Welcome to another potluck conversation with Grant Holicky, Rob Pickels, Trevor Connor, and Griffin McMath. In these discussions, we pick topics that we find interesting and break them down using a mix of science, humor, and our own experiences.
Should you be finding ways to get a little more out of your form in October or just pull the plug?
It’s fall, which means that unless you’re racing cyclocross, you’re getting toward the end of the season and starting to think about next season. This is the time of year when the legs start to do strange things—you may be finding your best form of the year or feeling very flat. Coach Connor wants to know when it’s time to pull the plug, or if there’s tricks for finding a little more form late in the year.
Should you fuel in short events like cyclocross races?
A lot of top CX racers have started carrying gels and chews in their races even though they’re under an hour. Physiologically, we have enough glycogen to get us through the race and if the event is short enough (i.e., under 40 minutes for some Masters) most of that fuel isn’t even going to get to the muscles. Yet athletes still do it. Coach Pickels asks why that is and what benefits are gained.
Is there such a thing as getting to the top too fast?
At the Paris Olympics, Kristen Faulkner won gold in the women’s road race—the first American to do so in 40 years. An impressive feat for anyone, but all the more impressive considering she only got into cycling seven years ago. It’s not uncommon for some cyclists to go from beginner to elite very fast. Coach Holicky asks if it is too fast, and why this phenomenon seems to happen more with women than men.
Grab your gels and let’s make you fast!
Episode Transcript
Trevor Connor 00:04
Welcome everybody, Rob, I’m not even gonna try because I just give you too many layups here.
Rob Pickels 00:09
It’s a potluck, dude. I don’t care what you do,
Trevor Connor 00:14
and it may be our very last one.
Rob Pickels 00:15
This is your time to shine. Trevor. You do this however you want to do it. Just roll with it, baby. Who am I to judge just the person sitting across from you at the table that judges all the thing Well, silently most of the time, I judge silently putting your facial
00:32
expression.
Rob Pickels 00:34
It’s funny. It’s funny. I make fun of my wife all the time because she thinks that she is super stoic and she is not. She like, like, has like, these little like ticks that happen, you know, she struggles to hold Yeah. Anyway, I silently judge.
Trevor Connor 00:49
See what I’m enjoying is Rob is not looking right at me. He’s actually angled a little bit so he can just side eye me as we’re talking. This
Rob Pickels 00:56
is a logistical choice so that I can look at all of you at the same time, because I am here for all of my co hosts.
Trevor Connor 01:04
So you can look straight at them. How do you have to look
Rob Pickels 01:07
at me? I’m actually looking straight out the door to tell you the truth. You know,
Grant Holicky 01:11
he’s trying to bolt. Yeah, he’s getting ready. Eyes on the Prize
Rob Pickels 01:15
people you know, got to get out that door.
Trevor Connor 01:17
Yep, no, some of us are going to run here. GRANT showed up with a question that he did not prepare us for, that is gonna end the show. It’s not gonna
01:25
end the show. Now, I
Griffin McMath 01:28
kind of hope it gets wild, because I just want this to become a self fulfilling prophecy.
Trevor Connor 01:33
Yep,
Grant Holicky 01:34
I think we start with yours, though. Yeah, mine’s
Trevor Connor 01:36
safe. Mine’s a good question. It’s gonna help
Grant Holicky 01:39
people. Wow, that was a passive aggressive judgment side. I
Trevor Connor 01:44
knew. Yeah. Well, what is your question? Trevor, my question, if you’re not racing cyclocross, then why you want to bite?
Rob Pickels 01:52
Yeah, exactly. Oh, boy,
Trevor Connor 01:56
already, this is going to be a productive one. If you’re not racing cyclocross, then it’s getting to the end of the season. What are tricks to get a little more time out of your form? Or should you just be pulling the plug at this point? So this is we’re recording last week in August. This is actually going up very soon, so I think second week in September. So a lot of people don’t really have any races left, but they might not be ready to hang up the bike. Should they be and thinking about the next season? Should they be trying to get a little more form? What do you guys think? You
Rob Pickels 02:27
know, I gotta ask the question. When you say, get more form,
Trevor Connor 02:32
trying to keep their form going, there’s a certain point where your body just says, I’m done. I need a break.
Grant Holicky 02:38
I would argue it’s your mind. Yes, fair, but yes, there is. Can
Griffin McMath 02:43
you tell us why you argue? It’s your mind.
Grant Holicky 02:45
I mean, yes, the body needs
Trevor Connor 02:47
rest, but you know what? Screw it. This is where this episode’s going. I disagree. Well, we’re gonna argue with Okay, okay, here’s my one counterpoint. A lot of people, when they get into the race season, stop doing all that support work, they start getting into the gym fair, and that is part of it, too. The body gets out of balance, yeah. And you hit that point where you go, I need to get back in the gym. I need to get back into balance. So that’s the logical part. But
Rob Pickels 03:12
I will say, though, through race season, especially in a championship type season, your body might be a little knackered from that one event, but you should otherwise be on really good form, feeling good, not overtrained, not over stressed, not breaking down. If you have all of those things, your race season is probably not going very well. Well.
Grant Holicky 03:33
My point is that I think you can stay at your peak longer than most people assume you can stay at your peak. I think there’s an assumption out there that the peak is some two weekend golden period, that that’s it, that’s all you get, and you can’t get back up there. I think that’s a little bit of a myth. And but what is really, really hard is mentally, you’re going through the logistics of getting ready for another race, being pressured for another race, being anxious, being excited, all those things and that cognitive load, as much as anything else, is going to put you under fatigue, correct? And having that break in a lot of ways, listen, especially for Masters athletes, I’m 51 when I take my quote, unquote break, I’m not sitting on the couch doing nothing. I don’t know that I can do that anymore, right? When I was 26 and I was a quote unquote pro triathlete, yeah, I could pull that off. I wouldn’t do anything for two weeks. It was glorious. But as as an older rider, I have to move, so maybe that’s a little easy run or something like that. But yeah, for me, it’s Oh, I don’t have to think about racing for a little bit. I don’t have to worry about that
Rob Pickels 04:43
stuff, Grant. I’m going to keep going with your mental side of this. And I think that following a race season, it does not mean you have to go into this full rest and recovery phase. It’s not like championships were yesterday today. I don’t ride my bike, right? Because maybe that doesn’t fit in your calendar. Right? That’s all part of the macro cycle that we’re looking at. But I do think it is a great time for people to actually just go out and do things that they enjoy, after months and months and months of doing things that were quite scripted, quite prescribed, right? How about just go out and ride your bike for fun? And if you happen to be riding really hard up a hill, great, maybe you’re getting some threshold work, and while you’re doing it, that’s not necessarily the point. And I think that people can actually maintain their fitness for quite a while just by riding for fun, before they’re taking any planned breaks, before they’re going back into a planned base build or whatever else
Trevor Connor 05:36
that was where I was gonna go. And before I go there, I just have to say there’s just a theme to this episode. The garbage truck just arrived. Every
Rob Pickels 05:45
potluck is a freaking garbage truck
Grant Holicky 05:49
outside.
Grant Holicky 05:58
I will say, I need to make a note. I wish we had a video of this. Everybody looks really nice in here today, with the exception of me, I look like my usual. I
Griffin McMath 06:08
don’t know this looks like it was steamed. I actually dressed
Rob Pickels 06:14
- This is new. I noticed. Yeah, you got to steam your arms later, just so, you know.
Trevor Connor 06:23
Oh, yeah, I didn’t iron those. To be fair.
Griffin McMath 06:26
I thought this blue car heart was you dressed up this morning.
Rob Pickels 06:31
This blue car heart is new since the fire.
Grant Holicky 06:34
No, no. I had it on when we were at the lacrosse game. I had it on. It’s one of my favorite shirts. Okay, this is my cross season work shirt.
Rob Pickels 06:42
Yeah, and it’s cross season for it is, baby. We’re going,
06:45
yeah. But anyway,
Trevor Connor 06:46
so to your point, the reason I have this new shirt, I have multiple of these shirts.
Trevor Connor 06:55
That’s exactly spot on. I don’t like to shop once every two years, I buy five of the same thing, but this is I’m learning relationship language. My girlfriend made the comment, I think you would look nice in this shirt, which I realized later as we were talking about it was, you’re a slob. I want to put you better looking stuff. The shirt I love that you said,
Grant Holicky 07:23
I realized later, Oh, crap, I’m gonna go buy that.
Trevor Connor 07:30
So I ordered five of
Grant Holicky 07:32
them. Good for you. It looks very nice
Rob Pickels 07:34
all the same color, or no, they’re
Trevor Connor 07:36
all different colors.
Griffin McMath 07:37
He does alternate the like specific so
Rob Pickels 07:40
we’re not like Steve Jobs level.
Grant Holicky 07:42
No, no, no. It looks for the record. Trevor looks really good in that shirt. It matches.
Rob Pickels 07:47
It’s a nice sand color. Yeah, button down.
Grant Holicky 07:50
Kind of a throwback, 50s style,
Rob Pickels 07:52
retro Bahama
Griffin McMath 07:54
but I could see you in a car in Cuba smuggling smuggling.
Trevor Connor 08:03
Know what the photo for this episode has
Griffin McMath 08:05
been him to have a cigar between his fingers and his left hand. What
Trevor Connor 08:08
was our question? Again,
Griffin McMath 08:11
you were talking about kind of disagreeing with granite first. And something that I’m hearing is, if you don’t use it, you lose it to an extent, but then it kind of bifurcated, and we talked about the mental aspect of that and the physical aspect. So if you don’t use it, you lose it. Is that similar
Trevor Connor 08:29
to both? Rob had a really good point, and I’m going to continue with that, which is where I think the mental side gets to you, is when you are on peak form. It feels great being on peak form, but that’s where you have to be your most dedicated. You have to be going out, doing the work. That’s where you see that slice of pizza and have to keep walking. You can’t have the cake after dinner, or whatever it is. We can have that as a separate question. But the point being, you are your most committed. You are your most dedicated. You are making your most sacrifices. And by the time you get to September, you’re like, I’m kind of tired of all that. Yeah. And I think the best way, and I actually wrote an article about this, to maintain form, if you want to keep form going, is to say, look, maintaining it is a lot easier than building it. I don’t have to be as dedicated like you said. You don’t necessarily have to go out and do the intervals, go hit a hill really hard, and just throw in some sprints. That’s probably all you’re gonna need. Yeah,
Grant Holicky 09:24
and at that point in the season, I think you’re right. You know, you have a lot that you’re building on, but I and I think this is the time to do something that maybe you don’t normally get to do, like to Rob’s point. Go try kom and see what you can do. Go try a gravel race. Go try a cross race. Go try one of those things that allows you to use that late season just a little bit more. Because one of the things that I’ll say is that so often we have a natural break come the holidays, 100% right? Or come when the weather changes, like, even if it’s not the holidays, you’re not going anywhere. You’re not. Out of town for Thanksgiving, but the weather starts to go downhill,
Rob Pickels 10:02
or the clocks change, yeah, can’t do the same volume after the clocks, and you just don’t want
Grant Holicky 10:06
to, right? It’s one thing. If it’s December, January, you’re looking forward to February racing, right? And you’re like, Well, I just got to get on the train. I’m going to knock this out, yeah? But DJ, not going to feel like that in November, no, December, yeah. So I kind of like to hold it a little bit, keep people active, yep, and then really just shut it down when it makes the most sense in the ebb and flow of their lives. To shut it down. Yeah?
Rob Pickels 10:33
No, I agree too, and I think that so what you shut it down now and then you have to start your build for next season in what? September? Well, time to go, if your racing isn’t really kicking off, April, May, June, in that time frame? Well,
Grant Holicky 10:49
I think there is, there’s other ways to do this. I mean, the thing to keep in mind, from my perspective, is there’s not just one soul two week break, and that’s the only break you’re gonna get in the season. I think that’s an important distinction to make too, right? You if you’re cracked mentally or physically, you can take a break now and then kind of wind back up. Give me a good six weeks to eight weeks, October, November, and then we have a little wishy washy funk going on during the holidays. But that six weeks to eight weeks isn’t wasted. It’s not thrown out the window just because there’s a secondary break. And I think that misconceptions out there too, right? If I take another week or two weeks, all that work’s gone. I don’t think that’s gone. You know, I say this a lot. Remember when I was coaching swimming, we’d have people talk about, well, you know what you did? You got to do that distance. You got to do that volume at 14, 1516, because that stays with you. And then we’d have those same coaches say, Well, if you take a week off, you’re totally out of shape. Sure. Yeah. Like, which one is it? Yeah. You know, as my dad used to say to me, are you lying? Then are you lying? Now, that’ll fill you in on my childhood.
12:01
Like, wait, I was told the same thing.
Trevor Connor 12:02
So this kind of moves to the side of the question. But actually, that’s something I just had an experience with, because I have an athlete that for years, we’ve been doing a fairly typical routine, and we take several weeks off in October, we start rebuilding in November, and every November he complains, I can’t believe I take two weeks off, and I’ve lost everything, and now we have to spend the whole base season rebuilding it. But he, in July, went on a two week trip where he didn’t have a bike, didn’t do any training, came back, we tried to get him on the bike, and he came down with a bug. Ended up taking three and a half weeks off, which is more than we take off season. Yeah, and sure enough, His form was right back to where it was. But he actually has an event in September he really wants to do so, you know, we talked about, do we want to kill the event, or do you want to do the painful work and be ready? He’s like, I want to be ready. So it has been painful, but it’s actually been amazing how quickly we brought his form back. It just wasn’t
Grant Holicky 12:59
fun. No, no, and I think that’s fair. Yeah,
Griffin McMath 13:02
I feel like we’re answering unintentionally the question I had, I want to be that athlete.
Trevor Connor 13:08
No, you don’t. You should have seen every
Griffin McMath 13:13
time I, like, got excited, Rob would be like, Hey, do you have time to talk on the phone? Because he just wouldn’t let me. I don’t
Rob Pickels 13:19
write training without talking to people. We’ll cover your questions as Griffin is very quickly realizing when she continues to stand me up. I tried
Griffin McMath 13:29
calling back numerous times, so
Trevor Connor 13:32
Griffin, here is the answer that question, no, you don’t want to do that. So part of the answer here is, when you take time off, there are natural painkillers that are flowing in your body. And when you are on top form, part of the reason you’re on top form is because you just don’t feel the pain. The painkillers are really flowing, and that’s part of why. I think there’s also a physiological reason for needing to take DOM off, because there’s a point where your body says, I’m tired of the painkillers flowing. They need to disappear. You take a couple weeks off, people think they’ve lost a ton of form. Part of what you’re feeling is the painkillers are gone, and a workout that used to not hurt is now miserable, something that you’d be able to get through easily. You’re like, I can’t finish this, because you feel every last little bit of pain
Grant Holicky 14:16
when I and I really what I feel when I go through that is off the bike, like you’re walking up and down stairs, and your legs just hurt. You know, your body just hurts, and then it’s wild, because I went through a little bit of this after after Montana, and to Montana, coming back home to Colorado, it’s when I needed to take my break home and get ready for cross. And there’s some time off. And the first couple weeks, man, back in Colorado, back doing group rides with my athletes, where they just punish me, and then cross camp on the east coast with with the team I work with. And dude, I just felt awful, yeah. And then this week, I started to feel normal again, right? Good, again. And same. Volume, you know, bigger load, but you start to come around. It’s almost that’s that feeling that people talk about being stale. Yes, right? That’s the idea of being stale. You can still push the power. It just doesn’t feel right. It hurts. Yeah,
Rob Pickels 15:13
I think that the return to form conversation is, is maybe a bigger conversation than we’re prepared to have in the potluck. But I will say I do think a return to form kind of depends on where you are in your form. It’s true to begin with, yeah, right. If you’re at a nine and you dip to an eight, I think you can get back to nine pretty quick, right? If you’re at a nine and you dip to four, I don’t know how cool you get back to nine, but if you’re at a five and you dip to three, it feels harder to get back to five, in my opinion, absolutely, tell you the truth. You know? Yeah, absolutely. So I think that there’s a lot of factors that weigh in there, and nobody wants to take unplanned breaks, but we have to take them. We have to be flexible.
Grant Holicky 15:54
And I will say just piggyback on that. We’ve watched more and more high, high level cyclist have these unplanned breaks and come back and be very successful. Because I think what we had in the past is somebody broke an arm, everybody kind of threw their hands up and said, You’re out. You’re done for a long period of time. Now, people are getting on the train, or they’re training through it. They’re getting done and they’re getting back on the bike. We saw it at the tour this year. I mean, yeah, Vin ago wasn’t able to win, but what he was doing, sure, still strong, ridiculous, ridiculous, right? Four weeks after getting out of the hospital, six weeks getting out of the hospital, whatever that was, that was really impressive,
Rob Pickels 16:34
right? You know, Grant going back, you know, I think that earlier, we were all kind of on a consensus about, hey, there’s no reason to just immediately stop your training following the race season. But you did bring up, if your mind is cracked, if your body is cracked, it is okay to take a break. And that’s a place that you know we are right now with Melissa, my wife, who is just in Sweden for Masters track world championships the day she woke up to run the 5000 something to know about my wife is she sleeps in socks. I think it’s crazy. Oh, my people. God. Who does that? She does it. She doesn’t wait and, like, wakes up with them. Yeah, yeah. She wears socks, like, all night long. It bit her. She was in her Airbnb in in Gothenburg, Sweden. She stepped out of bed, she slipped on the hardwood floor, and the side of her foot went straight into the corner of the dresser and like put a hole through the side of her foot. So she tried to run the 5000 she made it like a mile and pulled out. She was able to finish the 10k the next day, but ran real slow, and then two days after that, her foot was feeling slightly better, and she ended up winning the cross country race, but we have decided, let’s pull back completely. Let’s get her foot back into a good place, because she still has goals. She still has cross country worlds in November. And I’m of the opinion, oftentimes, if you’re gonna pull back, you should pull back, let things truly heal, as opposed to kind of nursing it along, and then you never really get better. Your training is never really that good quality. I think it is better to pull back hard, like you said, grant so that you can then get back into real training as soon as possible. Ultimately, I think that that’s more beneficial. I
Trevor Connor 18:13
think that leads to a good point, which is the last thing I’m going to say about my question, which is, if you do want that season to go longer. There’s a difference between taking the time off at the end of the season and saying, you know, it’s kind of done, and now I’m going to get focused on the next season, versus taking a rest so that you can come back and have more time. Yeah, and I am a believer, if I have an athlete that wants to go through September and part of October, we’re going to take a break in August, maybe take a week, and then that will help them to last longer. Yeah, when you make it
Rob Pickels 18:45
further without question, yeah. And
Grant Holicky 18:47
I think you bring up a good point. You know, when you’re taking the season ending break, the training you’re doing when you get back on the bike is very different. We’re gonna look towards weaknesses. We’re gonna look towards base. We’re gonna, you know, whatever anybody does individually, my training with athletes shifts dramatically. But if you’re taking this short break and trying to extend the season, the training you’re doing when you get back on the bike is still race focused training, not off season focused training, and I think that’s a big, important distinction as well.
Griffin McMath 19:18
So we’re saying, don’t take a two month break, Train for two weeks and do 100 mile race. Is that what you’re saying? Yeah, I
Rob Pickels 19:24
think that’s the moral.
Grant Holicky 19:28
Just might not be fun.
19:30
No, no,
19:33
the answer is,
Griffin McMath 19:34
I heard I heard one yes, which means I’m not canceling like so you’re saying
Rob Pickels 19:38
I heard you talk about the
Griffin McMath 19:41
guy in the hospital. Six weeks later. I’m like, I could do this, yeah,
Grant Holicky 19:46
for those six weeks on a trainer with his arm propped up on a ladder. Have we published
Trevor Connor 19:51
this? Is a guy who has won the Tour de France and done events like that. I just
Griffin McMath 19:59
delusional, calm. Minutes I want to ride it.
Rob Pickels 20:00
Have we discussed publicly your drive by moosing? It got
Griffin McMath 20:04
mentioned on the and the entry episode. Oh, did it any? Annie said, like one line, this
Trevor Connor 20:09
is where it belongs for anybody who’s asking. Griffin was going out for a hike a moose charge. She got moosed. She got moosed. I
Griffin McMath 20:17
got hit from behind. Yes, moost moose pinned down.
Rob Pickels 20:21
They look like they’re so gentle and so docile, and they know they do not so dope moss hanging from their hands,
Griffin McMath 20:28
and all you see is like a rack, and then muscles flinch, just that. It is like a terrifying last visual
Rob Pickels 20:36
you have before snort and potty ground. That’s all I need to know. There
Griffin McMath 20:40
wasn’t enough time. It was like a fraction of a second. I saw the muscles flinch, wearing red,
Grant Holicky 20:47
no, that’s that’s a bull. That’s not, but it was a bull moose, yes. Mason,
Rob Pickels 20:52
nice moosen, yeah, no,
Trevor Connor 20:54
it is. I looked this up. Plural is moose? Yeah, no, it’s
Grant Holicky 20:59
moose. That’s why it’s fun.
Rob Pickels 21:01
Is it a herd? It’s not like a murder, like it is crows, rafters.
Grant Holicky 21:04
It’s a rafter of turkeys. It’s a rafter of Turkey as a raptor. Rafter.
21:14
Don’t ever do that again as a visual to pair over that you
21:20
want a visual,
Trevor Connor 21:21
okay? And now that we’ve set the tone, let’s go. You mentioned
Rob Pickels 21:25
cyclocross earlier, Trevor, and I’m not gonna lie, I didn’t have a question until you sent your question and I keyed off the word cyclocross in yours as well. You should as well. I should. Hey, you know a trend that I’ve been noticing. My family and I were avid UCI cyclocross watchers watch most of the races live when possible, but typically not anyway. A trend that I’ve been noticing is that a lot of cyclocross racers seem to be taking in gels throughout the course of a relatively short race. Now, a caveat to this is how short, approximately an hour, give or take a few minutes. A caveat to that is that oftentimes I see it mostly on the female riders side. You know, these riders will have a gel, say, taped to their top tube. Maybe there’s a gel kind of up the short leg, and part way through the race, they’re consuming a gel. In general. I think that we also see riders taking gels immediately prior to the start. And I do think that we see that a little bit more on the men’s side than the than the women’s side. But anyway, my question is, you know, to the group, is this a beneficial thing? Should people be taking carbohydrate in during such a short event? And if we do think that that’s the case, then how do we maximize the benefit while limiting the potential downside pitfalls of sucking down a bunch of sugar partway through a pretty intense activity.
Grant Holicky 22:45
Well, I’ll make one note, and then I’ll turn this over, and I’ll let you guys talk about it for a second. But a lot of this started with tone arts. Tone arts was one of the first riders to be riding with the gel and that was back before his doping suspension, and he was riding with one up his short leg, and that was probably five years ago that I first saw him doing that. I think, yeah, I think the women got onto it pretty quickly, with Lucinda definitely having that. So I think a lot of that also came out of svensteam. Tell
Rob Pickels 23:16
us to say, is this a Sven thing more than anything? It may be. It may be, for those that don’t know, Sven, nice, absolute cyclocross legend now the DS, owner of owner,
Grant Holicky 23:27
Principal, yeah, and so, yeah, it’s borderline getting ubiquitous, yeah, in the women’s field and pretty heavy in the men’s field. I mean, if you watched US Nationals last year, there was a point where Andrew Strohmeyer and Curtis White were both getting ready to take gels on the start line when Scott Funston attacked over him just chucking gels. Just like, Oh crap. Gotta go. I have my opinions on this, but I’d love to hear yours, Trevor,
Trevor Connor 23:52
oh boy, yeah, you want to go first? No, I
Grant Holicky 23:54
won’t even want you to go first.
Rob Pickels 23:55
You know, your nickname is Trevor, sugar daddy,
Grant Holicky 24:01
Connor, just because I’m
Griffin McMath 24:04
gonna have aI procure the image for this episode. It’s like
Trevor Connor 24:08
real good. So my thoughts let me pull all this together. Rob and I just did an episode on the research of Dr Coyle, and one of the really interesting studies in that showed that no matter what intensity you’re going you’re pulling about the same amount of glucose from the blood, and obviously you need more at higher intensity per hour, but you’re really going to get that from your muscle glycogen stores. You really can’t increase how much you’re pulling out of the blood very much. So the amount of glucose that you are going to get from the blood for an event like that is going to be adequately supplied by existing blood glucose and by liver glycogen. So I don’t think physiologically, there’s going to be that much of an impact, though they have shown when you consume glucose, it does have in. Packs on your system. It basically convinces your system, okay, I’ve got more ready supplies so I can go hard, like you’ve seen the studies of people, where they’ll hydrate, mouth, rinse, mouth rents and they can go harder. So I think most of what you’re seeing is just a mental effect of it allows people to feel they can go harder, and it just gives them a little more motivation. So
Grant Holicky 25:18
I’m gonna, I’m gonna play Dr Scott fry on this and tell you that that is a physiological response, because your brain lights up when it tastes carbohydrate, and it turns back on. And I think the biggest benefit in something like cross where you have a very heavy technical load, very heavy cognitive load your brain has to be on. You have to be ready for that. You have to know this line. You got to know where you got to go and those things. And anybody who has raised it hard at any level, when you race cross hard, you are in the box. And it is not a
Rob Pickels 25:56
despair. 45 minutes of despair. First 15 minutes typically feel pretty good. I was
Grant Holicky 26:03
gonna say yeah, it’s 30 to 45 minutes at the end of that race of just Yeah, longing for it to be over. So I do think that it’s one thing in a time trial where you’re kind of head down, it’s pretty straightforward. You’re just going for it. Maybe the brain doesn’t need to be quite as lit up and on, but in cross it needs to be on. And I think when you’re out on the road and you’ve been out there for a while, and your mood sours, and you start getting a little mad, and like this road is rough. What the hell is wrong with I don’t want to go up goddamn wind, dude, and you take a gel, your mood will change quickly, and you’ll find yourself 10 minutes later, like, all right, this is good. Everything’s all right. Griffin,
Trevor Connor 26:48
mental note here, bring gels to the potluck. Yeah,
Griffin McMath 26:53
just as someone gets decked in the face that’s cute, like, perk up. I think that right there kind of proves my whole stance on this, I think in an acute situation for someone to utilize gels to perk up or to use it as a method of addressing a triage moment, let’s say I think that’s okay. I get worried about athletes who have chronic ingestion of these gels, and it’s just such a mainstay of their diet and lifestyle that you’re doing this for years. Because, let’s face it, a lot of these gels, though, innovation has led to better formulations, it’s still a lot of crap. And I don’t care that you’re like, burning something off people like, only think about it from a calorie perspective, but when you think about it from the sugar or these synthetic materials that get pumped in you’re constantly exposing your body to. And then you have an athlete who has years of a career, and they’re doing this every single day. That to me, you know, I was trying to look up the research after you sent the question, and I don’t think there’s a lot of research on chronic ingestion of these gels over a period of time. So to me, it’s like, yeah, that’s what you do if you’re in a pinch. But there’s got to be something better to expose so many athletes the chronic ingestion of these little teaser
Trevor Connor 28:11
here. Thank you. Dr Larson and I are planning an episode where we’re really going to address what should you be eating and taking on your rides if health is a bigger consideration because it is so performance focused. And, yeah, we’re not looking at the impact of this stuff. Well, I
Grant Holicky 28:27
think one thing to note to look at both sides of this coin. This is not a regular occurrence for a lot of the people. Like racing is a whole nother world. You know, they’re gonna take that in. More to my point, yes, it’s not the most healthy thing you could do to your body, but racing cross isn’t really the health there’s still a
Griffin McMath 28:47
population of people. I mean, I’m not saying everyone’s gonna strap a microwaved sweet potato to their thigh and gnaw on it. You know, on a
Rob Pickels 28:54
you’re irradiating your sweet potatoes with microwaves.
Griffin McMath 28:57
I knew I was gonna I was making a point.
Grant Holicky 29:01
I love that. No, no, you make a fair point. No. And there is, there’s a lot of people talking about the concerns of raised a 1c level in athletes. There’s a lot of people talking about, you know, you have athletes coming out of a career that are pre diabetic. I mean, we have issues in the sport because of the sugar intake. But I think what you really are seeing in a lot of those athletes is what they’re doing off the bike. You do get a mentality in high level athletes, or let me say, mid high level athletes, that I can kind of eat whatever I want, I can kind of do whatever I want. And I had an athlete come to me, a teenage athlete, come to me with this question recently, of like, should I be limiting jail? Should I be doing this stuff? And I said, in a racing setting, no, in a training setting, yes, you can eat real food out there and do really, really well off of real food, but really look at what you’re doing off the bike. You know, I think that
Rob Pickels 29:58
we’re bringing up a really great conversation. About the implications of carbohydrate during activity, when we’re focused on performance, but then also maybe some balance of the health benefit and whether or not having simple sugars in your diet is beneficial or not, it’s probably not. Let’s just state that, you know, we do have a great library of information. Trevor and I, we’ve recorded a few episodes kind of on this topic, and if anybody is interested in furthering that conversation, definitely check out fasttalklabs.com listen to the rest of this. I think we might even have some articles content that you can read. I want to go get back into this cyclocross race, these really short, hard, intense efforts. And we’re seeing people. We’re seeing people taking in carbohydrate during the event. We’re also seeing people, you know, the cameras painting across. We’re checking all the tires, you know, are they on the dugos rhinos? Even though my wife calls them Rambos, she can’t get Rhino and man, Rambo would be crazy. I know, right? You know. And then we’re seeing riders taken in gels during that shot. What other implications do we need to be talking about taking, you know, carbohydrate in such a short event? So
Trevor Connor 30:59
the one I’m going to caution anybody who’s thinking about this on is what’s called reactive hypoglycemia. So think about the basic physiology. When you consume sugar, you spike your insulin, and the purpose of insulin is to get your cells to take the glucose out of your blood. When you’re exercising hard, the insulin response gets shut off because exercise actually causes the muscle cells to take in glucose independent of insulin. Everybody follow me so far? Sure am so you have two mechanisms by which your cells can take in glucose. One uses insulin, one does not, the other one’s just exercise. The problem that you can run into is if you consume a bunch of sugar right before an event, and you time it in a way that it spikes your insulin, and then you start going really hard off the line, like you do with a cyclocross race, you now have both mechanisms active, and your cells just kind of suck up all that glucose. Your blood sugar levels drop, and you bonk really bad. Yeah, I think
Grant Holicky 32:02
almost everybody’s probably experienced this. If you’ve eaten a big meal, or eaten a bunch of food and then tried to go out and do a workout, and let’s say your stomach wasn’t upset, and you’re like, doing the workout or doing whatever, and you bonk. You’re like, how am I bonking? I just ate. But that’s exactly what’s going on. I think one thing to pay attention to, and something that I’m pretty adamant with with my cross racers is have a routine and have a schedule of your food going into the start of that race. And I think what ends up happening is people cross start times are weird, right? You know, elites are going at three in the afternoon or five in the afternoon. I remember we used to start cross Vegas at 930 at night, and you’ve got to plan your whole day back from that. So okay, I got to take a big meal in three hours before that, and that’s where everybody stops. Now look before that, and before that, and before that, but just in that time frame leading up to the race, large meal, three hours prior, I always really push people to do kind of a bump in calories, couple 100 calories, about an hour out, 45 minutes out, keep everything on that pattern, because what you’re going to run into is, if you have that lull and then you take in that sugar at the start, you can really run into exactly what Trevor’s talking about, right?
Rob Pickels 33:14
And because we were kind of talking and insinuating both the glycemic index a little bit earlier, and spiking that blood sugar and then insulin, you know. Grant, I think that these meals that we’re having prior need to be easily digestible, right? We can’t have something that’s going to be sitting in our gut, but they should also be lower glycemic as well, because we don’t want to be going through this blood sugar spiking process, you know, before the event either. How do you feel, you know, Trevor. I’ll throw this to you. How do you feel about taking in carbohydrates, simple sugars during the warm up, as opposed to on the start line? Do you think that we’ll have better control over blood sugar and insulin in that case,
Trevor Connor 33:53
that’s a good question. That’s
33:54
a good question. First
Trevor Connor 33:55
thing I’m going to say, if you’re going to try to consume during a cyclocross race, this is where you have to go simple. You’re not getting a lot of blood flow to your gut. If you put something in your gut that’s hard to digest, it’s just going to sit there and ferment, right? And you’re going to feel miserable. So when I do an event of that intensity, I generally I don’t even do anything solid, like I’ll do a drink mix if I’m going to try to get some carbohydrates that way, or some fuel that, anyway, I’m just going to do with the drink mix. I know when I’m going really hard, if I put anything else in my gut, it’s just going to make me miserable, right? So I do think, yeah, getting something during the warm up can potentially help it. Just again, experiment with this. Make sure you’re not highly responsive to that reactive hypoglycemia, yeah, yeah. And also be aware of the fact that you might be moving when you’re you’re warming up. But let’s say you do the warm up, eat something right at the end of that, and then you go stand on the line for 10 minutes. Yeah, yeah, you can be in trouble
Grant Holicky 34:52
well. And I think, I think you bring up a couple really good points. It’s super individual. It’s really highly individualized. And. Like, who’s going to a, what kind of gel? B, what kind of sugars you know? C, when what’s in your gut? What’s it taste like? All these things are going to matter to the individual athlete of how they’re able to digest it. But one of the things to keep in mind of what we said early in this this conversation is you’re not going to get a whole lot of quote, unquote, energy out of that gel in a mid race is just don’t have enough time. What you can do is turn your brain on. What you can do is light your brain up. What you can do is tell your body, trick your body into thinking there’s more energy available than maybe really is. So you don’t need a lot in that case. So point you can get away with a little flask with just a sweet drink mix in it, because all you need to do, remember, carbohydrate mouth rinse is not about anything other than tasting sugar, yeah? So if you taste it, you’re going to have an opportunity to get those benefits out of what you’re taking in. So it doesn’t need to be a lot. And I think that’s an important point. A little goes a long way. Yeah. And the other thing I’ll say, I want to go back to what you were saying, Rob, about pre race meals. You have to eat a quote, unquote, normal pre race meal. I think a lot of people do get caught up in this idea of all carbohydrate all the time. You need protein in there. You need fat in there. This meal we’re talking three
Rob Pickels 36:16
hours prior. You’re an eggs guy. I
Grant Holicky 36:18
used to be, I used to be a bacon and eggs guy before cross races, but I’ve just gotten a little bit older, and my stomach just doesn’t quite do it. So now it’s peanut butter. Now I turn peanut butter and it works really, really well for me. So peanut butter in my oatmeal, maybe some scrambled eggs in my oatmeal, scrambled eggs and rice, things like that that are really pretty simple and straightforward, but get the protein and get the fat in makes a big difference,
Trevor Connor 36:43
a trick I’ve done with time trials, which isn’t quite like a cross phrase, yeah, is kind of what Grant’s talking about. I just have something that’s sweet, that when you’re in that 10 minutes to go 15 minutes ago and you’re really hurting, it’s all mental at that point, it’s not gonna be getting to your muscles very little that’s gonna get to your muscles. You’re maintaining blood sugar. More than anything, you’re maintaining blood sugar. It just, there’s just something mental about it. You just take it and it just makes that last 1015, minutes easier. I
Rob Pickels 37:13
mean, we’re talking about blood sugar. There’s kind of a placebo effect. This golden elixir is going to get me to the finish line? Well,
Grant Holicky 37:21
I mean, I’ve been in cross races that are hot and even a bottle of water. I think we don’t recognize how much our body is reacting to what we are trying to put it through. We have a great episode coming up with Dr Scott fry about some of this, and he starts off that episode by talking about, when we go out and exercise, our body is not happy. Our body’s job is to kind of keep us from hurting ourselves. When you’re 40 minutes into a cross race, you are hurting yourself. Even if you’re five minutes into a hot cross race, your mouth goes dry. Your body’s freaking out a little bit, right? Colorado, yeah, it’s freaking out a little bit, and it’s surprising even to me. For me, what happens even when I just blast some water in my mouth, even if I don’t swallow the water, it’s just wet my mouth a little bit again, and I feel like there’s a full body reaction to that that might say, oh, okay, maybe it’s not as bad as I thought it was. No,
Rob Pickels 38:19
it’s one alarm bell that’s not going off, yeah? And
Grant Holicky 38:21
that sugar intake might do that as well.
Trevor Connor 38:23
See, when I’m 40 minutes into a cross race, you’re just seeing the leaders have lapped me for the second time by myself, so I’m fine, yeah?
Grant Holicky 38:31
So I’m usually seeing you at that point. No, I think there’s benefit. And I think, you know, it is one of those things to kind of sum up. It is one of those things that we see a lot of teams doing, a lot of top level athletes doing, generally, they’re not doing it without a reason. There’s a whole lot of science involved in what people are making decisions to do now. But just because they’re doing it doesn’t mean it’s going to work for you. And you really have to try these things out. That’s what Wednesday group cross rides are for hard, hot laps. That’s what that stuff’s for. And I mean, that goes for gels in the middle of a race, that goes for food in the warm up. That goes for what kind of warm up that might go for bicarb. That is something that’s getting really popular across now, whatever that might be, you have to make sure you can tolerate it, because everybody’s
Trevor Connor 39:18
different. I think that’s the best recommendation is experiment with this. There is that Wednesday cross race or go out with your buddies. Try it,
Grant Holicky 39:27
yeah, or just try it in a race you don’t care about right before you get to Nationals. But I would give it a try. It works really well for some people. I do it. I definitely bring a gel. I
Rob Pickels 39:36
mean, frankly, by the time I get to Nationals, I’m so far over my head that I don’t care, you know, like whatever. Well, I’ll
Grant Holicky 39:43
tell you to sum up with my guys, I’m yelling at them to take a gel if they’re in a place where I think they’re going to be challenged in the last 15 minutes of a race, whether by other people, by the course, by the conditions, whatever it is, they need their brain. I want them to take their jail. Yeah, I think
Griffin McMath 40:00
that’s one of the reasons why working with a coach should be a non negotiable, because they have the ability to look at those things. I mean, when I started working with Rob, there were so many granular questions about my nutrition, my preferences, and some of the first longer workouts that I did reporting back looking at my numbers, until we got to a point where he gave me a formula and then I could pace myself throughout really long activity. I knew X amount of minutes passed at a certain heart rate, and I would pop a gel, or I would eat a snack. If I didn’t have him doing that, or looking at the course that I was planning on racing, it would have just been the worst DIY.
Rob Pickels 40:41
I mean, there’s, there’s definitely objectivity. I think that comes from working with somebody else, even if it’s not knowledge, right? Just the objectivity of it can, can help bring clarity to some of these. Should I questions? Lastly, I
Griffin McMath 40:53
would say, if I hadn’t had Rob, the number of gels that I would have been consuming would have been insane. And I can’t remember, we’ve had this conversation before where, like, you take a little bit ahead of gel, and you’re like, whoo, a little bit later. And I didn’t realize that until probably my first, like, a really long workout. I was going at a really high pace, and it was I did not go toward my instructions, which were, be chill about it, and I just got so excited. It was my first time using gels, and I was flying. I think my notes from that workout were, if I had picked up my hands, I could have flown. And that,
Rob Pickels 41:27
that’s terrifying. Situation,
Grant Holicky 41:30
terrifying. Yeah, you read that as an early comment from an athlete like, oh,
Rob Pickels 41:37
sunshine. Where did you get them?
Griffin McMath 41:40
Texarbo is like, I was flying. No, really.
Grant Holicky 41:43
Where can I get those jokes? Yeah, all right. Grant,
Trevor Connor 41:45
you have a question. I
Grant Holicky 41:46
- I do so we watched at the Olympics. We watched Kristen Faulkner have an amazing race, win the gold medal, and so much of the conversation around her and that medal was she’s only been riding for X amount of time, seven years, she picked up a bike, was training in Central Park, was a investment banker. There’s something to that statement, too. But what I wanted to pose to you guys is, how is that possible a and why do we see that? Or do we see that more in women than we see it in men? And you know, just how was she able to go pick up a bike seven years ago and go to the top of the sport now off Mike in the green room in the beginning of this, one of the things Trevor said, kind of under his breath, is, is seven years really not that much time, which is a fair point. Seven years is a chunk of time. But I just kind of wanted to put this to you guys, and I wanted you start there. Trevor with All right, so how do we do this? And for those of you who are just starting on the bike, you know, what’s the recipe
Trevor Connor 42:54
starting there? Think I will say there is evidence that athletes have about 10 good years at the top. So it was great study where they looked at Tour de France level cyclists, which one started as juniors, which one started later in life, and then what happened with their careers? And you just saw they all had 10 years of being at the top, which is earlier, if you started later, you had your 10 years later. The question is, which I’ve never seen in any of that research, is how much time you need to put in before you get to your 10 years? And my guess is it’s probably less than 10 years to get to your peak, yeah, but probably more than four or five.
Grant Holicky 43:40
I think that’s probably a fair point, right? You know, we’re watching people now in the men’s peloton and in the women’s. Be phenomenal. At 2019, 20, okay, well, prior to 15, what can you really count that they’re doing? I mean, no offense, right? It’s, you can only get so much in so probably four or five years, I’d say that’s probably fair. And if you look at her development, that’s kind of on par she it’s not like she came out of the woodwork here, folks. She’s been a really strong cyclist for a couple of years now, and on the up and up, and shocking people every step along the way, prior to the Olympics too. But I guess to my point is, I’ve watched this happen with several women. One of the things that I wanted to bring up Kristen’s background, at least, I think I don’t know her very well, but she has some sort of a rowing background. Talk about an ability to suffer. Rowers are up there with everybody for an ability to suffer. So you’re learning something there. Evie Stevens definitely had a background in high intensity sports. Meredith Miller came from soccer. That might be the second part of this question is, where is it better to come from, to get good fast as a cyclist? Yeah,
Rob Pickels 44:56
I think it’s interesting, right? Because in a lot of regard, I. Think fitness is fitness, right? If you’ve done a great job of maximizing your VO two Max, your blood distribution system, you’re working your mitochondria, a lot of that is transferable. I think that we see this as well. You know, on the men’s side, Grant, there’s a name that we don’t talk about very often, this guy, John Gaston, who’s coached by a friend of the show, Adam St Pierre, who has gone from ski mountaineering to podium at Leadville, which is one both huge fitness and granted, it’s Leadville, there is still technical ability, you know as well that maybe is a little bit more than what you’re getting on the road. So I do think that these athletes that have these years of training and these other highly demanding endurance sports, 100% can make the switch into cycling. You brought up earlier that Her background was as an investment banker, right? And I think that that’s key we laughed about at the time, alluding to Evelyn Stevens, Her background was the same. I think that people that end up in roles in professions like that probably have this very like goal focused determination. And when they set their mind to doing something, they’re pulling out all the stops, right? And they’re doing everything that it takes to get there. And in that situation, I think that we can see rapid development, or at least rapid transition from one sport to another.
Griffin McMath 46:21
I think that’s something that no one has mentioned as you talk about all these female athletes, too, and the difference between men and women’s sports, there’s so much to cover, because women’s sports haven’t been as developed for as long. So it feels like, I think there’s this extra layer of inspiration. That’s why you see women aspiring to be other women, or women aspiring to enter something that hasn’t been done for them yet. And so I think there’s this extra drive, and there’s also room for attention to be drawn to women’s sports, because things haven’t been well.
Grant Holicky 46:53
I think you make a great point about attention being drawn to women’s sports, because little girls haven’t had anything to look at for a long time, we’ve only started to have these things on TV in the last I mean, women’s cycling has only been on, really been available to watch for the last, what, five years. And I
Griffin McMath 47:10
think that’s important to mention, available to watch. Yeah, that women have been doing it like People Keep Talking about the Caitlin Clark effect. And I think, listen, lover, that’s amazing. But I’ve been watching, you know, Women’s Basketball has been around way longer than that, so just the women’s sports getting Prime Time spots and getting that visibility, well, I’m getting
Grant Holicky 47:29
that press right. WNBA has been on ESPN for a number of years, right? The Women’s Professional Soccer League in the States has been on TV for a number of years. And you saw that, you saw little girls with US national team jerseys on. That’s what they’re aspiring to. And I think that’s that’s a big benefit. It will be interesting. Total. Side note is to see what kind of benefit Haley batten and Kristen Faulkner and some of these women that are being very successful on the bike are going to have on a generation of young riders now that they can see them, yeah, whereas before, hey, we had some incredible Mara, Abbott, Evie Stevens, incredible female cyclists that nobody really could see. Nobody could watch the Giro when, when Mara won it twice. So how do you look up and try to do that? Yeah? But Mara didn’t really start on the bike for for reals, until she was in college. She was a swimmer. Talk about an engine. So, I mean, I think all that stuff’s kind of valuable, but to play devil’s advocate, Taylor came from soccer. Taylor Finney came from soccer. He played that pretty late in his teens. Remco was an incredibly good soccer player. Played that very late 1516, I think the men are coming from other sports too. We just don’t talk about it very much. But without a doubt, the path for men is way earlier right now. There’s not an entry point later in life. You can’t enter the sport very easily at 22 or 23 we’ve watched people do it. Michael Woods did it from running background. We’ve seen some people do it, but it’s very limited. I think the women’s peloton is much more of a straight up meritocracy. If you’re fast, you’re gonna get a shot, yep.
Rob Pickels 49:08
I mean, if we think about cycling as a sport, is it just something that people find later, right? I mean, prior to Nika, it’s not like young kids were on bikes. Very often. They were doing other things. They were running, playing baseball, not in the States, not in the States, sure, sure, you know, but in the United States here, that’s sort of the development process, right? Like you age out of a lot of these other sports, and maybe you pick up cycling a little bit more as a recreational thing, and then you say, Huh, I actually am okay at this. Maybe I’m going to try for the next level, the level after that. Is it just a product there, or are we discussing a change in performance over decades and we’re just seeing a different I don’t know, way that people are reaching their peak?
Grant Holicky 49:53
Well, there’s definitely some evidence that shows that women reach their peak later in life than men, athletically, right? There’s some. Evidence out there that talks about women being incredibly good almost till they’re 40.
Rob Pickels 50:04
I’m surprised to hear that, just because females tend to go through puberty and maturation in that aspect sooner than men. Yeah, and
Grant Holicky 50:10
we’ve watched boys, we’ve watched sports, and this is a phrase that I am not using lightly. Take advantage of women very, very early on in their lives, gymnastics, swimming. You’ve seen these prodigy 1617, year olds with questions on longevity there for sure, right? But there is some evidence in research saying that the prime of their endurance careers comes later toward 40. And if that’s the case, these later entries into the propelled time make more sense for them. I was
Griffin McMath 50:40
advised. I remember being in college, and you know, at that time, everyone was signing up for the turkey trot in different races and half marathons. And I thought, Oh, I’ll do it. And I had a mentor in my life, who was probably in his mid to late 30s, who looked at me and he said, No, don’t do it. And I said, why? And he goes, You should wait until you’re a little bit older to do it. And made some type of comment about it impacting me, kind of prior to me wanting kids, almost like a link with my fertility Grant’s rolling his eyes for those but there was this concept, or this notion then, and that I was too young to start doing endurance events, and the impact that would have on me versus a male. Well,
Grant Holicky 51:18
be careful, you uterus. My fault.
Rob Pickels 51:21
This is the thinking that kept women out of marathons and like, you possibly run 26 Well, that’s
Griffin McMath 51:26
what I was told. And so I was like, Oh, I just shouldn’t be doing this until I got to med school. And I was like, Oh, I think
Grant Holicky 51:33
that you are not at all either. Which is, which is,
Griffin McMath 51:36
thank you so much.
Grant Holicky 51:37
Oh, stop it. It’s frightening that that was, you know, 2018
51:45
oh, my god, I’m so much older than
Grant Holicky 51:48
that. Women are getting
Griffin McMath 51:51
that type of language, like, you’re, you’re either for something, and then this, you have, like, a fraction of a second to participate in something, and then you get to a certain point like, well, you should have started before. It’s like, I’m at an age now where, if I wanted to have a baby, they’d say it’s a geriatric pregnancy. And that’s the term, right? So it’s like, I’m too young for this, and I’m too old for that. So
Grant Holicky 52:11
what an amazing term. Just as a side note, we had our second baby when she was over 35 and they called it a geriatric pregnancy, and she’s looking around. Are you kidding
Griffin McMath 52:20
me? Oh yeah, it gets it gets violent, really quickly,
Grant Holicky 52:23
geriatric. Here it’s my husband. He’s the one that’s eight years older than me, and she’s right. But, you know, I just think there is that double standard still so present. And what’s wild to me is, here’s the thing, right? Everybody talks about Ted Williams baseball career, if you don’t know anything about Ted Williams, he was hitting 400 every year before World War Two. Went to World War Two for four years, came back and just started hitting 400 again. Everybody’s like, oh, it’s unbelievable. It took four years off, and he’s that good. Women are taking two years off for kids coming back and being better, yes, and we’re now. We’re at the point where we’re like, okay, that’s normal. That’s incredible. But it does speak a little bit to the drive that people are talking about. And I think, you know, gender aside, that man, does your life get a lot more regimented after you have a kid, you get real good at playing and stuff after you have a kid. So there’s something to that too. But I just think it’s really a lot of fun watching, and it’s does seem to be primarily the American women that are coming to the bike late. The Dutch women are on the bike very early. We see Europeans very early on the bike. And it maybe it is just a little bit more of that path that you were kind of alluding to, Rob. They play other sports up until a certain point because the bike’s not really available for them. Yeah,
Rob Pickels 53:42
you know, it’s interesting, correct me? If I’m wrong, in Dutch culture, it’s almost opposite, right? We have a lot of young kids who are on the bike, but as you become an adult, there’s not a lot of masters racing. No, in Europe, to tell you the truth,
Grant Holicky 53:56
it’s pretty wild. When you go to Masters worlds for cyclocross, there’s not a lot of Belgian folk there. They might be watching, but they’re not. I mean, there’s, there’s certainly good ones, but it’s not like the Belgians are dominating masters racing, because they get done and they’re done,
Rob Pickels 54:11
yeah? And then you look at participation in the US and adult cycling participation has to be 100 times what it is for youth and juniors. Yeah,
Grant Holicky 54:20
yeah. It’s much higher. So there is a path here that may not even be available other places. I just wish we would open that path a little bit on the men’s side too, because I do think there’s Late Bloomers on the bike on the men’s side.
Trevor Connor 54:33
That was my obstacle when I was racing. The rule was the average age of a team had to be 26 and when I was in my 30s, they would look at me and go, if we sign you, we have to sign a 15 year old to offset
Rob Pickels 54:49
you. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, when you say the rule, are you talking like? Where they like to keep
Trevor Connor 54:54
had a rule, no, that the average age. So they eliminated. Yeah, but the UCI made a rule that the average of a team had to be 26 and I came into cycling in my 30s. Wow. And when I spoke to teams like I had lots of conversation with teams. As soon as they asked me my age that was it
Rob Pickels 55:13
should have lied. How unfortunate
Griffin McMath 55:14
is that norm, that you could be missing out some really incredible athletes who could feel like they would have an opportunity, they could have a path, whatever is, just like a hobby or a passion right now, that they could take it somewhere. Well,
Rob Pickels 55:28
real quick, I just want to say the UCI is a bunch of old dudes sitting around a table. So they actually thought that this was, you know, so
Trevor Connor 55:35
there was an okay explanation of America, which was, you saw all the big teams with money knew that the, you know, the people that were winning the tour were late 20s, early 30s. So they would let all the other teams develop riders, and that they would grab them in their late 20s. And it made it for kind of unfair competition. So the UCI basically said, you want to hire one of those top 30 year olds, you got to develop somebody, right? And that’s why they made that that rule.
Grant Holicky 56:03
I think it is interesting. When you look at riding in the States, look at what covid did for that age group. In the States, there’s not a whole lot of pro riders in the range of, like our pro riders in Europe, from the age of like 24 to 2627 covid really hurt them. We have a lot of riders that are younger, that are incredibly good over there. We have a couple riders that are older. The path to Europe is about getting to Europe for an American rider. And how you do that is, typically, you can get there early on in a Devo team or with USAC, it’s harder and harder to get over there and get a shot later in life. Riley Sheehan’s one of the rare exceptions. But Riley just so is so darn talented, somebody gave him a shot and then he took advantage of it. Now, hey, we’ll give you a shot. Oh, just go win Perry tours. I guess we’ll sign you now.
Trevor Connor 56:59
So going back to the question, I said I was going to get myself in trouble. Yeah,
Grant Holicky 57:04
I’ve been waiting for it, so I’ve gotten yourself in trouble. Yeah, it’s because I haven’t said anything.
Trevor Connor 57:07
Now I’m going to get myself in trouble. So I’m sure I’m hazy on the details here. This was almost 20 years ago, but when I was at the National Center in Canada, we had a woman who came into the National Center, and she won Canadian nationals, like a year and a half after she touched a bike for the first time. Just a phenomenal talent. She so maybe it was two years, maybe was a year and a half somewhere around there won Canadian nationals. But then, as I remember, she just was done a year later. It was a very, very short career. So you had kind of mentioned this earlier of what happens when you move up so quickly. I’ve seen at least one example. I’ve seen some similar examples of I think you need that development time, and if you get up there too quickly, sometimes I think the athletes have a hard time handling it. No, I
Grant Holicky 57:58
would 100% agree. I don’t think that gets you in trouble. I think we’re seeing it a little bit in gravel right now. Gravel right now. We’re seeing women in gravel for whatever it’s worth, posting their Strava numbers at the end of the year. They’re on real the amount of time these women are putting in on the bike. It’s 2223 hours a week average for an entire year. And they have jobs and they have relationships, from my point of view, and what I spend my time on, dude that’s hard to maintain, mentally, emotionally, physically, that’s really hard to do year in and year out. I think there’s personalities and people that can do it quite well, and that’s it’s not to say that people can’t, but it’s difficult to hold and maintain.
Griffin McMath 58:39
I also wonder. We had her on the podcast. Episode, The entry episode recently, my friend Annie, who was with me when the moose thing happened. And one of the one of the conversations we had this weekend was having the eggs of your life basket all in one basket. And for someone who’s cycling, 2224 hours a week, what happens if an injury results and you can’t be on the bike. Do you have an absolute mental breakdown that you a lot of people do? You know what I mean? And in this happened, I had, I got a text message from Annie this weekend, who’s been spending so much of her time since moving here, in the last couple months on the bike. And all the text said, crash bike backing trip in back of cop car, going to Boulder right now. Can you come to meet me to the ER, and she has a broken arm, she’s flown out to like Hopkins right now to get it assessed, and we had to have a big conversation the way back from the hospital about structuring her life and what this looks like for the recovery time. So I hear that from people. I go, what’s going to happen if that one thing is taken away from you?
Grant Holicky 59:41
Well, we see it, and we see it in development and youth athletes all the time, and this is where I think coaches are really important to rein you in a little bit from that. Yeah. But also good coaching super important, because I think poor coaching pushes you to that, yeah. We see it in so many developmental athletes. Do you define yourself by your. Sport. Does your sport define you, or is your sport something you do and you really love to do? Those are very, very different things. When you define yourself by your sport and you have a bad day in your sport, you’re gonna have a bad day, yeah, and that’s rough.
Griffin McMath 1:00:14
I think someone like Annie, who’s had so many injuries, broken her back, broken her neck during the sport, has thankfully, is able to kind of adjust, but not everyone is able to recalibrate.
Grant Holicky 1:00:24
No, it’s a very hard thing to do.
Trevor Connor 1:00:26
So this is a concern that I was getting on this. This is the part that’s going to get me in trouble. You look at women cycling, you start as a cat three, and then the next level is cat one, two, because women racing doesn’t have a cat two. So you basically go from intro level to racing against domestic pros. And if you survive there, then you’re racing against international pros. In the men’s cycling, there’s a lot more tears, a lot more hand holding to get you up to the highest level forced development. Right? Women, it is sink or swim. You know, we’re doing better now with coaches and sure, a lot of our centers helping to develop the women, but you go from being that beginner to racing against the best awfully quickly. And I think, like I saw at the center, you do have a lot of women who are phenomenally talented or suddenly racing against the best, but haven’t had the development, haven’t had the experience, the practice to really know how to deal with it sometimes. Well, you
Grant Holicky 1:01:22
see it with really, really young riders. You see it around here with the men’s juniors. They’ll raise the cat threes, and a lot of programs will force them to stay in the cat threes. But you’ll have 14 year old women who are so good that the cat threes is just not the place for them. They cannot raise their so they go raise the one twos. Now they’re podium in the one two. That’s a lot. That’s a big ask, and you, and that’s a really easy way to define yourself by your sport before you’ve even really gone through the changes that your body’s going to go through. And we used to see this in swimming all the time, that we would have young women coming through at 14, at 16, they were completely different body shape. They’re a completely different person. And you needed to have somebody along that line that went, That’s okay. This is all right. No, you’re not gonna look like that. You’ve gotta figure out how to swim or ride the way you look right now, and you can, it’s okay. You’re gonna be able to, but you don’t get a lot of that help. And to your point, with going from three to two to one, I remember when my wife was a cat three cyclocross and she won boulder cup. She was like, This is great. Now she goes up to cat one two. And she was like, I would get last or third to last every race, yep. And just like I was staying on the lead lap. Katie Compton was winning the local races, and I was staying on lead lap like that’s a pretty solid performance, but it doesn’t feel good to get trounced like that. It’s a big jump, yeah, and then the things you have to do in order to be competitive, it’s hard to sustain. I think that’s fair.
Trevor Connor 1:02:58
I remember talking to a young woman who had just raised here in Colorado, and she was raising juniors in Colorado, which meant, you know, she’d never been in a field bigger than about eight nine riders, and had upgraded, and she was going to Nationals and was about to raise pros in 100 person plus field when she had never done more than basically the equivalent of a small breakaway group,
Grant Holicky 1:03:22
yeah, yeah, that’s a big jump.
Trevor Connor 1:03:23
It’s tough. I
Grant Holicky 1:03:24
think we nailed that one, and I didn’t think you got yourself in trouble. Trevor,
Trevor Connor 1:03:30
oh, I didn’t try hard enough. I’ll try harder.
Grant Holicky 1:03:33
God knows you’re capable.
Trevor Connor 1:03:36
Well, shall we leave it there? I think we shall try to even load it up. That was another
Rob Pickels 1:03:40
episode of fast talk. That’s all we get. I don’t think we need to say anything more than
Grant Holicky 1:03:44
that. I think we need to say the opinions expressed on fast talk are those of the individuals.
1:03:51
That’s kind of a necessary one. I think that’s important. I think that’s
Grant Holicky 1:03:55
all that matters. Follow us on the socials, pull them up, comment, smash
Rob Pickels 1:03:59
that like button.
Trevor Connor 1:04:01
The opinions you just heard are the worst opinions you will get from this group.
Griffin McMath 1:04:10
Thanks for listening. Bye.
