Welcome to another potluck conversation with Grant Holicky, Rob Pickels, Trevor Connor, and Chris Case. In these discussions, we pick topics that we find interesting and break them apart using a mix of science, humor, and our own experience.
Where do you even start trying to find the right training plan for you?
There is no one-size-fits-all training plan for every athlete. A beginner athlete may be able to do well with a solid basic plan, but eventually, every one of us wants to optimize our training to our individual goals and needs.
We can learn the principles of training or buy a template training plan, but how does that translate to what’s best for each of us as an individual? Where does one even start? This is possibly the most important question an athlete can ask, and why Coach Grant Holicky has brought it to the group.
How should we and shouldn’t we use virtual training platforms in the base season?
A decade or two ago, the base months in the winter tended to be a solitary activity. Group rides and races were nonexistent, so many of us spent a lot of time alone on the trainer or out on snowy roads, dreaming of the first group ride in March. That’s no longer the case.
Now we can do a virtual group ride or race anytime we want. So, Coach Trevor Connor asks how this has impacted base training—both negatively and positively—and how the group recommends athletes navigate virtual training platforms in the winter.
What’s the status of U.S. Cyclocross?
Believe it or not, being a host on Fast Talk is not Grant Holicky’s only job. He’s also the High-Performance Cyclocross Manager for USA Cycling. Which means that he’s the one taking America’s top CX riders over to Europe to race World Cups and the big championships. Coach Rob Pickels asks him directly what we need to do to compete in ’cross at the top level.
Get ready for another potluck and let’s make you fast!
RELATED—Episode 322: How to Measure Running, with Nell Rojas
Episode Transcript
Trevor Connor 00:00
Music. Hello and welcome to fast talk. Your source for
Chris Case 00:08
the science of endurance performance you
Trevor Connor 00:11
haven’t done in like, three years, and you remember it? No, I know it’s a simple line. It’s a simple line. I don’t get it any. Like, if I don’t read it, I don’t get it really,
Chris Case 00:19
you can remember the article that was published in cell biology in 1967 volume six, but you can’t remember,
Trevor Connor 00:30
yeah, exactly. You don’t want to get into my brain. It’s a that’s very true, scary place.
Rob Pickels 00:37
Trevor, you said we had to be serious today. So let’s Well look,
Trevor Connor 00:40
this was new. We came in here, we were talking beforehand, and Grant was like, stop talking. It’s true.
Rob Pickels 00:46
He did. Yeah, he showed us a long range.
Trevor Connor 00:48
I just want to go. I’m very busy these days, which is not normal for me.
Rob Pickels 00:53
Are you saying the rest of us? Aren’t I don’t care about the rest.
Trevor Connor 00:58
The rest of you have no real bearing on my life, but I care. Who
Rob Pickels 01:03
do you though I do? Do you? Dude? I reached out to you see how you’re doing the other day. You told me you were effing busy, and then you didn’t send anything back. Well, you obviously didn’t want
Trevor Connor 01:13
my Come on. What else? And with that, there’s a potluck episode. Yeah, thank God. I’m excited. We don’t have Griffin here. Sad to say, Griffin, unfortunately, is under the weather, so she’s asked Chris to fill in for
Rob Pickels 01:27
her. Did Hi, everyone gets sick over the holidays this year? Holidays? No,
Chris Case 01:32
I haven’t been sick in years, actually, because I don’t spend time around human beings.
Trevor Connor 01:40
You’re screwed. You’re gonna get sick.
Chris Case 01:42
No, I know. I’m going into my special chamber after
Trevor Connor 01:45
this to detox. I
Rob Pickels 01:46
had a five year old freaking vampire man. I had a five year old sneeze directly into my face, and it was all downhill after that.
Trevor Connor 01:53
So, yeah, well, I see you at the pool tonight, like the pool’s okay, because it kills everything. My
Chris Case 01:59
daughter’s birthday, we’re taking her out to dinner.
Trevor Connor 02:03
She’s not going to swimming. No, oh, man, I’ll be alone. You will do my Dutch lesson. Stands right. So now that I know this, I’m going to teach your daughter what willies. No, my whole psycho career, my nephew, you’re
Chris Case 02:15
not going to my house, not going to spend any time near my child.
Trevor Connor 02:21
You way. The one man without children, we’re not gonna let him near anybody’s first question, a lot of people did get sick. Yeah, Europe was really hard for the I mean, lot of COVID over in Europe, really, yeah. All right, well, grant you have a question for us. I do have a question for you guys. My question is, so there are 1000 ways to skin a cat, right when we come to training, there’s a lot of different ways to do this. Sweet Spot polarized all base less base. There’s a million different ways to do this. My question is, what I haven’t seen a lot of is people trying to individualize a training plan to what it is that they need. I see people glom on to this idea of training. This is the right idea of training from a science point of view. But I’m not seeing people go all right? This is the try to type of training I believe in. But I’ve got five different athletes here. What do they each need to do individually, right?
Rob Pickels 03:21
Yeah. And I think that I see this a lot in people, and it’s why I think you can do a bad job of training people in groups, right? Yeah, same workout for same people, relatively. You know, maybe you’re changing the intensity like, oh, grant you can do this at 400 watts, and Trevor, you can do it at 350 watts, but the programming is relatively the same, right, right?
Trevor Connor 03:41
And look at it this way, what really got me thinking about this was an ego brilliant but there’s so much talk about Base, Base, base we need to train all this base. Everybody needs to do. 90% of everything they do is base. Look at what today is doing, all these things, but then I look at my life and the limitations of my training time are pretty extreme. So can I do a ultra heavy base training program and be ready for cross so I think what I’m asking is and this may turn into something much bigger in the future, but how do we do this? How do we find what is best for us before
Rob Pickels 04:23
we dive into probably some real recommendations from like Trevor and Chris? I do. I do. Just want to point out, yes, please give us the BS. No. I mean, what I will say, though, is we’re talking about the recommendations that are coming from influencers. As you’re bringing this up, I’ll call Inigo an influencer. Maybe we’re influencers too. Who knows? What I do find difficult at times is properly getting a message out. And sometimes the message is very simplified and the nuances are not described, because you can’t describe all of that. And so it’s easier to just say, do base all the time and then do some intensity. But is that really what it is day in and day out? For Inigo, I personally know him. I know it’s not like that all the time. No, it’s not. You have to say that, because if you say 1% more, it either gets misconstrued or misunderstood or whatever else. So I do just want to say that oftentimes you’re blaming
Chris Case 05:21
the media. I’m blaming the media. GCN has exactly oversimplified what an ego’s message was, because it fits into a sound bite, or even
Rob Pickels 05:28
it is, in part that, but it’s also, you know, like, take a fasted training. I would never, I am not publicly stating that I ever use fasted training with people, because I don’t think people should do it, but I might do it with some of my athletes in some situations and whatever else, right, because I understand my nuance and how I want to apply it. But if I just say you should be doing fasted training, somebody goes, you know, off the rails, and that becomes detrimental. So publicly, I don’t like saying stuff like that. Well,
Trevor Connor 06:00
yes, Chris, you have the real answer. Yeah, no. I
Chris Case 06:04
think that that is a very, very solid point that you make, because we all have worked with Inigo and know that it’s not that simple, but that’s what people keep stressing, that that’s all he’s about, that’s all he’s about. And, yeah, it must drive him a little bit crazy too.
Trevor Connor 06:21
Well, I’ll say, from my point of view, even on this show. And then I went on the EVOC podcast, and it was talking about intensity. And I obviously like intensity. I’ll use it year round. And I’m screaming from the rooftops that load is not intensity, and I’m still the intensity guy. I’ll still have conversations with coaches I know incredibly well, and they’ll say, Well, you just do all that intensity. I mean, how do you do all that intensity? I’m sitting there going, I do plenty of bass, and I have gravel riders that are doing almost all tempo, because that’s more what they do and what they raise. So I mean, I think for me, what’s super important is, and I’ll come back to this a lot, what is the individual’s life like? What are their constraints? What are their openings, even something as simple as I train in a five two system a lot of the year, five days on, two days off, my two days off for the weekend. Yeah, yeah, because my kids aren’t in school, and in the spring, we’ve got like 8000 activities, and I’m all over town. I’m not training on Saturday or Sunday. It’s, it’s, I don’t have a choice. But during the week, I can carve out two, three hours during the day on a couple days. So I have to go to a completely different system than I would like to train anybody with from a schedule standpoint, I’m going to give an answer that you’re probably going to find surprising, because I’m actually going to make the argument for group training here for the person who’s fairly new. Because when, as we all know, when you have a relatively new athlete who’s trying to figure out how to train, they’re at low enough a level that pretty much anything, they’re going to see improvements. They’re not at the point where they need to find the highly individualized, specialized plan, because, frankly, they don’t know themselves well enough to know what really resonates with them. And I think going and training with a group where you’re hopefully with some athletes who are more experienced, you’re going to get more out of that and watching and learning from them, because really, what you need to learn is just good execution. And it doesn’t matter if it’s not the perfect training plan for you, you’re going to see gains from almost any training. So go get those gains, see what other people are doing, learn from them. And then over time, after a year or two of that, and you’ve learned yourself, that’s when you can start saying, How do I find the right plan for me? But I get worried about people who are brand new, and go, oh, I need to find that perfect plan for me. There isn’t one. I think that’s fair. And so exposure of a lot of different things can start to get you to understand maybe what you need, maybe what you want.
Rob Pickels 08:58
Yeah, I think that when we are discussing what’s the right plan for someone, we need to be taking into account that individual and also the needs of their event, right? And when we think about the individual, I think that we can break that down into like a physiological like, what do they need, you know, so that their muscles and their mitochondria are able to do it. But we also need to think about the individual in terms of what do they need from their mental state, what makes them happy, what keeps them motivated, what keeps them training? And we also, like I said, need to marry that to the event. If we have a cross country mountain biker, probably in general, they’re going to be trained a little bit different than, say, a long gravel racer. And so we can say, oh, maybe the cross country person needs a little bit more chaotic training. They need some higher power output, some shorter work and rest intervals and the gravel person. Maybe there’s some longer steady just sort of KJ, sort of days. But even within that, I think that we need to train the individual based on what their needs. And I had an athlete that reached out and was. How do you feel about this? Like muscle fiber typing, like, do you think that we should be fast twitch or slow twitch? And I know Dr Seiler had actually asked us about that as well, and I don’t know that I’m ready to give opinions on that, but I will say when I do testing with my athletes, I do more of like the Neil Henderson sort of layout, where I’m not looking for the best 20 minute power so that people can get the highest FTP value. I’m more looking to see what’s your five minute power versus your 20 minute power versus your five second power, and how does that characterize you? And then what levers do we need to pull so that you’re successful in your tour around Iceland or in your crit race, or whatever it is. Yeah, I
Trevor Connor 10:43
think that’s really valuable, that idea of four DP testing, right of what are you? And I don’t want to say naturally, but what are you more ready to do now? Are you kind of a vo two guide? Now? Are you a threshold guy? Now, it’s funny, because I’ve changed completely over the last few years, whereas I used to be very much a sprinter or a lead out kind of guy, and now I probably could ride tempo all day and be very, very happy about it. Welcome to my world. Yeah, it’s a product of my life. It’s a product of who I’m training and who I’m riding with even though those are punchy guys for me to ride with them, I’m riding tempo all the time, and so everything’s closed into this middle ground, and I watch myself as a cross racer, like I have no lap one, absolutely no lap one. And then I get in a rhythm and I just start picking people off, but the front of the race is gone. And I realized that recently, it’s like, whoa, wow. So all right. And then this comes back to kind of, what do you want to do? What do you do? Trying to get done? I need to look at me now again and say, Well, do I want to be a really good cross racer again? Because if I do, I need to change how I train, and I probably need to walk away from some of the group coaching that I do in order to be able to do intervals at a better level, because I’m too tired to do them right now. But I don’t know that I’m ready to step away from that yet. Or I need to get an E bike, because I can’t ride with those guys like that.
Rob Pickels 12:15
But that right there, is the first hurdle to individualizing training. Are you willing to do what needs to be done to get to that specific place?
Trevor Connor 12:26
And I’m ready to admit it’s ego, right, like I of course, these guys are 2526 27 they’re some of the better riders in the United States. Just
Rob Pickels 12:33
face it, they’re better than you. They’re far better. That’s not it that, but that’s not
Trevor Connor 12:38
even a question. But I enjoy trying to keep up with them. I enjoy trying to do that. I enjoy those days out on the bike. I just feel throttled at the end of them. It’s awesome. I’m just excited for the day you realize I’ve turned into Trevor, and then you cry a little. Oh, no, dude, it’d be more than crying. Yeah, are we talking as a bike racer, as a bike racer, I could accept that. I’m not sure if that was a compliment. I don’t think
Chris Case 13:13
it sounds to me. The original question was, how do you best find the best approach for the individual, for your best for your best success, right? All the best. And everything that you’re saying, in a sense, comes down to a conversation that you have with an athlete about where they are and where they want to get to, and how you the map that goes between those point A and point B, right?
Trevor Connor 13:38
Yeah, absolutely. And the conversation the athlete needs to have with themselves, too.
Rob Pickels 13:42
But I’ll say I think that there is more to it than that, right? Because every coach should be sitting down talking to their athletes where they are and where they’re going. Should. But how do you get to where you’re going? That isn’t just a standardized sort of plan, right? Well, I see
Chris Case 13:58
like that comes down to the ability of the coach. And if you’re the athlete and you’re having the interview with the coach, and you don’t really know anything, then you don’t know what they don’t know, and you don’t know what’s right or wrong. And you might go along with it, and it might work, and it might not. If you do know something and they’re unwilling to admit that they don’t think they’re the right coach for you to get you from point A to point B that’s problematic.
Trevor Connor 14:22
And what about the athlete who doesn’t work with a coach? I will tell you the biggest mistake I see, I’ve seen frequently in athletes, is they look for that perfect, amazing plan that’s just going to produce some dramatically different result. And they try one plan. They do it for like, two months, nothing says all right. And then they hear about something else and go, let’s try that. Try that. And every couple months, they’re changing plans. You will get nowhere. You have to start with a plan. My recommendation is, start with something basic. Start learning what does and doesn’t work for you. And then you start individualizing. Then you start trying a little bit of this, a little bit of that. But it’s modifications. Well, one thing I will attach to that is, I used to hear this all the time when I was coaching swimming, that we need to train our weaknesses and rely on our strengths. I’ve almost come full circle. Yes, right? Like I especially if we’re talking about a newer athlete, Go Lean into what you’re already pretty good at. That’s going to keep your encouragement high, that’s going to keep your motivation high, that’s going to keep your excitement high. If I take Rob, who is very much a high end guy, sprinter type dude, now he’s gotten to, let’s say early Rob. And I say to early Rob, we’re going to do three hour rides every single day. I don’t know that I keep Rob as an athlete. If I give Rob some high end sprints, some 22nd power stuff, some that he’s posting numbers that he thinks the world thinks are pretty impressive, now, maybe I have a better shot to get him to do a three hour ride, right? But if I’m giving him a three hour ride or 20 minute power test, or all these things that aren’t what he leans into very well. You’re not going to come out of it feeling very good about yourself.
Chris Case 16:04
That seems like a commentary on what swimming training used to be like, or maybe it still is, which is just kind of brutal,
Trevor Connor 16:12
productive it is. But I think that that’s a lot of endurance sports. I think that swimming is trained as if it’s an endurance sport. But I mean runnings like this to a T. I mean running is just bang your head on the wall. I get in trouble when I talk about running, because then people call up and we will know all of it, you’re right, not all of it. Like I got in trouble with it with a friend over stride, when I said, I don’t know what people are using strides like, well, it’s, it’s proven to be really good information. It is really good information. I still don’t know what it means, though, and we went through this with the Nell Rojas episode, but I guess my point is, for so much of this, the people that lean into endurance training and training, not they’re not even necessarily endurance sport, but endurance training, are people that like to bang their head against the wall a little bit. It’s a prerequisite. It is right? And so it’s almost too easy to get into this place where, well, tempo is what I need to do, so I’m just gonna do tempo, and I’m gonna do more of it, and I’m gonna do a lot of it, and I’m gonna do this, and it may not serve that person at all to be doing that much tempo. It may not serve me to be doing total high end. If I’m really good at high end, I need to be doing other things. But I do think the entry is to do what you’re good at and then help broaden out from there. The modification I would offer is train your weaknesses enough that they don’t lose the race for you, but don’t lose your assets. I’ve seen people make that mistake where they’re always trained their their weaknesses and the thing that could win the races for them, yeah, their strength becomes the weakness, right? So, I mean, I’ll give you an example of me. I don’t have a great one minute power. No, I have to train it. I’m never going to win a race on a one minute effort, but I need to make sure I don’t lose a race on somebody else, putting down a one minute effort and dropping me. But my strength is always at that 20 minute climb see if I can drop people. And Chris is laughing,
Chris Case 18:14
but my laughing, but it’s been a long time since we raced, but I feel, I feel the urge to race you now,
Rob Pickels 18:19
and I will say Chris is the person in the room that could beat Trevor up a hill
Trevor Connor 18:27
with either both of them. And I’ll get second Chris will win. But the point is, I got to make sure I don’t lose that asset trying to fix that one minute, because the one minute, it’s never going to win a race, right? Karen,
Rob Pickels 18:37
I want to touch on something that you were kind of talking about there. I think a lot of people think the best coaching is laying out the perfect plan on paper and giving it to the athlete and telling them, here you go. This is your roadmap to success. And that is not the case. I never, ever write the quote, unquote, perfect plan on paper, and it is always fit to that person’s needs to their life. Maybe they need to be doing four by 20 minute intervals every single day, and that’s going to get them there, but like you’re saying, if they don’t like that, it’s not going to get them anywhere. And so we’ll do that sometimes, but we’ll also do stuff that they like that’s modified, maybe to help them achieve their goals, but to say that we can just blueprint out something, it’s not gonna happen, no.
Trevor Connor 19:26
And even the coaches that are bent towards that angle know that, the good coaches that are bent towards that angle know that that things are gonna alter. The phrase
Chris Case 19:35
bent towards that angle, yeah, it is now
Rob Pickels 19:41
Back off, man. It’s like you’re building something, and the board, it’s not quite right. You just sort of bet it, yeah, and
Chris Case 19:47
then it’s good, all right. Well,
Trevor Connor 19:49
I will make the argument, and I think you’ll agree with this that I don’t want to make this argument. I want to take Chris out back
Rob Pickels 19:57
and what I’ll climb out Clive almost. Don’t be hard,
Trevor Connor 20:02
but the argument I will make is I can have more success with an athlete taking a completely generic plan and helping them to execute it really well, and that includes knowing when to break the plan because of how they’re feeling or whatever is going on. I think you’re gonna have more success with that than giving an athlete the perfect plan, but they execute it poorly. Yeah, I think that’s 100% the case. And I think that’s coaching, right? I mean, I’ll continue to come back to I talk about a lot. We talk about a lot. I think coaching is about the relationship before the physiology. In so many ways, the physiology matters, but the relationship drives even the physiology. I’ll have athletes I’ve worked with for five years, and at five year mark, we’re going to a completely different approach to what we’re trying to do with them. I have athletes now that are going to switch discipline so that we are going to take a completely different approach. I’ll even go out and seek out coaches from that discipline and get advice, get information, get input, so that I have all that physiology in my back pocket. But it’s still about the relationship, and it’s still about that understanding back and forth with that. I hate to say it guys, because it’s been great conversation. I think it’s time to move to the second question, it’ll all go downhill from here, but that’s okay. Training peaks just introduced their new virtual training platform. There are more and more of these platforms, and they are fundamentally changing how we train in the winter. And yes, I am reading my questions. Yeah, man God. What are ways that we can take advantage of them, and how should we not be using them? And you probably already know my biases on this. Who would like to go first base
Rob Pickels 21:47
riding in ERG mode? You can put that into whichever bucket you want. Oh, my God, that’s it right there. He does,
Trevor Connor 21:56
like three hour base rides on the trainer in ERG mode. Yeah.
Chris Case 22:01
So he’s on one side of the spectrum, and I’m on the other, which is, don’t use them at all. Go outside and enjoy the sun. I
Trevor Connor 22:09
think the trainer is incredibly valuable. And I think there’s, there’s places to use it. I don’t know that a three hour base ride on ERG is the place to use it. That would make you strong as hell,
Rob Pickels 22:19
though. You guys look at my Strava. Recently, it’s like 30 minutes your Strava. Why not? Man, don’t you love me? I
Trevor Connor 22:29
don’t look at anybody’s Strava. I don’t even know why I post on my Strava. I think it’s just attached I look at yours, dude, yeah,
Chris Case 22:35
I don’t follow you. It’s probably better for you, right?
Trevor Connor 22:42
Where in the world did grant do a 20 minute run today? Wow, back in Belgium, again,
Chris Case 22:49
your heat map might be we have not
Trevor Connor 22:51
answered my question in any way shape. No, no, yeah, okay, what was your question? Again, I tuned out how
Chris Case 22:58
to use them well. He started best practices, best practices of virtual training. I do love
Trevor Connor 23:05
ERG mode for certain things. One of the things that I really love ERG mode for on an indoor trainer is this will be a shock to nobody intensity. I love the fact that erg mode forces you to be consistent, so you can’t stand and hammer the front end of something and then fade like crazy, yeah, and then average, like, yeah, yeah. And so, because a lot of the stuff, if I’m writing a minute on minute on session, the classic revolver meals, classic, I love minute on minute off, but what I don’t want out of minute on minute off is start at 480 and fade to 380 I want somebody to just peg it at 420 watts. I love ERG mode because you have big resistance and you have a really, really high cadence, and those two things don’t always come together well in training. For most people, I see people with really, really good power that they often have a low cadence, and I see people with really, really high cadence that aren’t really good at finding the right gear, right so I love that about indoor training. I love that type of session on an indoor trainer. I love the ERG mode. For
Chris Case 24:20
the for those who don’t know what ERG mode is, describe it. Oh, look at you.
Trevor Connor 24:25
Yeah, no kidding. It’s the mode that forces you to a power. You’re not self selecting, yeah, the trainer drives you to a power.
Rob Pickels 24:35
And if you increase your cadence, it lowers the load. If you lower your cadence, it increases the load, right?
Trevor Connor 24:41
And the way to do ERG mode, the best tends to be at a pretty high cadence. It’s hard to do to stay steady and to be really steady. If you start to move one way or the other, it’ll unload or load. And the load spiral on ERG mode, on a trainer, is hell on earth. It just makes you
Rob Pickels 24:59
strong. Longer it’s a toilet ball. I think we’re going to
Trevor Connor 25:02
the right question here is, though, it used to be in the winter, it was kind of a solitary time, right? Most of your training by yourself. It was also a good time to just go. I’ve got a plan. I’m going to follow the plan, do what’s on my plan? And the herd mode on a trainer, it could be part of that. Yeah, it pushes back to that plan. So now we have actually a huge social component throughout the winter. And I one thing that I think we lose is I remember when I was solo all through the winter, I got so excited for March, when the group ride started, when you could go to races like finally, I can ride with other people. Chris doesn’t do that because they’re humans,
Chris Case 25:40
because humans are involved in group. Ruds, yeah, and
Trevor Connor 25:43
God knows, we don’t want but
Rob Pickels 25:46
so I’ll ask the three of you, I know my answer. Do you find these apps, Zwift, training peaks, virtual, to be social? I do.
Trevor Connor 25:56
I was about to say that I don’t feel a social component at all with Zwift. What I feel with Zwift, though
Chris Case 26:03
you’re not on Discord while you’re doing it with a group of other people, for instance, I
Trevor Connor 26:07
am not, but what I do find on Zwift is competitive, and not because that may be a social component, and that’s a little bit of what you’re talking about is there’s always, unless you’re doing a workout there, feels like there’s always a competitive component to Zwift or training peaks, virtual or any of the platforms. Trevor,
Rob Pickels 26:29
when you say social, are you doing the discord thing? Chris is talking about, or feeling the competitiveness that it’s
Trevor Connor 26:35
both okay and so, yeah, I’ll address both. When I’m doing the discord thing, like, there’s some group rides that I love, that it fits with the purpose of what I’m trying to do. We all get on Discord, and it makes a group ride really enjoyable, and I get effective training. One
Chris Case 26:49
thing that somebody meant not I have never done a group ride like that with discord, but one thing somebody said to me that had never struck me was the fact that if you’re on a group ride, you talk to one person that’s next to you. If you’re on a group ride in Zwift and you’re on Discord, you’re talking to everybody all the time at the same time, if you want to, you know, like, so it is a very social environment in that way, almost more so, right? Exactly
Trevor Connor 27:13
the competitive side. You know, I’ve seen pros and cons to it. That’s, that’s part of what I bring up the con obviously, is you’re supposed to be going easy ergo, or you have a set of intervals, and suddenly there’s a group ride, and you jump in, and the next thing you know, you just did two hours of racing on the day when you were supposed to be just doing base space Ergo.
Chris Case 27:35
People need discipline. Yeah, there is a positive side
Trevor Connor 27:39
to it, and this is where I like to use it. Yeah, I can tell you I will do my intervals on Earth mode and frequently. So I do them often on Zwift. I’m going up out to Zwift doing my threshold intervals. They’re five minutes long, and a minute in, I’m going, oh my god, I have four minutes left. Yeah, every once in a while, there’s another rider going about the same pace as me, and I can watch them, and I want to catch them. Competitive side kicks in. And then instead of going, oh my god, I have three minutes of this suffering to go. I’m like, I only have three minutes. I’m not sure I’m going to catch them. And the intervals become easier. Measure absolutely, totally different. And I think the other components is with that I use a lot in the office. I’ll use it during cross season, when it’s beautiful outside, is I’ll get in a race, Zwift racing. I’ve said this before. I’ll say it till the cows come home, if you can eliminate the big picture competitiveness, which is to sit there and go, how are these people kicking my butt? How are this many people really that good that you start questioning other people’s weight and all that, don’t worry about that. Think about them as as game players. If you can go in those Zwift races are brutal. They peg you at a heart rate and a respiration rate and an effort level that you’re not going to replicate. I don’t think in any capacity outside, especially if
Chris Case 29:04
you forget your fan, yes, okay,
Trevor Connor 29:09
because Zwift levels everything out, right? So it becomes a competitive, responsive, 20 minute, 25 minute, hour long time trial, which is just not something you get very much outside, you know, time trials outside, or you’re with yourself and group racing outside, you’re on or off. A lot more Zwift is on, you are on. So it creates something that I like for cross racing, which is, I’m 20 minutes into this thing, and I’m breathing out of my eyeballs, and I gotta continue to function.
Rob Pickels 29:39
Gotta keep going. Yeah, it’s almost kind of like motor pacing, right in some regard, yeah, holding that effort. Can’t let that motor go, yeah, yeah. And
Trevor Connor 29:47
to me, that’s a really good component of it. But to your point, Trevor, it is very easy on Zwift, without direction and without a plan. Time to go hard every single time you get on that platform. I remember during COVID, when I first got on that platform, I was going hard every day on Swift because it’s a game, and it’s set up to compete against yourself too. And it’s hard to when you’re a competitive natured person, it’s really hard to back out of that.
Rob Pickels 30:18
And so Trevor, I think when you’re talking about, how do we use these effectively? What we have to be is mindful that we’re not letting the negative influences of these platforms affect training in a negative manner.
Trevor Connor 30:32
But here’s my question, then, is it okay to do a little bit of that? So I’ll give you an example. I have an athlete I’m working with. He just got back on the bike a few weeks ago. So end of December, we were doing a decent sized week. It was snowing outside, so he was stuck on the trainer all week, and he got to Saturday, and like, I’m kind of getting tired of just doing steady on the trainer or doing intervals on the trainer. And I said, You know what go do a race wasn’t really in the plan. It didn’t fit with what we were trying to do that time of season, but it’s like, it’s a little motivating, it’s a little bit fun. He’s gonna enjoy it. Was that the right choice, or is that something that you should avoid? To go back to what we were talking about earlier, I don’t think I ever do things based on the perfect plan, right? So so much of it comes back to that athlete. When that athlete’s saying, I can’t do this anymore, then, yeah, I think it’s the absolute right thing to do. Where I think it gets dangerous then is once you bend toward that place, you stay in that place, and you keep doing races, and you keep doing efforts, and the base goes away and you’re losing what the inherent goal of the plan was. That’s where it can get dangerous with the game setup in these systems, because it is set up as a game, which is motivating, even when Zwift is loading the things that it says, like, easy day, yeah, right, or stuff like that, go get a towel. So much of what the industry is set up on is, well, we’re here to suffer, and at the same time, so much of our good endurance training is actually not about suffering. So it’s a real contradiction in some ways.
Rob Pickels 32:11
You know, it’s funny the other day, I’m gonna bring this to a different example, but the other day, I had bottle of Coke. I haven’t had a bottle of coke in years, and it was pretty good. No, I know. Dude, I don’t, I don’t drink soda. Where are you going with? I’m going with. I’m going exactly this place, you know what? The next day, I was like, should get another bottle of Coke. And the day after that, I was like, You know what? Maybe another bottle of Coke sounds pretty and we get this one thing right, and it gets and for me, it was the sugar in this situation. Trevor, you know, sugar can be kind of addictive, right? But it’s the same thing here. Oh, that race yesterday was fun. I don’t think I need to do my base ride today. I think I can probably do another race. And then you did a week and you’re like, holy crap, all I’ve done is drink Coke and do Zwift races.
Chris Case 32:54
It is wild. Go hand in hand.
Trevor Connor 32:57
Yeah, it is wild. How much habit and habitual behavior starts with just that
Rob Pickels 33:05
first sip, the first sip, man, it’s the gateway. But
Trevor Connor 33:08
I have these little rules for myself with beer or with desserts or just stuff like that, because it just makes it easier to make my choices. And so if the kids have school the next day I usually don’t have a beer. We get into Christmas holiday, right? I’ll have beer, and it’s not a lot. I’ll just have one beer at night, and then here we are going back to school, and the next thing that goes through my head is exactly like that. Well, I want a beer. One beer is not doing anything for me one way or the other. It’s habitual, more than addictive, which I think is a really interesting distinction to make. So I get to give an example of exactly what you guys are talking about, and that’s actually what motivated this question, because I’ve talked about the fact that last year, my numbers were really bad compared to where they’re normally at. And the winter, I’ve changed up what I do during the season of the winter, my go to interval has always been the five by five minute threshold intervals, and I’ve always seen big improvements in my numbers through the winter. But I was like, I did them all last year. Why didn’t it work? And I went back and looked at the winter and I would say 80% of my threshold workouts I would do like one interval, and then go, Well, this hurts and this isn’t fun, and then jump into a Zwift race. And honest, God, was always going through my head, was what you said, grant, which is swift races are all just threshold workouts. So I just got in my head of just going doing a Zwift race, it’s the same thing, but as I demonstrated, it is not the same it is not the same thing. And I really didn’t, I think I completed those intervals twice last year, for what
Rob Pickels 34:41
it’s worth, when Trevor talks about five by five, it’s five by five minutes at about FTP with one minute of recovery in between. So it’s a 25 minute sort of set block with short recoveries.
Trevor Connor 34:52
But to that point, exactly, there’s shorter recoveries in there. It’s not a straight 25 minute. It period. There’s no surges. I mean, it’s very different. Ultimately, in the end, I mean, even the way you start off as Zwift race, like the first minute of a Zwift race, oh my good god, yeah, I’ll average the same wattage. But it’s not at all the same thing.
Rob Pickels 35:12
And the other thing too, right? I mean, Trevor, with your workout scheme, you’re five by five minutes there. It’s something you’re able to progress, right? It’s in my own quantity, right? Next week I’m going to do 10 watts more, so on and so forth. You don’t necessarily get that in Swift racing. No,
Trevor Connor 35:26
it sounds awful, by the way, what you do in the winter, I don’t find them that bad. I don’t know. No, I don’t I don’t mind five by five at all. Like, that’s a great workout. I don’t like the repetitive nature of how Trevor will do them. I yeah, that’s where you and I are different, right? I am a pick an interval, and do it me. So I very I have during the summer, I will bury it up more. But I used to be a pick one intervals, and you do that for six to 10 weeks. You’ve changed me too. Trevor, occasionally. Now, before I do intervals, I just get angry. Go down in the basement. I play a little Black Sabbath. I just get breaking stuff, and then I put pictures. I’ll find pictures of Chris. I’ll put it up.
Rob Pickels 36:11
I knew, I knew that you need that motivation of hatred.
Trevor Connor 36:18
It’s easy to hate. It’s easy to hate Chris when I’ve never beat him in my ever, I know,
Rob Pickels 36:23
I don’t think I’ve ever beat Chris at anything. Oh, did I beat you in the big wheel race? No, or without
Trevor Connor 36:31
you had it won. I think I did. And then you let him catch you.
Chris Case 36:36
Should we play a game of cards
Rob Pickels 36:39
too? I’m terrible swimming. Chris,
Chris Case 36:41
okay, okay, yes. Can I just say one thing for people that don’t, that don’t actually like virtual writing, yes, that they don’t have to get sucked into it. If you don’t like it, just don’t do it. There’s no peer pressure here. No. Nobody has to do this. Chris, just, there’s other things you can do in the winter to stay in shape and be like
37:04
Chris social.
Trevor Connor 37:07
Well, I will, I will say this, and I to your point, Chris, I have an athlete who is a master cyclocross national champion. He was fifth at Worlds this year from like, a ninth row start, and he takes 90 days completely off the bike every time. Wow, does he ski. He skis, he uphill, skis, he runs, he does a lot of endurance training, but that’s what I’m talking about, full 90 days. That’s what I’m talking about, yes, and he’s really good every year. And I think there’s a lot to that. How
Chris Case 37:39
much I’m not saying it’s, it’s what everybody should do, obviously, I’m just saying that certain people don’t benefit from banging their head against the wall in a virtual setting like that, or they, or maybe they actually do get sucked into the racing thing too much, and so they can just set it aside, and you can go outside and wherever you live, figure out what it is that you like to do that is endurance based, and do that for a period of time and get away from the bike,
Rob Pickels 38:05
bro. Listen, I know you haven’t been on this podcast in a while, bro, this is not a show. Was inject our personal biases, right at all?
Chris Case 38:16
We don’t talk about our beer drinking habits or our addictions or anything.
38:22
Say anything about addictions? I think he’s, oh no, he’s
Chris Case 38:26
addicted to ERG mode, isn’t he? And Connor
Rob Pickels 38:30
addicted to ERG mode and Coca Cola. I use them appropriately.
Trevor Connor 38:35
Next question, I did love your analogy. We’ll move on to the next question. I did love your analogy because I just spent, oh, it’s true, two weeks with my parents, yeah, and my mom always has bags of chips and popcorn everything. For a week and a half, I avoided it, yeah, but finally, one night, he had one chip handful done popcorn. Next night he’s supposed to admit to this multiple hand, he’s in handfuls, but
Rob Pickels 38:55
he but he’s admitting to popcorn. Yes, you know, let’s just be all
Trevor Connor 38:59
so it just shockingly went downhill like two days ago, after five weeks and just going to Wheat Thins. I am at the airport, just downhill past that box. Yeah, no, it was worse. It was your baking pot. Is it was worse I was at the airport. I grabbed a bag of Doritos. What are you like? Original
Rob Pickels 39:29
or the Cheetos? Oh, no,
Trevor Connor 39:32
Cheetos are worse. There’s nothing wrong with Cheetos. There’s nothing wrong Cheetos are fantastic food.
Rob Pickels 39:43
Wow. On that bang. I
Trevor Connor 39:44
love Cheetos. All right, I love Cheetos. I have no Cheetos in like seven years. They are horrendous for you, but they’re, I love them. Jalapeno Cheetos,
Rob Pickels 39:55
yeah. You know, hey, you’ve been spending a lot of time in Europe grant. Can you get Cheetos? Over there? No, no.
Trevor Connor 40:01
It’s disconcerting.
Rob Pickels 40:04
Segue exactly for people that don’t know, and I don’t know that you’ve been, you haven’t been vocal about this on the podcast, people, people follow you socially. I’m gonna out you. You’re like, the high performance director for cyclocross, or some fancy, fancy title, like
Trevor Connor 40:19
I am, I am the US cyclocross. Coordinator,
Rob Pickels 40:23
I mean, you do have a USA Cycling bottle next to you, a USA t shirt on. You’re laying into this leaning into this position. Coordinator,
Chris Case 40:31
so,
Trevor Connor 40:32
so my job is to help facilitate the highest levels of cyclocross for everybody in US cyclocross. So how we set up and select riders for World Cups? How we then help the teams coordinate their presence at World Cups, and how we get kids without big teams to World Cups and then
Chris Case 40:57
they never knew you were such an organized guy? Grant, I would have never guessed it.
Trevor Connor 41:01
I’m like a duck on a pond, baby. There’s so much going on beneath the surface, those
Rob Pickels 41:06
little legs are just going crazy.
Trevor Connor 41:10
And then I will run the world’s trip, be the head coach for that, and then also just the lead organizer for all that. So I’m not the discipline director. I don’t know the cyclocross will have a discipline director. It’s not quite big enough. If you look at track, there’s 18,000 events, and there’s coaches and swannies and physios and all those things. We don’t have that necessarily. So if you have questions regarding USA cyclocross on the high performance level, which is any of the UCI categories under 19, you 23 and elite? Yes, I’m who you call Well,
Rob Pickels 41:47
what I want to know, because cyclocross is near and dear to my heart, right? It might not be the biggest sport on the world stage, but for me, it’s my preferred discipline. And I know my wife, my daughter and I are family. We love watching cyclocross. And you know, I’m just wondering from you and your point of view, because obviously you have this amazing coaching background, you’re now heavily integrated into USA Cycling here. You know how, how is the USA cyclocross program doing? And ultimately, what I would love to know is, how do we get better? I feel like it’s been years since we have had riders kind of on the world stage, and that’s not to knock any of the riders that are over there doing their absolute best right now, but we’re not necessarily seeing things like podiums or anything else. Where do we go, and what are we doing well and what isn’t working, and what’s your view on that? We
Trevor Connor 42:37
don’t have enough time for this, but I made this really stuff. How long has it been since we’ve done well, since we were behind that, since we’ve been on the podium at a World Cup, an American on a World Cup? We’ve never had an American World Cup. World highest American finish the World Cup is fourth by Eric Brunner and Fayetteville. What about Katie for men? For men. And this is, this was the distinction I was about to make for both of you guys on the men’s side, on the elites, we’ve had one world championship podium, which was Jonathan page, way back, way back. We’ve always been pretty good on the junior side. And this is something I’ll speak to. Our women have recently been very, very good, with Claire hon singer being on podiums post COVID, and before that, Katie Compton was among the best in the world. Caitlin Keo, fantastic. Amanda Miller was sixth in the World Cup one year. We’ve been very, very good on the women’s side, and I think that’s continued. We’re a little shallow on the women’s elite side right now, but there’s some amazing women coming up. Vita Lopez de San Roman won the elite women’s race at Nationals this year as the first year U 23
Chris Case 43:52
Yeah, yeah. She’s 19. She might be 18. She might I think she might be 18. Yeah.
Trevor Connor 43:59
So on the women’s side were quite good, though, I will say that you’re starting to see this sport develop in Europe on the women’s side in a way that it hadn’t prior. I think if we look at 10 years ago, what we were doing in the United States for equity between women and men and cyclocross was way beyond what was being done in Europe. We still see some of that with the women, a lot of that with the women’s Junior races in the United States. We all have women’s Junior races, the UCI races in the States. That is not true in Europe. It’s quite a shame, in fact. But that may be why you see some of the European women develop very much faster. We’re seeing you 20 threes and juniors in the elite ranks in the women’s races in Europe, and performing at a high level. They don’t have a choice. They have to. There’s no other opportunity. Yeah, there’s no other opportunity. We are performing incredibly well in the junior levels. We had Lydia Cusack won the. Dublin World Cup earlier this year in the junior ranks, her and Alyssa Sarkis off have put Top 10 finishes in to World Cups this year. One of the things that to me, is a really big piece of this puzzle. There’s two that I’d like to start with. One is money lead fund, exactly. Exactly, but
Rob Pickels 45:22
it stinks that you can say it in one word, right? This is exactly
Trevor Connor 45:26
where I was going to go with this, because it’s not an Olympic sport, because there’s no available money or available medals. A usopc does not support USA cyclocross with funds. Hopefully there’s a time where that changes. The rumors are that that is going to change, but
Rob Pickels 45:44
on the Olympic side, or on the usopc side, on
Trevor Connor 45:48
the Olympic side, yes. And as soon as the changes on the Olympic side has to change on the usopc side, and then it becomes a battle for medals. If we get medals, we get money. If we don’t win medals, we get less money. I mean, that’s so much of USA Cycling is driven by metal count, yeah. And I think it’s really important that the general rider understands that the high performance side of USA Cycling has to the way that it is structured the US. The high performance side has to drive the sport in the States, because it hasn’t been built from the bottom up with participation, the way something like swimming has, with a million kids swimming on teams. So we just don’t have that for bikes. So cyclocross has always been a little hamstrung by money, and the main source of money is the mud fund. And the mud Fund is a private donation fund that basically it funds my job. It funds we handed out $66,000 in stipends this year to riders to go race in Europe, travel stipends and that all came from the mud fund. And
Rob Pickels 46:58
correct me if I’m wrong, mud fund was started by Tim Johnson, former US national champion. I’m sure other people were involved. Yeah, a big name attached to
Trevor Connor 47:06
- Yeah. And right now, it is run by a man named Russell Adams, who just loves cyclocross, and he has given so much time and so much effort to revitalizing the mud fund in the last year, and that stipend program that we’ve done this year has been so much because of Russell, so
Rob Pickels 47:24
let’s say grant, we find a benefactor, and they’re pumping millions into the program a year. Life would be grand. Are we instantly better?
Trevor Connor 47:34
No, and there’s a couple things that have that change. The second piece that I was going to say is that cyclocross in the United States does not necessarily prepare riders for cyclocross in Europe. And it’s not that, oh, the conditions are so much harder in Europe that can be true. It’s not just that the courses are so much harder in Europe that can be true. It’s a combination of everything, if you’re riding, and I won’t name a specific course, that only get myself in trouble, but if you’re riding the general UCI course in the United States, and you riding in Europe, and you’re riding no more, which is an incredibly difficult course, like, go watch it, or go look at it. Or, if you want a really good example, this year, dendermond, which happened last weekend, which was just mud bath, was wet. It was nuts, right? And September cyclocross race, where it’s dry and fast in the United States, is not going to prepare you for tender months. So what we watch is Junior riders over there aren’t riding dendermond. They’re not riding no more. They’re riding field cross. They’re riding a local race that’s put together. That’s not epically technical, it’s not epically difficult. It’s probably not that much different than a race we race in the States. So our junior riders are on a fairly level playing field. So our junior riders go over to Europe. They’re competitive. They’re very competitive. Lady, do you want a World Cup? This is a great example of that we’ve had. Maddie Monroe was on the podium for the UCI Junior race in Switzerland. We’ve had a good number of those junior races. What starts to happen then is, in Europe, the U 23 start to race those courses, that next level of course, a cockside that’s all sand, no more, that is a mountain bike course. In some ways
Chris Case 49:21
frightening to someone with a lack of familiarity with that type of stuff. Frightening, yeah,
Trevor Connor 49:25
Holst. Holst is the best example frightening two downhills and holster terrifying. Yeah? I mean, they went on a mountain bike, yeah? When I was going down them on pre ride on Friday before they were muddy, I was terrified. And I’m a fairly good masters cyclocross racer. And so now you take the U 20 threes in Europe, and that’s the course they’re racing. You take the U 20 threes in the States, and they’re continuing to race the same course as they were racing before. So you see this divergence in skill. You see this divergence in power. Zolder is a wonderful. Example, we had a girl on one of the junior U 23 trips in Europe a few years back in Zolder, and she was saying, oh, and the technical stuff, I had these girls in front of me, and they were driving me crazy. It was just slow. I couldn’t get around him. It was brutal. And then we hit the pavement section. The Zolder pavement section is flat as a pancake. And she said, I was getting dropped off their wheels. Yeah, on the flats. On the flats, they were just riding away from me. Because one of the things that we do not have in American cyclocross courses is peddling. You do not pedal. In American cyclocross courses, you turn, you turn. And American cyclocross race directors and course designers are trying to make the courses harder and harder and harder and harder, and if Fayetteville is still my favorite example, Fayetteville happened. Every American cyclocross fan said, What about Fayetteville? That course? This course sucks. It’s boring. There’s nothing to it. It should be embarrassed. This is the course we put forth on the world stage. Guess what every European writer said about that course? Oh, it’s a good course. It’s great because it was hard. It was hard. It was nothing to think hard. The best course we’ve ever had, in my opinion, in the United States, is jingle cross. It was technically demanding. It was incredibly hard uphill. But it is harder and harder and harder to find those venues that allow you to do that. Rest in peace. Jingle cross. Man, yeah, devout park at King’s Cross in Cincinnati was another one of the examples of that. Incredibly difficult, technically incredibly difficult from a peddling point of view. There is elevation. So we watch this divergence, and we watch American riders stay in these in the states and ride that type of course, and you watch Europeans ride this type of course. So then we send our riders over, and they have mud and they have technicality, and they have pedaling and they have elevation, and they just haven’t progressed at the same pace that those other riders have progressed the riders that have had success in Europe, whether that be page, whether that be powers, whether that be trevorn And Johnson, back in the day on the men’s side, have moved there and lived there for an extended period of
Rob Pickels 52:11
time. Jonathan page essentially immigrated to Europe and lived there with his family for a decade.
Trevor Connor 52:18
Yep. Katie Compton spent an incredible amount of time in Europe, to the point where she would skip Pan American championships because she was too busy at World Cups in Europe. We don’t have very many American riders moving over to Europe and doing that these days. When you look at our success on the mountain bike level, driven by Blevins and Riley Amos and Bjorn Riley and Maddie Monroe and Kay Courtney. And take your pick of eight women on the on the mountain bike side. They’re based in Europe. They’re racing in Europe. They’re doing those things. I will always say this about what North Americans and Americans do to sport. We make it harder and we make it longer, and then the Europeans find a way to take that sport and make it presentable to a watching public, entertaining, shorter, faster and more fun. Mountain Bike. What did we do with mountain bike? We went to Leadville with mountain bike. What did the Europeans do with mountain bike? X CO it’s in the Olympics. Triathlon. What did we do with triathlon? We took it to Iron Man. What did Europeans do with triathlon? They made it sprint distance. They made it Olympic distance, and they made it Olympic sport. We’re gonna watch it with gravel. What do we do with gravel? We make it unbound. What are they doing with gravel? They’re making we have more space than them. We do that world they do that world championship that everybody watched that was freaking cool this year, and it’s going to become an Olympic discipline, and we’re going to be terrible at it because we’re trying to go long.
Rob Pickels 53:48
Sorry, Chris.
Trevor Connor 53:52
Sorry, Chris, to the guy who’s best guy in the room at Cross, yeah, yeah,
Rob Pickels 53:56
so and the best guy riding around Iceland, yeah,
Trevor Connor 53:59
he’s just better than us at every day. Yes, I so I think that that divergence is one of the biggest pieces, right? We live in the States, and we raised in the States, and it’s such a divergence from where the sport is, we have to move over there. So that million dollars, if it funded people to go live in Europe, race in Europe, and let them feel at home in Europe. That would make a big difference.
Rob Pickels 54:24
To wrap this up, are we going to be status quo for a while, or in the next two, three years? Are we going to be seeing an uptick? What’s the future look like? I
Trevor Connor 54:30
feel like we’re going to see an uptick. I feel like keeping people to your point, keeping people like Henry coot, who’s a first year U 23 male in cyclocross. I feel like keeping Vita in cyclocross. I feel like it’s something we can do if we continue to work for it. I think the possibility of Olympic medal will make a big difference. I think we have conversations among people like and Andrew Strohmeyer and Eric Brunner about moving to Europe and doing the full. World Cup. That’s going to make a huge difference as well. And if you’re out there and you love cross, watch it. Give to the mud fund. Please. Give to the mud fund. I cannot tell you what a big difference $20 from 100 people makes. You cannot imagine what that does to what we’re able to do. The last thing I’ll say about cross that makes it difficult and why that money is so important. It is a labor and equipment intensive sport. Yes, it is. If I go to, when we go to Worlds, we’re planning worlds right now. We will take eight mechanics to worlds for a team of 20. The road you would take two for a team of 20. Yeah.
Rob Pickels 55:38
How many? How many bikes? How many sets of wheels? Too many the logistics of movies, 2020
Trevor Connor 55:42
riders plus coaches, there will be 50 bikes plus there sets of wheels, hundreds of sets of wheels. So what we’re doing to try to move that around logistically. Over there is a dance, you know, watch the relay on Friday at Worlds, that’s a big deal. Our women for that relay are going to drive us to a good finish. That relay is among the most important things to me at that World Championships. And I think lastly, my goal with this position is to bring the team idea back to Team USA for cyclocross. I want that relay to do really, really well, and I want us out there helping each other and pushing each other what Andrew and Eric and Scott Funston did at Nationals this year, and then got off the bike and get along. That’s going to push them to higher levels in Europe. It was great race. And if you haven’t watched USA nationals. Go watch that race. The men’s USA nationals was incredible. The Women’s was incredible. Almost every category was incredible. It’s on flow. Go watch it. There’s a lot of talent, and we can change it if we have the funding and if we have the desire from the public to continue to push the sport and as the sport in general, if you don’t watch cross, watch it, you’ll be blown away by it’s like watching NASCAR. It’s super fun, way better
Chris Case 57:05
than NASCAR. And
Trevor Connor 57:06
if you don’t race it, try it short track gravel. Man, it’s super cool.
Rob Pickels 57:10
That’s what we should call it. Short Track gravel. From now on, nice. You’re
Chris Case 57:14
off the back. It’s been called that for years, especially in Colorado.
Trevor Connor 57:18
That are dirt, dirt crits in Colorado with that, Chris, you want to do the outro your first potluck?
57:24
He’s been on a potluck before.
Trevor Connor 57:26
Have you been to a potluck before? Yeah, but thank you, Rob for giving me that soapbox, and I’m sorry for all of you who turned that off midrant.
Rob Pickels 57:34
I hope nobody did. It was interesting.
Chris Case 57:36
It was good to hear that was another episode of fast talk. Subscribe to fast talk wherever you prefer to find your favorite podcast, be sure to leave us a rating and a review. The thoughts and opinions expressed on fast talk are those of the individual outro for as always, we love your mother. Join the conversation at forums, dot fast talklabs.com, or tweet us. Does
Rob Pickels 57:59
that really tweeting any access.
Chris Case 58:03
X us. X us out head to fast talklabs.com to get access to our endurance sports knowledge base, Coach continuing education, as well as our in person and remote athlete services for Trevor Connor, Rob pickles and grant holocy And that microphone that just fell. I’m Chris case. Thanks for listening. It was
Trevor Connor 58:21
a literal microphone drop. You.
