Original episode & show notes | Raw transcript
This document provides a detailed exploration of the key themes discussed in the podcast episode featuring professional domestic cyclist Taylor Warren. The conversation offers a nuanced look into the strategies that contributed to a breakthrough season after over a decade of high-level racing.
The Philosophy of High-Volume Training
The “Drop in the Bucket” Analogy: Consistency Over Heroic Efforts
Balancing Life Stress and Training Stress
Riding More: The Cornerstone of a Breakthrough
Advanced Fueling Strategies for Endurance
Shifting from Under-fueling to High-Carbohydrate Intake
The Compounding Benefits of Optimal Fueling
Practical Application: “Homemade Lemonade” and Liquid Calories
The Art and Science of Recovery
Training for What You Can Recover From
The Importance of a Mid-Season Break
Off-Season Philosophy: Being a Human First
Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) in a Data-Driven World
RPE as a Direct Measure of Physiology
Avoiding “Ego Watts” in Endurance Training
The “Suspiciously Easy” Pace
Navigating a Demanding Race Season
Maintaining vs. Building Fitness In-Season
Periodizing Around a Front-Loaded Race Calendar
Managing the Stress of Travel
The Evolving Landscape of Domestic Pro Racing
Changes in Field Size, Team Structure, and Rider Compensation
The Paradox: Racing is Faster Than Ever
Tactical Evolution: The Rise of Unified Team Strategy
Critiquing Common Training Myths
The Intensity of Endurance Rides
The Mysticism Surrounding FTP
The Importance of Experience and Learning from Mistakes
A central theme of the discussion was the shift in Taylor’s training philosophy towards higher volume and greater consistency.
The “Drop in the Bucket” Analogy: Taylor contrasts his current approach with a past tendency to place excessive importance on single, “heroic” training sessions. The new philosophy treats each session as a small, consistent contribution (“a drop in the water bucket”). This mindset prioritizes the cumulative effect of consistent training over weeks and months, rather than the impact of one massive workout followed by inadequate recovery. This aligns with the principle of progressive overload, where fitness is built through consistent, manageable steps.
Balancing Life Stress and Training Stress: Both Kolie and Taylor emphasize the finite capacity for adaptation. The body does not differentiate between sources of stress. Financial, relational, or work-related stress draws from the same “recovery pool” as training stress. Therefore, an athlete’s training volume must be scaled to what they can realistically recover from, considering their entire life context. Adding a long ride can become counterproductive if it introduces more stress than the athlete can handle.
Riding More as a Breakthrough Catalyst: For a highly experienced athlete like Taylor, who had been racing for over 13 years, significant performance gains are difficult to achieve. The primary change that unlocked a new level of fitness was a substantial increase in his total training volume, particularly during a focused six-week block where he consistently rode 20+ hours per week. This highlights that for well-trained athletes, increasing the aerobic base through volume can be a powerful stimulus.
A critical component of Taylor’s breakthrough was a deliberate and dramatic shift in his on-bike nutrition strategy.
From Under-fueling to High-Carbohydrate Intake: Taylor admits to previously under-fueling his endurance rides, consuming 40-60 grams of carbohydrates per hour, or sometimes starting long rides with no food at all. His new strategy involves maximizing carbohydrate intake on every ride, aiming for 90-120 grams per hour.
The Compounding Benefits of Optimal Fueling: The podcast emphasizes that the benefit of high-carb fueling isn’t about a single ride feeling dramatically different. Instead, it creates a positive feedback loop:
Finishing each ride with higher glycogen stores.
Starting the next day’s ride fully “topped off.”
Improved recovery between sessions.
Reduced physiological stress (e.g., lower cortisol levels).
This enables higher quality training and greater consistency over an entire training block.
Practical Application: To manage the challenges of high-carbohydrate intake (cost, flavor fatigue, and sheer volume), Taylor adopted a practical solution:
Liquid Calories: He used large amounts of table sugar (sucrose, a 1:1 glucose-fructose ratio) in his bottles.
“Homemade Lemonade”: A typical mix would be 100-150 grams of table sugar, a pinch of sea salt (for sodium), and lemon juice in a large bottle. The lemon juice’s citric acid helps cut the sweetness, making it more palatable.
Recovery is presented not as a passive activity, but as an integral and active part of the training process.
Training for What You Can Recover From: This is a recurring principle. It implies that the optimal training plan is not the one that prescribes the most stress, but the one that balances stress and recovery to allow for positive adaptation.
Mid-Season Break: For athletes with a long and intense race calendar, a planned mid-season break is crucial for both physical and mental regeneration. Taylor took a week off in the summer with very light, unstructured riding (e.g., easy mountain biking). This allowed him to shed accumulated fatigue before launching into a condensed, high-volume training block to prepare for the second half of the season.
Off-Season Philosophy: Human First, Athlete Second, Cyclist Third: Taylor advocates for using the off-season to undo the imbalances caused by a year of cycling and build resilience.
Cross-Training: Activities like hiking, backpacking, and surfing are used to engage different muscle groups, move in various planes of motion, and introduce impact (bone loading), which is absent in cycling. This helps prevent overuse injuries.
Mental Reset: The off-season is a time to focus on being a “healthy human,” which provides a foundation for being a successful athlete.
Despite the prevalence of power meters and heart rate monitors, the conversation champions RPE as a primary tool for guiding training.
RPE as a Direct Measure of Physiology: Power and heart rate are described as objective quantifiers of a subjective experience (RPE). The argument is that training should target the underlying physiology directly. RPE is the body’s built-in tool for gauging physiological state. Learning to listen to signals like breathing rate and the sensation of suffering allows an athlete to be more in tune with their body’s limits.
Avoiding “Ego Watts”: RPE is a powerful tool for moderating intensity on endurance rides. Many athletes get caught up in hitting a specific power number (the example of “200 watts” is used frequently), even if that intensity is too high for true recovery and aerobic adaptation. This can lead to accumulated fatigue and burnout.
The “Suspiciously Easy” Pace: The ideal endurance pace is described as feeling “suspiciously too easy.” It should be a pace that feels sustainable for 10+ hours. The podcast argues that the aerobic adaptations gained from riding at a very low RPE (e.g., 180 watts) are virtually identical to those from a moderately higher intensity (e.g., 220 watts), but the lower intensity comes with significantly less fatigue, allowing for better performance on key high-intensity days.
The discussion provides insight into how a professional cyclist manages fitness across a long, travel-heavy season.
Maintaining vs. Building Fitness: A key concept is that maintaining fitness is relatively easy, while building it is very hard. The majority of fitness gains must be made in the off-season and early pre-season. Once the race calendar begins, the focus shifts to recovery and maintenance. Taylor’s season involved a large block of racing from April to June where he did very little structured training, relying on the fitness he had built.
Periodizing Around the Calendar: The American domestic calendar is heavily front-loaded. Athletes must arrive at the first major stage races (e.g., Redlands) in peak form. The strategy involves building a large aerobic and anaerobic base from December to March, and then using a mid-season break to execute a compressed “re-build” before the late-season races.
Managing Travel Stress: The podcast posits that for many racers, it’s the travel, not the racing, that causes burnout. Taylor’s strategies for mitigating this include:
Normalizing the Environment: Syncing to the new time zone immediately (sleep and meal schedules).
Creating Familiarity: Bringing an eye mask or your own pillow.
Experience: Developing a routine for packing light and efficiently.
Having raced since 2009, Taylor provides a long-term perspective on the state of cycling in the U.S.
Structural Changes: The scene has shifted from having ~15 domestic pro teams with most riders earning a livable wage to only a handful of such teams today.
The Paradox of Speed: Despite fewer professional opportunities, the racing is perceived as being faster than ever. This is attributed to two main factors:
Better Equipment: Aerodynamic bikes, disc brakes, and wider tires.
Smarter Training: More widespread access to coaching and sports science knowledge.
Tactical Evolution: Racing has become more strategic and team-oriented, mirroring trends in the World Tour. There’s a greater emphasis on unified team plans and controlling the race, as opposed to a “strongman’s game” where the five strongest individuals simply ride away.
The conversation concludes by addressing several long-standing myths in cycling training.
Intensity of Endurance Rides: The most significant myth Taylor had to unlearn was the idea that endurance rides needed to be ridden at a moderately high intensity (e.g., 70% of FTP) to be effective. As discussed, a lower intensity is often more beneficial for long-term progress.
The Mysticism of FTP: The concept of Functional Threshold Power (FTP) is often misunderstood in “pop culture.” It is not a magical number you can hold for exactly one hour, nor is it always 95% of your 20-minute power. These are heuristics, and the underlying physiology is more complex. Training should focus on improving physiological durability, not just a single number.
The Value of Mistakes: A final piece of wisdom is that mistakes are the greatest teacher. Athletes should not be afraid to experiment with things like tapers, warm-ups, and fueling strategies in lower-priority “C” races. The goal is to learn what works for them individually, rather than seeking a perfect, one-size-fits-all solution from the outset.