Here are five things that Tad Pagacha always does after he races. In the first 60 minutes, the real work begins. And today, we'll break down the dark red bottle, the purpose of getting on the rollers, why the layers go on instantly, and the exact rhythm that turns chaos into recovery.
You'll hear how Pagacha resets his head fast, what he eats, what he drinks first, and the small rituals that protect tomorrow's legs. will show you what's science, what's habit, and what you can copy without having a world tour budget. So, if you've ever wondered what separates a champion from pack fail after the finish line, this is the playbook.
Let's get straight into it. We see after every race that the riders, the minute they come across the finish line, they're almost like robots. The finish line isn't the end.
It's the start of the recovery process. Jackets go on, rollers come out, bottles appear, and riders disappear into team buses. But what actually happens in that first hour?
Today, we break down the post-race routine, what's known about the sport's biggest names, and how you can apply the same principles without that world tour budget. My plan today is to cover why the first 60 minutes matter physiologically. What we actually see riders doing at the races rider by rider is their variance from Pagacha to Evapole to Vindergard.
What's on record with these guys and what's reasonable to infer from their post-race practices and I'm going to give you a practical cooldown and recovery stack which you can go and implement into your own training. After a hard race, your body is still in go mode. That first error is about steering it from high alert into a repair phase.
There are four pillars to this process. So the first step, it's getting on the trainer after the race. Light spinning on a stationary trainer at very low intensity.
So I'm talking 100 to 150 watts. This gives us a gradual reduction from race pace to easy spinning and then rest. It's like going down through the gears in your car, getting back to recovery.
You want to be doing this for around 20 minutes depending on your race intensity and duration. Why? Well, there's a few reasons to do this.
Metabolic clearance is to my mind the main reason. Light activity helps clear lactate and metabolic byproducts from muscles more effectively than complete rest does. So the active recovery that spinning it maintains blood flow which helps you to flush out waste products that are accumulated during those highintensity efforts.
There's also this idea of cardiovascular transition where a gradual reduction in intensity. It helps prevent pooling in the legs and it helps the cardiovascular system transition from race intensity back to resting intensity safely. Muscle function is also another reason.
Gentle movement prevents muscles from seizing up and maintains flexibility. Thermmorreulation also does matter depending on the environment. It helps the body to return to its normal homeostasis, like gets back to normal temperature.
And this is especially important in hot conditions, summit finishes when you've gone to the absolute limit. So, you're on the bike warming down, and that's a part of the puzzle, but you also need to think about replenishing sugars. You've burnt through a lot of glycogen stores during the race or hard training session, and replacing them is timesensitive.
So our second our second step in this little framework this is our refueling window glycogen reynthesis and muscle repair accelerate when carbs and protein arrive early. So what does this mean? You've got like 15 to 20 minutes to get that recovery drink into you.
A commercial recovery drink will do just fine. Chocolate milk also works great. You're aiming to have something with a carb to protein ratio and around 4:1.
I had a really long conversation, two hours or so with Dr. Sam I impy on the podcast about this. We really break down the details of glycogen reuptake.
I'm going to link that below in the description because it's thoroughly worth watching. It's over on the YouTube channel. The next step is, and this is a recent addition to the stack.
This is a cherry drink. Studies show that cherry tart juice can significantly reduce muscle soreness, like delayed onset muscle soreness and speed recovery between training sessions or stage races. Riders weren't doing this a few years ago.
We've only seen this appearing into the recovery stack in the last few years, and it's the strange red juice that you see appearing on finish lines around the world. Step four, and this is probably quite intuitive, but maybe you don't know why you do it. It's layering up, adding scarfs on, jacket on, woolly hat as fast as you can.
Thermal control is what the sciency word for this is. But the in reality, we just we cool down super fast, especially if it's windy, if it's rainy, and we want to get those layers on really fast to protect immune function, but also just be more comfortable after the race. From the first ride on two wheels to the biggest races in the world, every pedal stroke counts.
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Loads there at every stage. We have those four steps, and I like to think that those steps, if you execute on them, they're greater than the sum of their parts. There is an overarching, to my mind anyway, purpose of having this ritual.
And it's all about nervous system downshifting. Small, consistent rituals help you shift from sympathetic race mode to parasympathetic recovery mode. And that should be our overarching goal with this recovery process.
The sequence of this stuff, it matters a little bit. You usually do see the riders executing quite a specific sequence. So recovery nutrition happens first straight away.
So as soon as a rider crosses the finish line, you'll see them grabbing a recovery drink. And this could be paired with that cherry tart drink that I talked about as well. Next, it'll be the warm layers to prevent that chill.
and then they'll move on to the active cool down that 15 to 20 minutes whether it's riding back to the bus or the hotel or it's jumping on the turbo trainer. Later in the day, people will start to emphasize hydration as well and replenishment of salts. But that'll be based on body weight, heat, duration, sweat loss, and it'll be very individualized.
This four-step framework, it is very sciencebacked and almost all the major world tour teams will adhere to this four-step framework for recovery. But then we will see that some of the big riders, they do have small variations in where they put the emphasis within this recovery or additions to that. For instance, if we look at Pogacha's postra routine, we'll see Puggy likes a very consistent routine, stable, rarely deviates at all.
That's why I think this overarching idea of shifting back into recovery mindset matters more than the actual steps that we execute. Puggy rarely deviates from it and mental decompression is very much a part of his post-race routine. He is a creature of habit.
He likes his recovery protocol laid out and then executed. But in extreme scenarios, we have seen him reference that he takes on a very salty or electrolytebased shot for cramp management. Think back to Leaz when he was cramping in the final.
Takeaway for amateurs here is keep it simple. A ritual. spin, layer, drink, always consistency.
Consistency is the power. If we shift it over to Yonas from Lisa Bike, Taj's big, you know, rival for Grand Tours, it's much that four-step framework as well, except with the addition of he always seems to call his wife when he's on the turbo trainer. When he gets back into the team bus, I'm told that he gets a short physio session with some soft tissue work and then has his deeper massage later at the hotel or if it's a long transfer, he'll have his deeper massage on the transfer back to the hotel.
Remco is an interesting one because he's one of the only riders that we see sometimes tag on extra miles after a stage race. If it's a B priority race for Remco, he'll often do an hour or two hours extra after the race. recovery protocol is still in place, but it's just all shifted a little bit later till after his ride.
If he is warming down on this turbo trainer, if it's a a priority race or if it's a grand tour, we almost always see Remco warming down on a time trial bike. And this is just to get used to that different hip flexor angle, slightly different saddle height, and the compressed diaphragm. The physiological demands of riding the time trial bike are slightly different than road bike, and he likes to spend as much time in that TT bike as world time trial champion as he can.
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Details are in the episode show notes or description down below. So, what about post-race stretching? I know Pagato does a lot of pre-ride stretching and activation, but we don't see post-race habits like this.
The thing is, we don't see them. It doesn't mean they don't happen. The answer is we're actually not sure because this likely happens on the team bus afterwards.
So, I'm going to need to get one of the UAE coaches, which I will do on the podcast to confirm this. But there is some stuff that I think we can infer that happens on the bus, if not with Pagotaa, definitely with a chunk of the teams because the science is pretty solid around stretching and the benefits of stretching postride. Now, the key thing is that we need to treat post-ride stretching differently than we would do stretching before a race.
Immediately after the cool down, I would suggest you stretch for five to eight minutes emphasizing like dynamic looseners for one or two minutes. So, here I'm talking ankle rocks. And if you don't know what these are, just put the term into YouTube and you'll get a video on it.
Like ankle rocks, gentle hip circles, thoracic rotations, scapular squeezes, stuff like this. And then some short static holds of 20 to 30 seconds each on your glutes, your hamstrings, your calves, your lower backs, and an optional foam roll. And you're just rolling out like 30 to 45 seconds of quads, glutes, calves.
30 to 45 seconds in each area. What you want to avoid is any aggressive end range stretching or long neural tension work, especially if you've been cramping or it's very cold weather. Later that day in the hotel or back at home, I would say 15 to 20 minutes stretching is definitely beneficial.
A little bit more thorough where we're looking at hips, teaspine, ankles. You could add some core activation and breathing drills to downshift that nervous system. I think by taking this fourpart structure that the pros are using, the four-part framework for recovery and integrating it into your lifestyle, you're going to see massive benefits.
But for me, the important thing is consistency. Get a habit that works for you. If you're time crunched and need to have your recovery drink in the shower, always have your recovery drink in the shower.
Consistency, consistency, consistency. I'm going to link a video up here which I think is really interesting and kind of builds on this. It's Pagacha's pre-ride routine.
And down below in the description, I'll link up that Sam Impy video I mentioned. Thanks for tuning in. Like, subscribe.
J next day.