Welcome to this week's Rider Support. Top of the show. We're starting off with a rider who spent 15,000 on a road bike, and it hasn't made him any faster.
Ouch. Okay, question number one. Anthony, I spent $15,000 on a top-of-the-line bike, but I'm still getting dropped on group rides.
Did I just waste all that money? Yes and no. No, I think no.
I I think definitely you're not alone. This has happened to a lot of people. We've even had questions in the past.
So many riders go through exactly what you're feeling right now. You spend big, you get the dream bike you've been eyeing up for a long, long time, and then you get dropped. It's absolutely brutal.
So, did you waste the money? No. But maybe the money wasn't spent on what matters most.
The reality is fitness is going to beat tech gear every single time. It always has and it always will. You can have the fastest, lightest, most arrow drivetrain optimized bike in the world, but if some kid shows up on a $400 hacker and he's just a better athlete or he's just train the engine better, he's going to drop you and it's not going to save you.
But that doesn't mean the bike is a bad investment because a bike, it makes riding much more enjoyable having a nice bike. It does make you more efficient. It's going to motivate you to train harder, which I think is the big one.
Especially if you have a little bit of a imposter syndrome right now. Do you feel like you don't deserve this bike? Instead of shunning away from that, like lean into that and say, "Okay, I need to up my game to justify owning a bike like this.
" Which isn't the reality, but you can use it to fuel yourself in a sort of perverse way. But yeah, no bike is going to replace structure training and time in the saddle. If you're getting dropped, it's normally your aerobic engine, like your threshold power, your endurance, your group ride skills, your ability to move around the group, or your repeatability, like your ability to recover from hard efforts, short break, and go again for a hard effort.
Like the little rollers we have on the Saturday spin, my advice, if I could put it into a tight little eggshell, it' be embrace where you're at right now. It's just a snapshot. Build your fitness systematically.
Follow a plan. work on your bunch skills so you're saving those extra watts and use that expensive bike as a tool to get a little bit faster, not as you maybe initially intended as a shortcut. Yeah, I mean I agree with all of those points, particularly the one that having a nice bike does motivate you.
I mean, we are riding the most incredible bikes this year, Reap. They're sponsoring the show. I personally have never owned a new bike.
This is my first ever new bike that I owned. I always got handme-down from Anthony. You were lucky to have them.
I was so lucky. Thank you very much. And they were they Anony's bikes fit me.
If we tinker around with, you know, the stem and all of that kind of jazz, but having that new bike day, having it there, it's all shiny and new. It's all your responsibility. And you don't want you're not you're not going to be it's not going to be sitting in the corner and you're using it as a close horse.
You're going to get out on that bike. So, um I don't think this I'm with you, Anthony. I don't think he made a mistake, but yeah, I think he needs to start putting the hard work in now to justify that purchase.
Yeah. Also, like you it's like there's always going to be someone faster. So, the peer comparison is a dangerous little game to get into.
Like what's the saying? You play stupid games, you win stupid prizes. No matter how much work you put in, there's always going to be someone faster than you.
So, it's like learning to appreciate where you're at at the moment. Your fitness also could be a lot worse right now than it is. Yeah, absolutely.
And as I always say to Anthony, sometimes I see you going over and back in your mind about, oh, will I buy those cycling shoes? They're like 500 quid. Will I buy this for the bike?
It's x amount. And I'm always say to you, when it comes to cycling, I don't care if you spend the money because I know that it's going to get used and you're going to get great value and great joy out of it. What about new golf clubs?
No, I would maybe have a little bit of a problem with that. But if you are if it's bringing you loads of joy, if it's not putting you into a hole, I mean, we've had um people that we knew that bought like 12 15,000 bikes and didn't even tell their misses. They just kind of squirreled money away and bought the bike and kind of claiming on the bread line and he was on the bread line.
So, we're absolutely not advocating that. He just arrived in the country, two children, one special needs. Yeah.
And he was and he bought He didn't bought a 12 and a half grand bike. I when he told me that I was like I I don't I'm in absolute shock here. I don't know what to say.
When I worked in my old company, all of the guys who were cyclists used to get every component that they bought new parameters, new wheels, new group sets, like get it all sent to the work address. So no, there would be no kind of, you know, evidence of kit arriving to the house. So as long as you're not putting yourself under pressure, enjoy your beautiful new bike.
And as Anthony said, maybe put a little bit more effort into training, get a coach, and you'll be beating those guys up the climbs in no time. Okay, next question. Anthony, do you think the current anti-doping systems are strong enough that we should believe per performances like Pagachers or are we trusting too easily again because the sport wants a clean hero so badly?
Ooh, this is a tough question. It's probably the most sensitive question in sport at the moment when we ask is Pagatoa riding clean because what we're really asking is about the credibility of modern sport. First, it is important to understand that cultural historic context to doping and cycling.
Like the 1990s culminating in the Fina affair in 1998 into the early 2000s, they tarnished the reputation. But cycling now isn't the same as cycling then. Like we have we have much tougher testing protocols.
Out of competition testing is much more frequent than it was. Biological passports now track people's blood values. And the culture this for me is probably the most important.
I I get to chat to guys, coaches, athletes all the time. My friends were riders. The culture has shifted.
It's not a prerequisite for a young athlete coming into the sport to dope. That was a part of the conversation for a long time. You needed to be willing to have this.
And I had friends who literally sat there with a Belgian director and they said, "You want to be on the team? This is what it takes. You don't want to be on the team, there's the door.
" And athletes aren't been asked to make that tough choice anymore. Now, specifically on Pagotaa, nothing credible has emerged to suggest that he's using any performance-enhancing substance. He's tested maybe one of the most tested athletes in the world.
His performance numbers, they are mindblowing, but they're not within the limits of implausibility. Like his times up climbs, like his Mi time was significantly slower this year than Alejandro Valverde's 2014 time. His power figures again, brilliant, but again, not implausible.
I think cycling's past means we get to be a little bit cynical and get to have a little bit of skepticism about these performances. Fans are right to ask hard questions and demand transparency and have stronger testing. But we should also recognize that exceptional generational talents do come along every now and then when you combine a really well-funded team in UAE where no stone is left unturned with nutrition, aerodynamics, equipment and you combine that with a generational talent.
You have maybe in making the greatest bike rider ever to ride a bike. Oh, I'm just I'm I'm just at home as this air is watching the YouTube comments and Spotify comments rolling in about how we have it all wrong and cycling is still the dirtiest sport out there. And I'm with you, Anthony, and I like to take Paga and all the other riders at face value with so far as like clean or unclean.
And unfortunately, we do cycling does have a we're we're experiencing a hangover from those many years of the sport. I mean, there's loads of sports that were dirty, are dirty, will continue to be. Um, but cycling just seems to always pop up number one as the sport that is filthy almost, isn't it?
Armstrong contextualized the significance of Pagacha's leaz baston leazge win. He said the dominance winning lees by over a minute would be the equivalent to Mroy winning the Masters by 15 strokes. It's hard to put into words how dominant he is.
Until you use that analogy, you're like, whoa. No one ever wins a Masters by 15 strokes. It's two strokes, four strokes.
It's a runaway victory. Yeah, I know. It's crazy.
Look, let us know in the comments what you think. I know this this is very very polarizing and if you do think that you know the sport is dirty that paga is too good to be true do you still enjoy the sport regardless? Do you kind of look at it and kind of say oh well look it is what it is.
They're probably all at it or do you you know zone out completely from the sport? Do you ever watch the Christmas movie Miracle on 34th Street? Yes.
They're talking about Santa Claus and they said, "What's better, a lie that brings a smile or a truth that brings a tear?" Okay, next question. Hi, Anthony.
I listened to your podcast last week with Dan Lurang. Something he said stuck with me. Is doing a proper off the bike warm-up really worth it for regular training rides?
I see the pros doing glute bridges and bridges and band work, but does the average rider actually need all of that? Will muscle activation before I start riding, especially for hard sessions, help? I've had a few rides lately where I felt very sluggish for the first 30 minutes, would a warm-up actually fit that?
Fix that. Sorry, I just want to say who Dan Lang is. Dan Lurang is one of the head coaches coaches at Bora head of performance.
had a performance at Bora Red Bull Hansrove. Yeah, you got there. I'm there in the eventually.
Just in case anyone hadn't heard that interview, please go back and check it out. I'll link it in the show notes. It's been one of our biggest most wellperforming podcasts over the last couple of months and well worth a listen.
Yeah, I think in short it is worth doing the off the bike warm-up, especially if you're doing one of those quality sessions, the two or three quality sessions per week. If it's a race or one of those key breakthrough sessions during the week, the goal is to switch on the key muscles before you ask them to perform at high intensity. We go to the gym, you know, when I jump in to do bench press, I bench press just the bar for the first set.
You wouldn't jump in and do your absolute max load, which I won't reveal what that is. You wouldn't go jump in straight 100 kg straight out because, you know, you just wouldn't. I'd build up to my 100 kg in my second set.
But especially for riders who spend a lot of time at desks, like those key muscles kind of fall asleep for want of a more scientific term. So forcing the quads and the hip flexors to waking up before the ride is a very good thing. The falling asleep, the slow start.
It can actually manifest in other ways. It can lead to that sluggish start, but it also affects power transfer and it can even manifest as injuries over time because some muscles aren't starting up. Others are having to fire an extra to compensate for the muscles.
Exactly. And the misconception around this is I'm busy. Everyone listening to the podcast is busy.
Most people are probably listening to this in their pocket as they're moving. It doesn't need to be an extra 25 to 40 minutes that you're doing pre-activation stretches. We're talking five minutes here where we're working on some core activation, some glute firing, some dynamic mobility, and it can really make a difference on those race simulation days, race days, hard interval days.
I don't know if anyone's heard, but I have been injured. Oh, I've heard my knee. I've had a knee injury and my physio has me doing pre-ride activations and I have to say I'm absolutely terrible at them.
I think probably I do them. You're terrible at doing them or you're terrible at performing them? I'm terrible at complying.
Yeah, complying. So maybe 30% of the time I do my pre preride activation and I really do whether it's you know psychologic you know if it's helping only kind of in a um you know in my my mental state I do feel after I've done them that I'm more comfortable I have a better ride and I'm not getting as much kind of discomfort around my knee area and in my glutes and kind of up my back. So, I do think that the pre-activation does work.
As you said, it doesn't have to be, you know, an hour. It's three minutes. That's all I really have to do of activation on my legs.
And if you're looking, I think it's worth it if you have any niggles or injuries to go to a physio and talk to them about this because I certainly have found it helps a lot. There's loads of good uh on YouTube pre-activation. Dan Martin done one years ago.
Oh, no way. where he's in the video. Uh I think it's like more like a 10-minute routine he uses before his rides, but it's up on Garmin's channel, I think.
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com. I'm going to put that in the description down below. Okay, next question.
Hi Sarah, I heard you're riding Badlands in September. Very impressive. I'm getting more into gravel myself and I was wondering what gearing setup are you planning to use for it and actually would it be different from what Anthony is going to run when he's racing it?
I always hear people debate between a one by versus a two by big cassette versus tighter gearing. But what really matters for an ultra tough event like Badlands? Just a great idea for something else we need to put into the members area on the website.
We need a gear rollout calculator. This was old school. Sheldon Brown had a gear roll out calculator.
Comes from the track. So, do you know what gear roll out is? So, it's one revolution and then it's how many meters you cover in that re.
So, if you take a pedal at the 12:00 position, you turn the pedal one full rotation around, finish back at the 12:00 position, mark and chalk your starting point, mark and chalk your finishing point, and then measure the distance. We call that roll out. So that's why when you're pursuiting, you would change because you it's confusing to just say, "Hey, go I'm going to go from a 50 to a 51 on the front and a 12 to a 11 on the back.
" It's like, have you gone up or down? Like it's hard to figure out if you've gone up or down when you're changing the two variables because the back is it makes a significant more difference than changing on the front. Like going from a 12 to an 11 sprocket on the back is not the same as going from a 52 to a 53 on the front.
So it's a significant difference. So roll out is how they talk about it in inches. But we need to make the Sheldon Brown equivalent of that roll out calculator.
So when we're having these conversations, we can just say, "Hey, go to go to." Okay. But anyway, uh the question is around one by or two by for me and you.
Both of us are running one by. Well, you haven't fully agreed on your setup, but I'm pretty sure you're going to run one by as well. Yeah, I think so.
I'm a huge fan of one by because I have used your one by in the past and I just think it takes out so much faffing about going up and down, little ring, big ring, little ring, big ring. So, for me, when you're riding gravel and there's going to be 16,000 meters of climbing over the event for me and I'm going to be, you know, going around a corner and next thing there's a wall in front of you. It just takes out that, you know, clunking it up and down little big ring for me.
So, that is my preference. Well, Sarah rode her old bike at the weekend and it's probably the number one reason that I tell people to move to ShraMM and I've been on ShraMM for the last 3 4 years and before that I was a lifetime on Shimano. The battery setup on ShraMM is like nothing else.
Sarah ran out of battery on her front mech in her old on her old bike in her Di2 and I don't think you were shaming me today because you need to ride home at like 4 km an hour. 4 km an hour and like a cadence of 200. I'm still not smoke coming out your face.
I'm still not recovered from the whole experience. It was awful. So Sham has that ability to swap batteries back to front.
So for me, bike packing setup, it's that's an absolute game changer. But one boy, it's just it's one less battery. It's one less thing to go wrong.
It's less chains dropping. It's less things that can break. Bike packing, gravel racing, it just makes total sense.
And when you com when you combine that with the huge ranges we have on the back now, it's you're not losing out on anything. before when you used to be stuck on like an 11speed like a lot of people listening to the podcast are kind of my vintage will remember racing on a 53 39 would be your front gearing and then on the back you'd have an 11 up to a 23 when you started and then it started the odd person would creep up to a 25 or a 28 would be like a really big climbing gear. So a 3928 would have been my stage racing.
We're going up a bit of a wall today climbing gear. So that I worked it out just before the show is a 38.3 in roll out.
But if you take your setup that you're going to run for Badlands, which is going to be a 40 up front and probably a 44 on the rear, we'll say like that's a 25 in roll out. That's a significantly smaller gear. It's going to get you up significantly steeper pitches.
So, you have way more range. It's almost like a mountain bike range. It does feel like it's going to be and I'm that's what I'm going to need.
I mean, I have in the past preferred to ride my gravel bike even on our group spin, even though it's not super hilly, but just because I want that extra gearing for any of the hills that we go up rather than I mean, I'm on a the old bike that I had that gearing was extremely tough or low or high. That wasn't confusing at all. You were on a old race setup.
You were on a 3925 on the back. Yeah. And I mean, I find that very hard.
I was running out of gears almost instantly. So, I like loads of gears, and that's what I'm going to be running. What about you?
Similar. Uh, I won't run quite as small as you. I'll probably go with something a little bit bigger up front, but still loads of range on the back.
Maybe something like a 44 up front, but still loads of range on the back. One thing that I'm actually geeking on at the moment is the I'm not sure if you've set it up yet. Your hammerhead pairs with your shramm and it tells you what gear you're in.
It's super cool. I used to look between my legs and be like, "Am I in the I got one gear left?" Oh, no.
I have to sometimes look down and see am I in the big ring or little ringing? I remember asking you a few years ago. I was like, "Do you ever have to like look down to see if you're biging little ringing?
" You're like, "No, that's not a thing." Like, how do you not know that? I know days I've been climbing really bad in a race and I'm in the little ring and I go to shift down to the little ring and I'm like, uhoh, I'm already in the little ring.
I'm so getting dropped. Oh, okay. Hopefully that was clear.
I mean, keep sending in your questions around gearing because it can be quite confusing. So, send me all of your questions and I will try and you're trying to understand still. I'm trying to understand.
And I'll try and get Anthony to kind of speak like a muggle around gearing as well sometimes. Okay, next question. Hi Anthony and Sarah.
Be honest. Are you going to end up racing tap Vegas? I know it's just a sportif, but let's be real.
Once the flag drops and you see someone putting down the watts up the first climbs, it's hard not to get dragged into it. How do you actually hold yourself back and ride your own plan when the adrenaline kicks in? So, we are going to be racing We're not going to be racing.
All right. Sorry. We're going to be riding Vegas the day after tomorrow.
So, what's your game plan? I certainly have one. It's not like I'm not going Someone sent a message to me actually on Straa warning me about the gearing I would need.
Speaking of gearing, the that I need a huge gear coming down the final descent. Okay. I was like, what are you talking about?
just I can have a beer in my hand coming down the final descent and I'm going to have fun. I'm not getting sucked in like to race. Look, I like the category.
I like the category system because it marks out people who can be trusted from people who can't be trusted. I'm not going down the sense at 70 80k an hour on someone's wheel only to find out that it's a calf 4 in his first ever event and he wipes me out and have a broken spine coming home. So, no, I definitely won't be racing.
Not saying I won't ride hard in parts, but you won't see a picture of me with two hands in the air saying I won a Sportif. The shame. You will have you will definitely will have people who that is the badge of honor for them.
And for people in their Wiklo 200 think they won the Wikllo 200. Like we all start at different times. It's like what?
It's not a thing. Everyone needs to know you're in a race for it to be a race. Okay.
So, my day is going to be, and please, if you're doing the event on Sunday in Las Vegas, uh, please come up and say hi to Anthony and myself along the way. I'm going to be riding around it. And I'm going to be recording things and posting things to my social media.
So, again, check out the social media. And what will happen to me is even though okay I'm not you know at a level like Anthony or any of the really good riders and even though this is just a sportif I will absolutely be picking people out that are in front of me and trying to get by them and if I feel that there's a guy who is like breaking his balls to get by me and then he's absolutely in the red trying to get by me and then I'll get I'll I'll end up in a little a little mini race with this person. So, I totally get where this listener is coming in asking this question.
I think sometimes not once the flag drops, I'm not going to be like, you know, elbowing people out of the way and getting aggressive, but in my mind, I'm going to be a little bit competitive and, you know, want to get the race done and do it in a good time. But look, as I said, uh, while having fun. Also, stop saying the word race.
Oh, sorry. Event. We have three long form podcasts every week.
Some of them are 90 minutes or two hours long. And I realize you're busy. Sometimes it's hard to cut through the noise and figure out the signal, figure out what the important parts are of these conversations.
So, I've taken your feedback and once a week I'm delivering to your inbox a newsletter called the Saturday Spin. It's a 4minute read or less and it's going to break down the very best thing I've learned on the podcast this week. So, it's insights from the biggest names in the world who are physiologists, sports psychologists, and coaches.
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The link is down below. Go sign up. Okay, next question.
Hi guys, love the show. Why do some, actually, most riders surge out of every single corner on a group ride? I don't mean attacking, just that little micro acceleration that strings out the group and wrecks your leg legs by the second hour.
Is that just bad etiquette, bad pacing, or is it secretly a tactical thing people do to soften the group up or is it what we are supposed to be doing? I'm new to this game. You're often the victim of these micro accelerations.
I think they're definitely real. Like it is a thing that happens on every single group ride and it compounds. If you're on a long group ride, two, three, four hours, towards the end of the group ride, they're like a death by a thousand cos you really start to feel them.
Like it happens for you. Bad group riding skills for sure. If you have a lot of riders who don't know how to carry speed through corners, they break too much.
They over slow down into the corner. Then they have to sprint out the far side of the corner. And you multiply that 100 meter gap over a three-hour ride.
It turns out you have to do a lot of sprints on your group ride. Also, there is a little bit of even in a good group, just the natural physics of a group that accordion effect you get through corners. The people coming through a corner first are going to carry more speed than someone who's in fourth wheel, fifth wheel, 20th wheel.
So, you're going to have that as well. But your goal in the group ride should be that progression. learn to get a little bit better, a little bit smoother, be more of learn more of the traits of the good guys in the group and start to evolve week on week.
So, some stuff you could do to clean this up a little bit. It's just break later and less into the corners. Stay light on the front wheel and try to look past the corner like where you want to go, but not just one rider ahead because then you become reactive.
gonna look two, three riders ahead to see what's happening up there so you're not making those last minute jolty swervy motions. And yeah, I think that's that's really it. It's I think what this listener is talking about, and maybe you don't notice it as much as me because I'm a newbie, is when you go around the corner, the person at the front of the group stands up on their out of their saddle and accelerates.
whatever about the cornering process. I think yes, great advice there that and that is a you know a lot to work on there but it's that acceleration when the group is the other side of the corner and they stand up on the pedals and kind of accelerate a little bit and it's those bits person one unless person one is taking it badly because the goal is to carry speed through the corner. The only reason to accelerate is if you've lost speed.
Yeah. So, like if you're coming into a corner at 28k an hour and you come out of the corner at 21k an hour, now you're accelerating back up to 28k an hour. But if somebody takes the corner, assuming it's not a dead stop corner, somebody takes the corner with a little bit of momentum.
Like it's not a get out of the saddle to get from 26 back up to 28 or, you know, 31 back up to 32. It the problem is when someone carries no speed, scrubs off all that speed. And that's especially bad further down the group.
That's when you see the big out of saddle 1200 W efforts. But that happen that knocks on all the way down the group then and you just get a battering if you're back to group. Yeah, absolute killer.
Ro man, I think that is it for this week. If you enjoyed this show, please click up here and check out another podcast which you're going to love.