Road men, welcome back to the podcast. Today's guest is Mr. Alex Wild.
Today's podcast is a little bit unique. Alex Wild is one of the top racers in the Lifetime Grand Prix series. Sea Otter was the opening race in that series which just took place.
Alex has agreed to come on the podcast, open up his data, show us exactly what it takes to be at the front of these bike races. The preparation in race, the data, the fueling strategies, the tactics, the dynamics, the gossip, it's all here. Welcome to the podcast, Mr.
Alex Wild. Alex, welcome back to the Roman Pod. Thanks for having me.
What did it feel like to finally be standing on the sea otter start line knowing the lifetime Grand Prix is officially underway for 2025? Man, it it felt quick this year. I feel like I was just taking my my month off and I've done a good job in the off season of what I call keeping it fun.
There's like I guess stages of my off seasonason like I trained through December and then my wife and I went to do a camp dedicated took some time off work to go to Maui and just ride and run. Um and then me and my buddies always do what we call a coast ride which is three big days normally six hours on Memorial Day weekend. So, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and yeah, come off the back of that, go into Cape Epic, and yeah, like you said, I just standing on the start line of Sea, like, wow, the the season's here.
It's it's time to go. We're going to dive in. We're going to talk data, tactics, tech, everything Sea Odder.
But just to give some context as to the leadin to sea, what did that block look like in between, as you said, riding Cape Epic and coming into Sea Order? or is a case of just freshening up or what's going on there? Um, I think it's listening to your body.
So, taking a step back, before we went to Cape Epic, we did a Cape Replica block. So, it was 2,000 TSS, I think, in 8 days. So, big block.
And then the nice thing about that is it makes travel less stressful for me because you take those days off because you need them anyway. So, you're not worrying about like getting there, building the mic, spinning. Like, there's no rush to travel, which I enjoy.
and then came into Cape Epic. Um, going into Cape Epic, my body was saying, "Hey, we need a little extra time." So, we took a little more spin days as I got to South Africa and just trusted that the body would show up.
And then the day before the TT when we did some openers, it was kind of like, okay, now now we're cooking with gas. We got the engine back underneath me. And Cape Epic went super well for me.
Um, some people probably listen to the pod. Zach struggled a little bit with some just some health stuff. So I was going well we both going slower than we expected.
So with that we thought we might recover a little quicker which we did honestly within two days after Cape Epic which was very surprising to me. I was doing spins. So for me that's like 2 to 240 roughly just easy cruising.
And I was feeling like I needed to up those a little bit. So, I put them into endurance, so closer to 250 just just because I knew travel back again is two days off the bike. So, I didn't really want to lose too much.
Um, we got back, got off the plane, swapped to the the drop bar bike, which is always uh an interesting one for me. Sometimes it takes a few days to get used to, but honestly, right off the plane felt great. The next day we did uh 7 by 8 minutes with 3 minutes rest and was hitting phenomenal numbers.
So, we knew we were ready. What's a phenomenal number? I mean, I did the 7 by 8 minutes at 4 to 4:30 with only 3 minutes rest between.
So, I think the normalized was like 390 for over an hour. Oh, that's a brutal session. Yeah.
And and it's it's a good sign, right? Because in that the three minutes is strategic because it's teaching your body to flush that lactate and flush it quickly. So, I think that repeatability was there which was exciting.
And then kind of when you see something like that as an athlete, you're like, "Oh, sick. I want to do intervals again tomorrow." And as a coach, you're like, "Oh, sick.
He's ready for a race. Let's not do intervals again tomorrow." So, it was nice that uh I had that that knowledge.
And so, we knew we were ready for seat at that point. It was kind of just maintaining. So, we got a little bit of a block in.
Um got out to the course one more time to see it. And then the usual week leadup. Um, we did do some sauna work just because South Africa was hot, so we know we had heat acclimatization already.
So, we did a few uh 25 to 30 minute sessions in the sauna just to make sure we kept that topped up. And then, yeah, I mean, coming into Sea Otter, it was the opposite of Cape Epic. I was worried about being too fresh, so I just want to do a little bit of work.
We did uh the group ride the Saturday before and just punched it a little bit just to kind of keep the engine running but also again not let your legs go from fresh to blocked essentially. So the week before is interesting. I was chatting to Dan Lurang last week.
He's the head of performance for Bora and he's saying a lot of the writers there now have moved away from a taper before a big event. So they're tapering them two weeks out from an event and then going back into build one week before an event because they like to come in with a bit of fatigue. They just feel too undercooked with a traditional taper.
Yeah, I think that a bit of it comes with experience, right? And I think listening to your body is key there because at Cape Epic, right, the taper was what made me good for the race. And then coming into Sea Otter, knowing that I needed a little bit more to make sure I wasn't blocked to kind of have the engine going.
So, I think you learn how that feels and you can kind of like I was coming to each race from a different perspective. like Cape Epic. I was trying to get good and Sea Otter I was I was flying and trying to make it so I didn't like drain almost.
Any interesting bike setup decisions? What did you go on today? Um I was going to run Explore, but it's an interesting course.
It's a really really fast course with a really steep climb at the end, like a proper 8 to 12 minute climb, depending on if you include the the cork screw and everything. Um, so I knew I wanted to run the biggest chain ring possible, but I went to transmission so that I could run a 50 to up front, but still have a 50-52 as my bailout gear instead of a 5046. So, how does that work for someone that's not familiar with it?
So, essentially, you divide the front chain ring by the rear to get what's called your gear ratio. So if I had run transmission with a 50-52, that's underneath one. So to put it in perspective, to get that same ratio or close to it on Explore, I would have had to run a 44 to front chain ring.
Also, in terms of efficiency, a rough, I guess, best practice is the bigger the chain ring, the less the chain bends, the more efficient it is. So I knew I would be in that biggest gear going up parts of Lookout no matter what because it's just steep. So essentially what I did is the cassette on the transmission is 10 to 52 where on the Explore it's 10 to 46.
So I still have the same fastest gear with a 10. For the flats, the downhill, anywhere that's really pedaly, which Sea Otter is notoriously a big power course. There's very little time you're spent coasting.
So, it was kind of trying to get both ends of that spectrum, which is rare because we're doing a pretty long steep climb. And I just felt that those first two laps could be submaximal as the group kind of suses itself out. So, I wanted to be able to have a higher cadence while still riding that lower power.
And it worked out. My average cadence, I think, ended up being 91 for the day. So, how about setup?
I did the 22 Air Track, which is the replacement for the Renegade in the front, and then a 50 Tracer, which is our new gravel tire in the rear. Nope. I don't really do inserts ever.
I don't like the way they make the tires feel. Um, I may run them at Unbound just because you don't really need tire feel there. There are a lot of flat left and right hand corners that just don't require much skill, I guess, for lack of another word.
Um, just so extra safety there, but no, don't no don't don't. Yeah, don't normally run inserts. And will you stick with Sorry to jump ahead to Unbound.
We will get into I know we're going to do a separate part on that, but is the initial thinking you're going to run mountain bike tires for unbound or will you stick with gravel? I will likely run the 22 air tracks front and rear. Interesting.
seems to be the way it's going. Yeah, everyone's geeking out on that at the moment. Was there anything else in terms of tech that you felt gave you an edge on your competition that you got right?
Uh maybe not an edge, but I guess I got a little with the times this year. I've gone to 40 bars. I've gone to 165 cranks.
I've also uh done arrow socks and I had an arrow base layer on. And I'm running the evade almost exclusively now. So I guess more unseen gains in terms of just trying to optimize where I can.
Um the aerob layer is interesting. I've had some friends had it in the tunnel. Are you talking like the mini one looks like a bra with the rule 28 and some other brands seem to make it.
Um I have one that Specializ has made. It is not commercially available but we're working with Bora Hands Grower this year. Um okay.
So, uh, since I work at Specialized, I I know the apparel guy, and he was able to get me one pair of socks and one arrow base layer. So, if it's if it's good enough for the world tour, it's good enough for me. I haven't seen the data on them, but I know the problem with the bra ones is, if anyone doesn't know what I'm talking about, like a half base layer.
They're like something you'd wear to like an SNM night out where your nipples are still exposed. But the data I've seen on the wind tunnel from those is they're more aerodynamic than not having them when they're super well positioned underneath your speeduit. But if the positioning of the seams is misaligned under your speeduit, they're actually slower than not wearing it at all, which is and that's similar data to arrow shoe covers, arrow socks.
Pretty much as soon as you see creases, you're losing some of the gains. But my apparel sponsor DNA makes a really nice skin suit. And actually the fabric on the arms is one that is really good to have that dual layer fabric.
So sometimes if the fabric on top too is too thick, the ribbing that makes it fast won't actually show through or or or affect your slipperiness. So yeah, I think I mean Arrow is a bit hard to test until you know the sensors that you can put on your bikes yourselves come out. And I I firmly believe in the future on climbs we'll be talking watts per kilo and then on the flats we'll be talking watts per CDA.
And you'll be able to see both on your head unit live. I think we're just a few years from that. Hey everybody, let's take a quick break to talk about the bike I'll be riding this season.
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Back to the show. I have one of them here. I'm not sure if you played around using Gimly and it's the real time coefficient of frontal drag sensor but yeah it's not quite there where you were saying I know there's body rocket and a few other brands as well are doing similar stuff but it's there's a lot of stuff affects yeah that and to to try and put on a pair of aeros socks versus regular socks and to get that data it's just not really there I think that's going to be a few years away first 20 30 minutes of the race what's that like is total carnage or do people kind of know their pecking order and there's a little bit of respect for the hierarchy based on last year.
Um I think people are forced to recognize their pecking order with with how fast that start was. Um it's a Darwinian pecking order. Yeah.
Yeah. I think I think we came out swinging pretty fast. Uh Sea Otter regardless of being the Fuego XL or this new gravel race, we start up the track.
It's kind of the same formula. Uh I didn't have a call up this year because they decided to do top five overall from the Grand Prix last year and then top five at Sea Otter last year. Both of which I narrowly missed.
So I knew it was going to be the same thing as always that the sooner you line up the better. So I actually started my warm-up I think 25 minutes early just so I knew I'd get my full warmup in. And I also told my mechanic Daniel to essentially have rollers set up at the finish just in case I wanted to hop on them and I could kind of wait in line while rolling.
Um, so as soon as I saw people lining up, I was at the tape and I was essentially right behind everyone that got the call up. So second row and that's like a drag race like into that first single track like where Pete Stetta broke his hand a couple of years ago. It's not that same single track section and this time it is onto a fire road, but I was a little worried because that fire road is technical in terms of riding it full gas with 100 people next to you, there's ruts, there's a little bit of sand, there's a lot of dust you can't see.
So, although it's not technical to ride per se, I think the race made it technical. So, being up front is still super important. Um, I wasn't too bothered about leading the race at that point or or being top three.
I thought, you know, top 10 to 20 would be fine. Essentially, I felt we still do that chicane, so a quick right, quick left, and then there's a little climb and then we start descending. I felt if I was top 10, 15 wheels, that I'm kind of out of that possibility of carnage where someone's divebombing you because they're not where they want to be.
someone's super tired because they're, you know, riding above their fitness level, crossing wheels, crashing, unclipping, whatever it is. I just didn't want to waste those matches. So, it's kind of that fine balance of at the front enough and I just I checked that box.
When did the first pivotal moments come? I think that was the first pivotal moment, honestly. Um, it doesn't feel like it when you've succeeded, but there are riders that started too far back and still made the front group, but they had a few less matches in their matchbook.
So, that was the first fight. And then that uh fire road brings us to the bottom of the second longest climb on course. And Matt hit it pretty hard there.
So, I imagine someone probably just got on and then has to do 450, 500 watts for three minutes to to get up this climb. And that's got to hurt. And Matt puts out Matt Beers here.
Matt puts out wild power. Like he's a big dude. His power numbers are wild.
Well, in his wheel, it feels like he's a big dude. You feel like you should get a better draft than you do because he puts out so much power. You just feel like you don't actually get a draft because you're still putting out just as much power in his wheel.
So it Yeah. Massive. Is there any psychological advantage to going, "Oh, like I'm sitting at 440 in his wheel here.
" Like, he's got to be doing easy 540 up there. Like, that's has to be hurting. Yeah.
I don't have power up when I race, but I mean, I've I know I'm at that level that if I'm hurting, everyone's hurting. So I think there is solace in that in terms of if if I'm hurting behind him, he's hurting himself to do the effort and anyone who's still with us is hurting, which every time that happens, you kind of are are a little happy because your first five wheels, so imagine someone who's 25th wheel seeing gaps open up. Not only is it mentally taxing, but if they're gonna go faster than Matt is at the front to get to the front, then that's either a really impressive rider or they're writing their own ticket.
Well, that's also where you're talking about that first win of the day position in the top 15. And because for anyone that hasn't been in that position, if you find yourself 40 wheels back, initially, you're doing the same draft maybe as someone in wheel 10, but then somebody in wheel 35 decides, "Oh, this is too much for me." in they pull out.
So wheel 36 now has a bike length to close and this happens all the way up the line. So you end up having all these extra gaps to close on top of the power which Matt has put out in the front. Exactly.
What's the data look like in that first 30 minutes having looked back at it in hindsight? H I haven't looked at it but I can I can pull it up here real fast. Give the give the people the numbers.
Everyone loves numbers. We're just cuz it's like clipping into a lie detector. And it also shines a light on our own inadequacies and go ah my dream of actually maybe I could win se is just it's just that it's just fiction.
Well, I think the consensus after the race that it was an incredibly hard race, but the Grand Prix is kind of frustrating because everyone feels like they've taken this massive step up every year. And that massive step up everyone seems to have taken. And so you get to the race and you like I think Dylan Johnson and I appreciate him being super transparent about it said I think he did 317 normalized for the race.
Best PR for him ever for 38th and just mindblowing to him and to everyone that we're putting out power PRs and we're going some riders are going backwards in in placings. I talked to Dylan last week and he was super happy with how his winter had gone, how his preparation had gone, his numbers had never been looking better. And then yet to see that post was a bit like everyone else is training.
I actually thought Keegan was going to go backwards. I said that on the podcast with Dylan. I was like, he's looked pretty secondhand in Cape Epic.
You know, are you saying he had a back injury? He looked pretty secondhand in some of the other gravel races early season down in Texas. I was like, "This could be the year that Keegan doesn't lead the Grand Prix.
" And then I looked at the results and I was like, "Oh man, I think those results without context are a little misleading." In Texas, there was a breakout front and then the weather caused it to be called unexpectedly and the winner didn't even know he won. So, the race was supposed to run for another three hours.
So, Keegan was probably like, "I'm happy with that break up the road. I'll catch him by the end." And then it didn't work out that way due to weather.
And then Cape, yeah, I mean, it could go either way, right? But I think with him, it wasn't a fitness thing. It was a back thing.
So, as long as he can sort that out and figure out what caused it, maybe he tried a different fit on his mountain bike, whatever it could be. Maybe he went with the 40 to chain. Maybe that caused the cadence to be too low and he was just grinding too much.
You know, I haven't talked to him about it, so it's all speculation. But I think for him it's it could be anything in terms of what caused that. But I mean my hot prediction was that he was the dude that that never happened to though over the last few years.
You know where you could say he got super lucky or he never flatted. He got super lucky. He never got injured.
He got super lucky. Another way I could look at that is he was super well prepared. So he never got injured.
Super well prepared. What I know about Keegan is that he does his homework. And yeah, there is a piece where you know there is luck involved with flats, but he also chooses setups that he knows he can run and be successful with.
So yeah, I think no surprise, but maybe the field was also hoping that there was a in the armor. For sure. When you say the field, you mean you personally?
No, for sure. and and the way he was riding wasn't usual Keegan dominance. Like he would go to the front at lookout and set the pace and he would do his turns, but Keegan likes to ride from the front and he likes to soften the field and Matt was kind of filling that void on Thursday.
Interesting. Uh did you find your numbers? Yeah, so first 20 minutes was 352 raw, 411 normalized.
Spicy. Yeah. So, what's the what's the total race file average normalized?
Uh, 343 normalized for 4 hours and 22 minutes. That's a big day on the ticket. Oh, it was it was a day, let me tell you.
And you're like high 60 kilogram. Yeah. Yeah.
That's it's not not achievable for most mortals. What's this? You probably don't have access to it off hand, but what's this year's power profile feel like?
You said everyone's moved on. How much do you think you've personally moved on from CEO 2024 to Cutter 2025? So, I guess just raw data, the FTP I was training to last year was 380.
The FTP I'm training to this year is 400. Um, very big. And it's possibly too low.
But I also even when it was 380 my brain I guess or the way I work is I really struggled to hit the bottom of ranges. I like to to hit the middle top of ranges. So we actually artificially lower the FTP.
Um like we chatted about with doing 440 twice for 20. Theoretically that would put me at 420 or roughly around there. But I think we decided 400 just because there's no point in just ringing myself out in training.
So, I mean, real FTP, who knows? I think think FTP is kind of just a a dick swinging thing at this point and saying you you do this much or you do that much, but I think I like to think of it of different mastery levels. Like essentially, how how far into a race can you do that?
How many times can you repeat that? I think those are the more important things. And so, but yeah, roughly what is that?
Five five to eight percent increase year-over-year. Yeah, that's huge. And I know that doesn't even capture something that we talked about last time that you've worked on a lot, that durability, the ability to put it out later in the race.
Well, the crazy thing is I did the Fuego XC, sorry, XL two days later and that power file was more winner winner chicken dinner. I did 356 normalized for 405. So, I don't know if it's just my mountain bike background and we still need to tweak the the fit on the crux to kind of have that same power delivery or what we just talked about.
You know, maybe I do need to come into a race a little more revved or or what it was. But I mean, this one for me is like I was Did I remember to calibrate my power meter? Like even for me seeing 356 for 4 hours 2 days after probably the hardest gravel race of my life is just kind of unconceivable.
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What did you do in between? Because that was Sunday. The other was Friday.
What was What did you do on Saturday? It was Thursday, Saturday, and Friday. I just did an hour and a half spin on the mountain bike just to make sure I was familiar with it.
Okay. And yeah, it's it's pretty well, it speaks to that durability. You've talked about that so many podcasts and physiologists have gone at nauseium about the limitations on assessing someone's ability just off FTP or just off a critical power number because it doesn't show you what Vanderpole done in the final of Rub.
I think there is even a a snippet from his team manager that says his fresh numbers aren't actually that impressive compared to those of his teammates, but he does a very very high percentage of them six hours into a race. Yeah. No, it's it's totally different.
I remember training with friends who were world tour and that was the huge difference for me was I didn't have that word to put on it then. I was just like, "Oh, they're built different." But it'll be the the five minute climb up to the cafe at the end of the spin when they're still putting out 550 or something.
I'm like, what? Like, you know, I can get close to these numbers fresh on a good day, but I can't go close to these after five, six hour spins. Absolutely.
What does the weekend, what does it tell you about your preparation? Does it fill you with confidence or is there still work to be done? Yeah, absolutely.
I think honestly I my result could have been better. I made a few mistakes in the last lap. I had a caffeine gel ready for me going into the last lap and I missed it.
And then at the next feed zone, I missed my bottle. So, I still had fuel on board because I I had carbs fuel in my pockets. Um but I wasn't drinking for a solid 30 40 minutes.
And then to kind of kick that off is as we were coming into the last feed zone, which I'm now forced to take a bottle from because I need it, that's when everything was kicking off. And I kind of just made that mistake of I grabbed the bottle and kind of sorted out the gels and put it in my bike. I should have just grabbed the bottle, thrown it on my bike, and worried about using it to hydrate later because there's a climb right after.
And just that one to two seconds I let Keegan's wheel go was just the ana elastic snapping for me. And me and Peter Vakotch were were chasing all the way to the bottom of Lookout the the lead four. And then by the time I got there I kind of had just punched my own ticket with that effort.
So I think some learnings but I mean I'm there right? Um, sixth place overall, fifth place in the Grand Prix in arguably one of the hardest races we've seen at the Grand Prix level is super confidence inspiring. Um, my my XL time essentially solo was four minutes faster than I did in the Grand Prix last year.
Unreal. But does your XL time also give you hope into what's set up this year as a more mountain bikey focused series? Does it give you hope they're coming back to your terrain?
I I still don't believe it's mountain bike focused. The only mountain bike race in there is Little Sugar if we're honest is a is a grass crit. Um and then uh Leadville is becoming a gravel race.
So it's funny when you talk to the roadies, they're like, "Oh, it's a full mountain bike series now. I'm not even doing it." You talk to the mountain bike guys, they're like, "Ah, it's still a road series.
" Yeah. I think I think we've always naturally had the advantage because it's all off-road. So, even little things like at Unbound, right?
If we take half a second out of someone who doesn't know how to handle their bike out of every corner over 10 hours, yeah, they can bridge up or whatever a few times, a 100 times, but there's a lot of corners and there's a lot of times when just efficiency of rolling through that means that we're putting five to 10 watts less average less over the whole day. So, I think I don't think we're articulating it right. I don't think it's a mountain bike series.
I think it's an off-road series and roadies come from road and mountain bikers come from dirt. And I think the crossover to a mountain bike is much more significant because we're used to our tires moving underneath us. We're used to that efficiency, slow in, fast out, looking for essentially that right line.
So, I also think as roadies, and I'm heaping myself into that category, we've had to learn this totally new world, this new world of pressure, tires, tire widths. These weren't conversations that ever had on the road. I can never remember being at a road race where this mattered until it started mattering in the hybrid gravel space.
And now it matters in road, now it matters everywhere. But you guys have been having these conversations for a decade. Absolutely.
Uh the way I think about it is we learned from the roadies from the waist up or or from anything not touching the arrow socks up. Yeah, exactly. So I would never have run 40 mil bars or sorry 40 centimeter bars.
I would have never looked at 165 cranks. I would have never worn arrow socks or an arrow base layer. That I learned from well Dylan Johnson.
His his YouTube I think is a blessing and a curse for him. But uh and then from the from everything touching the ground, I think that's what we're learning. We took cues from the wrong sport and that's why everything's going to mountain bike tires.
And I still run mountain bike pedals almost exclusively, but maybe I should start running road pedals at some races. But essentially that that contact patch with the ground. I think that's it's only leaning more towards us now that like you said at Unbound, we're essentially going to be using mountain bike tires, something we've been using for years and we know how that feels and how it connects with the ground.
So we actually don't have to learn anything new. We already have the pressures dialed. So you think we're going to see, I know this has maybe gone to your day job as well.
You think we're going to see these dynamic pressure adjustments moving across into gravel? I was thinking about that when I saw them pop up again at Perry Rubé. It could have been interesting at Sea Otter because there were some road sections.
I don't know if there's enough uh I don't know if I can think of off the top of my head a race where there's enough of a split between like chunky gravel and smooth road that it would be a benefit. Um cuz you think of something like Belgian Waffle ride, there's not enough dirt, so you just run like 32 durable road tires. And then something like Unbound, there's barely any road minus the finish.
Are you going to carry that whole system just to bet on a sprint? Yeah. So I think Yeah.
I I can't think of a use case in terms of like a 50/50 course, but it could be interesting. I know you're cooking up a little something for with cyclesport.com.
We're going to do a full Roadman Alex Wild podcast, Lifetime Grand Prix series. So the plan is before Unbound, if you're up for it, we'll do a pre-Ubound podcast where we'll talk through everyone wants to geek out on tires, equipment because it's the tour to France of Gravel. And then we'll do a post Unbound.
And likewise, then we'll continue this series across the rest of the Lifetime Grand Prix. Hopefully we'll get you. It's not the first time I've done one of these series.
Myself and Jay Van had one where we checked in when Jay was a neopro and we're like we wonder can you get legitimately a world tour contract the following year then he moved from Alpus into UAE then he started winning stages. So it's like we're hoping for a similar trajectory here. No pressure though.
There we go. You and me both. Yeah.
I think uh whatever the appetite for it is, um I I enjoy the the podcasting and and chatting and getting to know new people and new audiences. So, I encourage everyone listening to either go over to the the Roadman Instagram or my own, Alex Wildt, send us questions, comment down below with what you want to hear, what you want to see. Uh the goal is just to kind of give everyone a behind the scenes and yeah, I think it'd be cool.
We're going to do a custom bottle. So, if you go to cyclesport.com, which is my title sponsor, essentially you can get anything bike related there.
You need tubes, tires, wheels, frames, bikes, anything you could want. And if you put roadman in the comments, we'll make sure your order ships with one of these bottles. Awesome.
I better get one. We'll get we'll get you two. How about that?
Match bottle. What are we looking like now into a little bit of downtime between now and this is another one of the features that makes this series so unique because any of the roadies I interview it's like okay you finished rub bay at the weekend what have we got okay we've got uh what's branch chapal is on Friday this week and it's like it just comes so fast that's not the reality with the series it's back to work for you but training wise what's this run into unbound look like now yeah so I'll do Levis's this weekend, which is seems like the one the biggest one day road race right now. Uh I train a bit with Levi when I go up to Tahoe.
Um so it's his event about two and a half hours from my house. So and a crazy prize purse. I think it's $25,000 for the win.
So Oh, seriously? Yeah. That'll be live streamed, I believe, on YouTube, but I'll I'll post on my stories when I I have that link so anyone can watch if they they're interested.
And then likely like an easy what I call an optional week where we'll probably put a spin every day. But if I wake up and I'm like I don't want to ride today. Kind of just skip it and see how the body feels.
Essentially the goal is to freshen up both physically and mentally. And then from that point, I believe we have four weeks to unbound. So we'll likely do two to three weeks of of big volume and and push up that that durability and that endurance a little more.
and then probably a a seven to 10 day taper into the actual event itself. Amazing. We'll be in touch before then.
Alex, thanks for a quite unique insight into the opener for the Lifetime Grand Prix and congratulations on the win. Congratulations on fifth in the series onwards and upwards from here hopefully. I appreciate it.
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