending there very fast.
What's importantly for me, my biggest hesitation when I got back training was yes, I had the time available to train, but I couldn't do it if it meant sacrificing energy, the focus, the calm and have high-level conversations on the podcast. And I have so much energy off the bike. Like I'm coming in the door fresh after 3-hour rides.
It's wild. I've never experienced it before. And I want you guys to check this out.
I chatted with Sam offer and his co-founder David at Hexis and they've hooked up an amazing discount code for the Roadman listeners. So, if you want to try Hexis for yourself, it's honestly the biggest leap that I've seen in cycling ever. Forget aerodynamics, it's fueling properly.
So, if you go over to Hexis, h e x i s dot live and you use the code Roadman when you're checking out, you're going to get 25% off your Hexis plan. Go just test it out. Trust me, it's a game-changer.
Okay, back to my conversation with Sam. If you want to see what the other half of this experiment was like, watch my video where I ate like a pro cyclist, ate like Tom Pidcock for 60 days. That's down below because training is only half the story and eating is the other half of the story.
Roadman, the 60 days is up. I can go back to drinking beer, eating shitty food, or will I continue this momentum? Who knows.
Roadman, thanks for tuning in. Drop a comment, like the video. All that stuff really helps with our deliverability and helps us get bigger and bigger guests onto the podcast.
And please, please subscribe. I'll see you in the next one. Thanks for tuning in.