Welcome to the Empirical Cycling Podcast. I'm your host, Kolie Moore. I want to thank everybody for listening as always. And today we are joined by our Empirical Cycling coach and a personal client of mine for, well, we'll talk about the details of that in a little bit, Mr. James McKay, who was just coming off of a big win. And we'll talk about that a lot. and I want to thank everybody for listening and if you are new here please consider subscribing to the podcast if you like what you're hearing especially and if you're returning we love having you back and if you want to support the podcast there's a couple ways you can do that you can always give us a nice five-star rating wherever you listen to podcasts and a really glowing review always helps a lot if you want to donate to the show because we are completely ad-free content you can always do so at empiricalcycling.com slash donate and if you want to become a coaching or consultation client coaching we are always taking on new clients and if you want to keep coaching and you just want to run some ideas by us and ask a couple questions, get the gist of a plan, something like that, reach out empiricalcycling at gmail.com in order to get a coaching or consultation inquiry rolling and Instagram at empiricalcycling. I do some weekend AMAs up in my Instagram stories and been posting a couple memes lately. We've had some great ones from the coach cabal, I guess you could say. So anyway. Mr. James McKay is here live on the mic and we have not done a lot of talking beforehand because I wanted to get his unvarnished reaction at his big win this weekend. So why don't you tell us about the Lincoln Grand Prix? Yeah, no, it's my favorite race. So it's something that I've been dreaming of doing well in for a long time. How many years have you wanted to do well with this race? I don't know, maybe six or seven years. It's finally clicked this year. I don't think I would have believed you if you told me back then that I'd be winning the race because I couldn't finish the race when I first started. Yeah, it's a pretty sweet feeling to take off kind of my biggest bucket list goal. Well, why don't we start all the way back? Because I've been coaching you since 2020, late 2020 or early 21, something like that, right? I think it was, yeah, I think it was 2021, like mid-season kind of. I think, you know, you and I have been working together for a long time, and I think it'd be cool to kind of talk about the evolution of your fitness and how things have changed for you and also for our coaching and all the things that we've learned ever since then, because I've learned probably as much from you as you have from me, if not more. So how was your fitness? Like, let's talk about that when we started working together. Yeah, I think I've always had a good sprint naturally, but aerobically I probably lacked a bit of what I have now. Certainly from like an FTP wise, I was probably 50 watts down on where I am now, at least. And I definitely didn't have the same endurance and kind of repeatability that I do now. Yeah, I don't know if that's enough. Is there anything you think I'm missing? Yeah. Well, I think, you know, when we started working together, you know, I had kind of sold you on the volume train. Like, let's just get you riding a lot. And we had a lot of ups and downs with that, just trying to find a good routine that worked. And also, you know, thinking about recovery and nutrition and race weight and things like that. We've got a lot to go into, and I think it'd be really cool to do a big retrospective on all of that and kind of give people, I think, some context leading to why you and I were kind of tearing up when we were texting about your Lincoln win. Yeah, no, it's been a... Wow, the race has a couple climbing, so I was going to say it's been a bumpy road. Oh, come on. All right, dad jokes aside. So, all right, when we started working together, I think you were probably averaging like, what, 15, 20 hours a week, something like that, right? Yeah, maybe 20 hours a week, something like that, which, and I'd had a decent kind of base level of fitness. I'd been racing and riding for a good while, maybe five or seven years up to that point. So it's not like I was untrained at all, but I certainly hadn't done big volume up until that point. Yeah, and I think one of the first things that happened when we started working together was you went to Spain and did a massive training block. I think... That wasn't the dodgy lettuce year, right? That was the year after. That was the year before, yeah. But that year, I think you did, your first couple weeks were something like 30-ish hours or more. But I remember one of the issues that we were having was I was giving you some intervals on top of that, and they started out great, and then they got really, really bad. Like, I remember I gave you some FTP efforts, and I think you, like, I think I was expecting to see, like, 350, 360, and they were, like, 330, and I was like, this is not good. Are you okay? And, geez, what happened next? And I think you were so hyped on just, like, kind of having the permission to just go big with the volume that you were like, well, fuck it, I'm not gonna not. do all this volume, right? Yeah, definitely. No, I was really enjoying kind of seeing how big I could ride and I think my previous coach had held me back a bit. I don't think it's a big secret to say I enjoy riding my bike a lot. But yeah, it was, yeah, I don't regret it really. It was fun to kind of push that envelope a little bit and extend both my longest rides and the kind of overall weekly volume that I was doing regularly. Yeah. Do you remember why, you know, kind of why you were having the issues doing the intervals? Off the top of my head, no. I imagine I was just a bit cooked, but I could well have not been eating enough as well because that's, well, maybe a reoccurring theme here, but certainly the Me in my younger years was not feeling as well as I am doing now, so I imagine that was a decent factor. Yeah, actually, one of the things I'm going to do is in WQO5, I'm going to pull up your body weight trends and yeah, let's see, yeah, from September 20, like you started out around 75 kilos and you got down to about 72 and then I think You, yeah, that was the year you hit about 70 kilos in January and things, that's when things were like kind of really rocky for your efforts. Like you could still ride a ton, but I remember one of the things that I learned from then is that if it took you longer than about 30, 40 minutes to feel warmed up as you went out to spin, no efforts was rule number one, but also like go home. Well, if I could even convince you to go home at that point when you had eight hours on the schedule. No, I remember. This takes me back, actually. Yeah, no, I recall that. And I remember my PMAX was through the floor as well. Yeah, like 11, 1200 watts or something like that, when previously you'd been cracking out like 15, 16. Yeah. So there was definitely some pretty obvious red flags in the data, at least. Yeah. In 22, one of the other things that happened then is I was like, you know, we kind of had a heart-to-heart and I was like, you've really got to bring your body weight back up. And from that point up through the rest of the year, You got back up to like, I don't know, like 76 kilos or something like that. But your power came up with it. Like you maintained basically the same watts per kilo across. Actually, it even went up. Like your watts per kilo, you were like 4.8, something like that. And by the time you... Hit, you know, like 76 kilos, you were at like 5 watts per kilo. Which I think is one of the, you know, one of the more notable experiences in my coaching career so far is watching that happen. Because I think a lot of people think that, oh, I've got to maintain my low body weight and try to get the power up. But it's like, you know, the recovery from the efforts comes from the fueling. If your body is too depleted, your body is just barely trying to get along, much less have the extra energy to repair what you've done in training. Yeah, and I think that I know from experience that if my weight starts heading down to sub-70 kilos, not only am I going to lose a little bit of muscle mass, which might hurt my power output, but I think just that body fat, that I'm carrying is not enough for me to maintain a good level of strength. So it's just, it's not worth kind of pushing that any further. So yeah, I guess maybe as a take-home message, you've got to kind of figure out when, you know, what's the optimal weight for you? And it's probably a little bit heavier than you might want it to be. Yeah. Well, also like if you... Oh, sorry, please. Sorry, I was just going to say, you know, if you're racing in the UK or somewhere that's pretty flat, like, yeah, it's definitely no sweat to be, you know, that extra kilo too heavier. It's not going to change too much. Yeah, and by flat, you mean like hills between like one and five-ish minutes, something like that? Yeah. Yeah, like it's not the Netherlands flat, but I get what you mean. Well, one of the other things I thought was really interesting looking at your body weight trends is that, you know, in the last year or so, I've been reading more into the kind of energy availability literature. And when I came across the dual intervention point model by John Speakman, I started looking at everybody's like body weights and body fats at a, it's like starting to be through that lens. There's a couple factors that I think that, you know, your history kind of exemplifies. And one of them is that the Speakman's dual intervention point model, the lower intervention point is sort of like, what's the body fat mass that your body decides is the lowest it'll carry around? And from what I see from a lot of kind of professional male cyclists is somewhere around like the, depending on how tall you are, somewhere between like four to six kilos of body fat is kind of like the minimum. And it's for a lot of people that's somewhere between like six to like 10% body fat. And so, you know, one of the things that we've got pretty good data for you on is that like your lower intervention point is somewhere around like five and a half, six kilos. Yeah. And, like, it's kind of easy to be drawn into thinking that, or it was easy for me to be drawn into thinking that I need to lose more weight. Like, I'm just under 5'9", so to be, like, mid-70 kilos at that weight is, yeah, if you look at, like, PMI calculators or just what, you know, other riders of your kind of height. the weight they sit at and perform well at, it can be very different for different individuals and yeah, it's just important that with these things that you focus on yourself and you be objective and yeah, I think it's hard especially in like the age of social media and you know, body dysmorphia and all these things, it's yeah, it's a really tricky game in cycling but you do have to be you have to try and be objective about it. Yeah, and I've seen a lot of people get pressure from teams and stuff like, oh, you have to be at like 68 kilos in order to be at race weight for the season. And like, for some people, that's like way under that lower intervention point. And like, they have issues recovering and, you know, performing well. And depending on how you approach your training, like it can make your season a living hell, really. Yeah, I mean, I went to France for a year after I left university. I think, yeah, I think I told the team I was like a size small kit and I got extra small everything and I was racing around at like, yeah, I think I was about 65 kilos at the time and I was not going in as well as I am now. So yeah, hindsight's 50-50, but yeah, certainly the wrong team environment can make those kind of pressures and situations worse. Yeah, and the wrong social environment too. That's one of the things that I really appreciate about you as a coach and as just a human in the cycling world is that you are somebody who is being aware of these things and having had this experience. You're somebody who's able to say, oh, no, I think you're getting too light or I think you've lost weight too fast or is this worth it for your sprint, these kind of races. You know, you bring a lot to the table from this experience. Yeah, and I mean, even not just from a performance side, but I mean, from like a physiology side, but from like a psychological side, you know, if someone is worrying so much about food and weight, they might not even necessarily be underfueling or underweight, but it's just that mental energy that they're expending worrying about it. It can be... Yeah, it's definitely worth talking about these things because they can have a massive impact on your performance. Yeah. I mean, and you've worked with a couple nutritionists over the years too. And so what are some of the big things that you've taken away from them, both in terms of like performance fueling and also in terms of, you know, like finding race weight and things like that? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot there. I think maybe one of the biggest things is that your power meter, the number of kilojoules you burn, you know, the kilojoules you expend on a ride isn't a great measure for how many calories you've burned or necessarily expend over that day. There's so much more going on, you know, kilojoules to calories is not up. a perfect one-to-one equation. And then your metabolic rate can change with your activity level and how much energy you're expending. And yeah, basically, if you're calorie counting just to the number of kilojoules that you burn on your ride, that is not necessarily... Well, no, I don't think it's, it isn't accurate, basically. So that's a dangerous game. And yeah, sometimes you need to lean into your hunger keys. That's the kind of the biggest calorie counter in your body. So yeah, I think that's a pretty big take home. Yeah, I think for most people, We did a podcast about this a couple months ago where I was looking at nutrition and mostly metabolism myths, but I think one of them was you cannot decide that your fueling for the day is just some calculated BMR plus whatever kilojoules one-to-one to calories that you have on the bike. All of the literature so far on energy expenditure in cyclists, most of it's been done on world tour riders so far, if not all of it, but it's the energy, actual energy cost of all that riding is way higher than pretty much any calculation would tell you it is. And also, you've got the thermic effect of food, which if you're eating... you know 2,500 calories a day or something might not be too substantial but it might be like another 200 calories on top of that for yeah but if you're eating 10,000 calories it could be near a thousand calories which then if you don't compensate for that you're suddenly in a pretty sizable deficit each day so yeah it's um it's something that I think is not that well talked about um but it yeah I think definitely the There may be more of an elite level you're at, or certainly the bigger you're riding and the bigger the numbers get, the more margin for error you've got with those calculations. So it becomes a pretty slippery slope or dangerous game, as you might say, if you're trying to use that. Yeah, for sure. So, yeah, so let's say about kind of your training routine, because I think after, you know, Actually, you know what? No, let's talk about the mental stress aspect of all that, too, because you and I had a conversation recently. I don't know how much you want to get into that here on the podcast, but you had pretty much, in only so many words, had said, I think the pressure is too high. And so, do you want to talk about that a little bit? Yeah, yeah. I think... I know pretty well that I don't perform amazingly under pressure, or certainly not under heaps of pressure. And maybe for a one-off race it's okay, but long-term, yeah, it's not where I thrive. I'm definitely at my best when I'm just having a bit of a laugh with my mates and just enjoying bike racing without too much kind of second thought. Yeah, I think I had a very successful year in 2023 and that was kind of off the back of just, yeah, doing some of this big training that we had going on and I was riding with my best mates just doing these crazy rides and yeah, loving it really and I got a lot stronger but I didn't think too much about the implications that would have for my racing in the season when it came to it but yeah, I put on a a pretty hefty chunk of watts, and then suddenly I found myself in situations in races I hadn't been before. I'm picking up some pretty sweet results. And then the following year, I... Your first UCI podium. Let's not forget Cycle Classic. Yeah, and kind of off the back of that, I then moved up to a UCI Continental team, St. Perrin, and I think I put too much pressure on myself. at that, you know, on that team. And certainly the first half of the next year in 2024, I, yeah, was one to forget really. I kind of overdid things and, yeah, I ended up missing my favorite race, Lincoln, because I was ill. I'd probably just done too much and was kind of ignoring some things. And I remember as well, I just wasn't in a good place mentally. I wasn't particularly happy. and I, yeah, I put a lot of pressure on myself to kind of step up to this next tier of racing, you know, I was going to be doing more regular UCI racing in Europe and I needed to suddenly take it a bit more seriously, it wasn't just about dicking around anymore but yeah, that didn't go too well and then funnily enough this year, I, yeah, I don't think I had too much pressure on myself this year but We did get to a point in, yeah, about six weeks, five weeks ago or so, four or five weeks ago, and I said, you know what, I think we might just, I might want to take a break from coaching. I think I just want to mess around and, yeah, just ride on vibes a bit more. And, yeah, funnily enough, the next two races I did... I won two races on the bounce and the second one was Lincoln, the one I'd been kind of, yeah, I guess putting a lot of pressure on myself for over the past few years and yeah, I think it's kind of a testament to the fact that you definitely helped me build the engine to win the race. But perhaps kind of like the missing piece of the puzzle was actually me saying, ah, fuck it. I don't care. Yeah, fuck it. I don't care. I just go on Vibes this weekend. So, yeah, I think that's definitely something I've learned about myself. But it's, yeah, it's a tricky balance to kind of not take it too seriously, especially if you're performing well. I think it's easy not to care if maybe you're not at your best or you're not where you want to be, but certainly it's a hard sweet spot to find where you are doing races or you're training at a very high level and it's something you care deeply about, but you also need to be able to just enjoy it and accept that there's a lot going on outside of your control. Some things aren't meant to be, some things are meant to be, and you kind of just have to smile and enjoy it and see what you get. But yeah, I don't know if that answers your question. Yeah, it does. Actually, when you told me that, I actually didn't know that you had been putting such pressure on yourself to one-up your previous results. I mean, because you look at just about anybody but the top 10 men and women in the world. It's up and down constantly. How many people have we seen go really well in some classic and you're like, oh god, this guy's going to be awesome next year. And next year you're like, where did he go? And sometimes that's just the way it is. And you don't know what's bubbling under the surface. It's like whenever you look at... I listen to too many history podcasts when I'm on the road. And so it's like when the historical record falls away and you don't know what's happening and then suddenly there's an entirely different situation happening. And it's like you don't really know what's going on over there. But when you told me that, actually, it made sense in a way because whenever you and I had sat down to have a catch-up chat about coaching and training, One of the things that you always would say that I noticed as a pattern like on call two of the, you know, what, 20-something that we've had over that time. And I think the pattern was just you're always thinking, okay, I've done this in training so far. Now I have to level this up. You know, you're like, all right, I was averaging like 25 hours for my training weeks last year. and next year now, what, do I have to do 30, 35? Is it going to be 50 one of these days? And I was always like, no, no, no, this is more than enough stimulus. We're up against what you can eat and we're up against what you can recover from. And that's one of the reasons that when we started, I think I was giving you three interval days per week-ish and then pretty quickly I was like, oh, at this volume, clearly two interval days is pretty much... It's good. Like a Wednesday and a Saturday or something like that. And otherwise, just volume and recovery more than enough. And so I had seen that pretty early. Like, okay, this is going to be pretty much a practical limit for you physiologically, psychologically, and also not to mention life on top of that. So it kind of made sense that you had kind of the same thought process with with results. But, you know, I think when you started coaching me, I made big progress and up until 2023, it had all been fairly linear. Yeah, I'd had a few peaks and troughs with maybe my weight or just natural variations in form over the year, but I built a lot of fitness pretty steadily. And then, yeah, in 2024, I didn't, that didn't Keep on going. And I think my kind of knee-jerk reaction was to like try harder, which was probably the worst thing that could have happened because I was already doing a bit much. Well, it's like one of those things whenever your clients, like they see their fitness starting to dip and they're like, oh, now I got to do more intervals. And they're like, please don't. I know where this goes. Yeah. No, yeah, it's a tricky game. So, yeah, a bit of objectivity is really important there. Yeah, and I think that it's funny because after 2023, where especially after your good form early on, you went to like every race you could. And, you know, we kind of, at the end of the season, we were like, all right, what went right here, what went wrong, and what lessons are we going to take to 2024? And coming into this year, I had that exact same plan from the lessons that we learned in 2023, in terms of like, you know, training, like race frequency and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, based on the races that you would put in your calendar, I was like, oh, okay, yeah, we're still on the same page. It's funny because it's like the same idea, but it yielded a very, very different result this time, just based on, you know, your kind of motivational change, I guess, like the mental energy you had to attack the races and to hit training and to ride hard, like, you know, not a lot changed. No, yeah, I'd agree. It can be... Form can be an elusive thing. I think, yeah, a couple of weeks ago, I wasn't feeling too confident, and that's fair to say. I was going fairly well, but just because of the headspace I was in and the way I'd been racing and the results I'd got, I didn't feel at all confident for Lincoln this year, let's just say that. But, yeah, it's funny how quick those things can change with just a little bit of, Yeah, a change and a bit of momentum and before you know it, yeah, you're well up for it, so Yeah, I think actually one of the things that I saw, because you did like, I don't know, two-thirds of the training that I'd put in between, you know, for the last like three or four weeks and other than that, you were just kind of like off in La La Land, just kind of riding the vibes and having fun and, you know, a couple sprints here, a couple efforts there, some extra riding here, some extra days off there. And, you know, I think, I think, you know, last year, if you had done that, it would have been like, is everything okay? And now this, I saw this and I was like, everything's really okay. This is great. You know, I was very happy to see it. And not only that, One of the things that we learned about you in 2023 is that you are, you have, it's not totally unusual, but it's somewhat rare in cycling world where your fitness peaks as your training load peaks. Like even with the accumulated fatigue, like you are flying at 180 CTL. Yeah, no, it's a tough problem to have maybe, but yeah, at least it's fairly predictable if you don't pop yourself or get ill getting there. Yeah, well, and so one of the things that I saw you doing, because I had been, you know, based on how you were recovering pretty much over the last, like, you know, from like January to April, I had been planning a lot less volume for you. And last couple weeks, like you, You went wild on the volume. I had planned like a four-hour day and you came back with like seven and a half and I'm like, nice, he's feeling good, I'm happy about this. Yeah, it helped that we had some very, like a very dry, sunny spell where I live. So yeah, I was just riding with my mates, going off road and yeah, enjoying the sunshine to be honest. But yeah, I think that, maybe that. kind of alleviation and mental stress made that training load a bit more manageable again and yeah, it's kind of hard, you know, sometimes the numbers don't always show everything but yeah, it was, I had a good run for sure. Yeah, definitely. I mean, and this is one of the other patterns that I've known about you since forever is that, you know, you going out and riding with your friends and having a good time, like, I've never seen such positive comments from anybody as when you've done like eight hours with your friends, you know? Yeah, what's not to like? It's certainly a lot better than doing eight hours by yourself. But yeah, I think, you know, I enjoy riding my bike, but, you know, I think life's about... sharing experiences with people you care about and making memories with your friends and your family. It certainly makes doing that big volume training a lot easier if I can just go out with some mates and mess around, chat shit, and it doesn't feel like hard work, really. It feels like a treat. I've played to my strengths there, really. And I'm very lucky to have a good group of people to ride with most days. Yeah, I mean, and I think that's probably something for people to take away with. I think actually one of the biggest things to take away with is learning what motivates you as an athlete. you know you don't it's like some days yeah you got to go out and do your intervals but like you don't have to be a training monk and you know shut yourself off from the outside world it's just you know you and your kind of monastery I guess that'd be your roads and your you know your meditation which I guess be your intervals or something like that I don't know yeah perfect is don't let perfect be the enemy of the good you know if you got some intervals on the plan just work them into a group ride or a ride with your mates. They might not be 100% as you plan them on paper, but the outcome's probably going to be the same. And, you know, if you have more fun doing it, then that's going to actually have a pretty significant impact on the psychological load of training over a season or more. So, yeah, you definitely got to work with... The riding options you have and the terrain and the people you have to ride with, not kind of fight against it and just put yourself in a kind of box and say, this is what I'm doing today, four hours on the dot, these intervals, tick, tick, tick. You know, it's about going out, meeting some mates, trying to fit the intervals in if you can, even if it's not on perfect roads to them or making time for a cafe stop and if you are a little bit over on time or a little bit under. you know it's probably going to balance out over a long period and the most important thing is that it creates an enjoyable training load and that's the most important thing you know I do quite a lot of training or certainly have done in the past and a lot of people ask me how I do it but it's just about yeah if it doesn't feel like a chore if I'm with my friends all the time yeah it's a pleasure it's not necessarily it doesn't feel like hard work so it's just about Yeah, playing to those strengths. And I think there's absolutely no way I could have done all the training I've done past few years if I'd been on monk modes by myself, you know, just riding by myself. It has to be, I have to keep it fun. And that's just, you know, everyone makes their own path and that's my path is just riding my mates. and killing it because it's so hot. I think it's easy nowadays for aspiring riders to look at what the pros are doing maybe on Strava or they hear anecdotes about or they get training plans and things. Oh, these are your magic intervals, yeah. Yeah, these are the things to do. This is what some world tour pro who lives in Andorra is doing or he lives in Nice and he's doing these intervals and these intervals and it's actually... You don't live in, you know, most people reading that probably don't live in Nice or Andorra. They probably live somewhere that's quite different and it's probably got different group rides, different opportunities, a lot of a training crit or different things to utilize in your training. And it's about making the most of your environment, the things around you, the things you enjoy, most importantly. And that's how you create a training plan that works for you because, yeah, you can't copy what someone else is doing because that's for them. You should carve out your own path and figure out how to use all the things around you to become the best version of yourself. But it's not all enjoyable. Let's talk about some things that you absolutely hate in training. We're talking about the race sims now. Yeah, let's do that. Let's talk about that and then let's talk about cramps. So the race sims, I mean, geez, like when, oh God, when did we start those? 2023? for Lincoln. So why don't you talk about the diabolical plan I had for you for 2023 leading to Lincoln? And you got fourth that year, by the way. Yeah. No, it wasn't a bad year. No, because there was a team that you eventually joined that had like, what, 13 riders in the group or something like that, and they just decided to let their riders off the front one by one. and just mark you. Yeah, they played it pretty well. And to be fair to them, I think they were the strongest in the race. So they more than deserve to mop up the podium. But yeah, I remember getting some training from you and seeing that you'd put in a session which was like, just kind of do the race, basically. We built up to do the race. We built up to do the race, but yeah, I think, you know, there's 13 climbs, 13 laps at Lincoln, up the steep climb, that's about a minute, a minute and a half, and I think we started off with about 8 or 10. Yeah, I think it was 9. And then, yeah, built it from there, up to maybe the full race distance, so I was going out and doing 13 90-second efforts. Hard, and riding Tempo in between, and then going on like a chain gang in the evening to finish it all off. So, yeah, there were some pretty, pretty hard days, that's for sure, physically, as well as mentally. Well, because to give people an idea of how hard physically they were, like, it took you well over a week to really fully recover from those efforts. And like, and that's one of the reasons that we started those in like, what, February? for a race in May. No, I mean, there were like 400 or 500 TSS rides. There were pretty serious tools in the arsenal, that's for sure. Yeah. And I remember when you finished Lincoln that year, you said that the race sims were way easier than the actual race itself. Yeah. No, they definitely worked. I mean, assuming... I did recover in time, but yeah, if you can recover from that kind of stimulus, it can definitely help a kind of specific race type intensity. And yeah, I remember the climbs in the race were easier than I was doing in training. So along with all the adrenaline, the tapering, you know, the excitement of the race, yeah, I was playing on easy mode when I was doing it. Yeah, I guess those results both in 2023 and this year were, this is cliche to say, but yeah, they were definitely built in training. I guess I won those races well before, I won that race before it happened in a way. Yeah, well, I mean, this year and last year, I think, we didn't do as many sim efforts, mostly because you had basically built the fitness already. That was one of the things that kind of did change more between like 2022 and 2024 really is us kind of realizing that you needed a lot less race-specific training than you had needed in the past. And so we really tapered down those efforts and just really made them surgical basically. Like, all right, let's do one of these here, let's do one of these here and like that's it instead of like let's build these over the course of like four and then a couple other supplementary efforts. and aerobic capacity stuff. Like, you haven't done a set of 30-30s in like three years now or something like that. Yeah, I think I was going to add there, you know, it definitely helps that I think we started looking more at what were my limiters and I naturally have a very good sprint and aerobic capacity and even if my kind of goal race was reliant on those things, there were probably other things in that that were limiting me more along with, of course. recovery, which is the big one. So I think, yeah, maybe in 2022 and the start of 23, we were having a lot of fun with ways to turn screws, but actually we kind of realized it wasn't all about how can we add extra ideas to stress myself. It's more about actually, yeah, what's the right dose here and what's maybe the minimum effective dose that I need to maintain the recovery between those efforts and the racing. Yeah, and I think especially as, you know, as the kind of your mental pressure mounted from like last fall through this spring, you know, you had done less than ever in terms of hard efforts and training. And, you know, the minimum dose is like, it's way lower than I think either of us thought. Yeah, I know. It's been quite interesting to see, really. Like, I've ended up in, similar places from doing quite different training loads and quite different amounts of intensity especially. So yeah, it's definitely worth kind of playing around with that and seeing where you can end up. But I also think I am definitely reaping some benefits of previous work. I'm sure I can get to a similar place now doing a little bit less because I've banked all that. and yeah, I'm not starting from scratch, that's for sure. Yeah, that's definitely for sure. I mean, anybody who's seen your Strava is probably like, holy shit. So, let's talk about cramps because that's probably the thing that you like the absolute least but had probably the greatest effect, I'd say, of all the things that you didn't like about training. Yeah. Because the volume had an effect. All the intervals had an effect. But they're the effect that you expected, right? So, yeah. Tell me about your history with cramps and how we kind of attempted to approach that. Because also, for folks listening, this may not work for you unless you are exactly in this exact same circumstance. Yeah, no, I've got an unpleasant relationship with cramping. It's something that I don't get too frequently, but I tend to get it at the hardest, biggest, hottest races when I go that little bit extra deep. So, yeah, it was something that we wanted to work on because it was limiting my performance at those big events. Especially in the summer. Yeah, I tend to cramp. More in the heat. Well, you're in the UK, so what does heat count as up in the UK? Probably anything over 25 degrees, I would say, is hot. Yeah, certainly 30 plus. That's not good for my Scottish genetics. So, yeah, I think that's something that I had to work on. We started doing more heat training. may also have other benefits, but certainly I think the biggest reason I was doing it was to become more heat adapted to help prevent cramps. And yeah, it's funny actually, at Lincoln, just gone, it was quite a warm race. I think it was about 25 degrees. And it's certainly the first warm race of the year for nearly everyone. I don't think we've... Yeah, anyone's been racing anything over 20 yet until that point. And a lot of people were, yeah, falling apart a bit. But I remember, you know, I wore like a aero baseler that we get from our team. And my teammates, some of my teammates were saying, they do live in Scotland. They were saying, oh, it's too hot for that stuff. I put aero overshoes on and they were like, nah, it's just, you're going to cook. But yeah, I had an aero helmet, aero over shoes, and I guess a thicker aero base layer, and I didn't feel hot, really. I felt pretty comfortable, and no sign of the cramps, which was a big relief. So yeah, I think, yeah, learning to manage heat and train that, because it is definitely something that can be improved by training, has helped a lot. and then something else we did were the cramp induction rides. Let's talk about your regular heat training first. So like what's the kind of routine that we fell into and also what are the lessons that we learned about heat training because it did not go swimmingly all the time. Yeah, no, I definitely overdid it at least once I'd say that yeah, left me wiped out for a couple days, I think. So it's just a disclaimer, word of caution here. Yeah, go easy with it because it's definitely something you can overdo and it's always a little bit better to go under than over with that kind of stress. Well, this is something that I caution people about in part because I had seen it happen with you where I think you had been looking for basically that same feeling of hotness from the first couple. rides in later rides when you were well heat-adapted. And at that point, it's sort of like if one beer kind of gets you tipsy at first, and then it's 15 to get you tipsy later. And one is probably not going to... you know kill you like you know 20 years earlier but like 15 a night will you know so I think that that's one of the things about becoming desensitized and actually making those adaptations to the heat is that you know you cannot really look for it to feel like that first day all the time because as you get as you get adapted to it then you know even if your core temp approaches the right temp You're going, man, I don't feel that hot. But that's the point. Yeah. And something I think was quite big for me was that I naturally have a pretty high sweat rate. And obviously that's something that can increase with heat training. And I think it got to the point where because I was just going so ham with some of the sessions, I was just ending up really dehydrated because I was losing a crazy amount of fluid even just in an hour session. So, yeah, it's almost the – and I would say as well, you know, the first few sessions, if I haven't done it in a while, they really suck. They're really uncomfortable and they're definitely the most unpleasant. But as I find doing it more regularly less taxing because you've made the adaptations and to maintain them doesn't take as much out of you. or at least that's my experience. So, and your thermal comfort, you know, how you experience that heat will change a fair bit too. So, yeah, just replicating, you know, if a certain stimulus got you heat adapted, if you're just looking for a maintenance dose, why are you doing more than that? Because that is not maintenance by definition, you know. So, I think, yeah, it's just about being sensible with it. But also, yeah, maybe prioritizing regularity over intensity with that kind of thing because it's something that you can reap the benefits of quite quickly but also lose quite quickly. But certainly if you, you know, it's like all training, there's no one session that's going to make your training but certainly there's always one that can break it. So it's just about making sure you don't Overdo that, overcook it, quite literally. And maybe just doing that a little bit less, more regularly, or with some consistency there. Yeah, for sure. And so, just that alone, how did you feel that helped with your cramps? Because, like, you know, again, your cramps pretty much only happened on days, like, over 25C. Yeah, I think... Yeah, it had a pretty noticeable impact. But maybe, you know, I wouldn't say it's a fail-safe. I think, you know, I've noticed there are other things that impact my abilities cramp. If I'm too fresh and if I'm lacking some specific intensity, that can be a bit of a problem as well. even if it's not too hot or I have been doing my heat training. Yeah. Alright, so let's talk about the cramp induction rides now. Your absolute most, and by most I mean least, favorite training ride of all time. Yeah, these are substantially worse than the race sims because they don't really finish until you finish. Yeah, if that makes any sense. But basically they involve, yeah, overdressing or ideally you can do them on a hot day or somewhere warm. I did some in the French Alps or the Swiss Alps even last summer. While overdressed, no less. Yeah, while adding a few extra layers and yeah, going out and doing some hard efforts over threshold, I think like 10 by 3 minutes. near max was what we had and then after that just yeah that just to wake up the legs and then just doing repeated repeated long sprints um yeah I think it was like 30 seconds or something like that yeah yeah I think I was shooting for 30 but by the end if you could get 20 that was great yeah exactly but um yeah I did I got myself I have I've done these rides a few times and managed to get myself to cramp up in training and something that I know is that if I can cramp in training, it's certainly, that's kind of the best thing to prevent cramps for me is like to bring in racing. Yeah, sorry. It almost like blows out the system and it's going to take me a while to get rusty again and to be able to, yeah, my body to kind of pull the handbrakes on like that. So yeah, in preparation for, if I haven't been racing, for a while, or there's a hot, hard race coming up. Finding time to try and fit in one of those can be a valuable tool, but I would say, yeah, they have been the hardest rides to recover from out of everything I've done. Just, you know, doing like 20, 30 plus all-out sprints have, yeah, like the peripheral fatigue they can generate. You know, I might feel fine in myself a day or two later or, you know, the week after. I feel, you know, wake up, refreshed, ready to go, but the legs just aren't recovered. So yeah, just that muscular damage can take a long time to get over from. So it's, yeah, something that needs careful consideration when we put them in because sometimes it's not worth the fatigue cost, that's for sure. because, you know, you're looking at a place, you know, there's, I'm kind of balancing these two things here. It's like, are we trying to prevent cramps or are we trying to get me to the race not completely broken as well? Like, I still need the legs to win the race or to perform well. And, yeah, doing one of these too late in the day. Yeah, you lack the legs for like two weeks afterwards. Exactly. So, yeah. So, the timing is very, very... Like, again, it's got to be surgical because, you know, like a month after one of these rides, like, you know, you're kind of past the window of, like, cramp prevention. Yeah, it's a very tricky thing. And sometimes it's just not worth that. It's not worth that risk if the time windows aren't adding up. But certainly, yeah, I know that if I've got... a decent amount of time to train and prepare for a race, and I'm coming off a period with no racing or maybe no heat, no hot racing. If there's something I want to do well at, then it can be worth doing. Yeah, so typically, this is like a spring ride. I think we've done only one in the summer heading into fall. Yeah, I think last year we did a couple, but that was because I'd been sick. I'd had a really kind of bumpy start to the year. I definitely didn't have the race days or the kind of race intensity that I wanted to have banked at that point in the year. So it kind of made sense to do them a little bit later because I was almost starting my season or restarting my season a little bit later than we'd have liked. But yeah, certainly, say this year, I don't think, yeah, maybe not too many this summer. Yeah, I mean, and so these are just like a couple of the things that we dealt with, you know, kind of since we started working together, trying to get you in great shape, like ready to win races and stuff. And I think the only other thing that... comes to mind when it comes to the big hurdles that we face was you getting COVID at the end of 22? Or was it 3? 23. It was only 23, yeah. I mean, just that alone derailed our plans because we were like, all right, let's have a shorter season break. Let's get you doing some low-intensity, low-volume rides for a little bit just so that when it comes time to really build, you know it's you know you've held on to a little more but at like the minimum absolute minimum cost which you know for most people I think at that point are going to be doing something similar and so that was our plan and what actually happened was yeah I got sick I got COVID and it took me it took me a while to get back on the bike but when I did get back Yeah, we had a, we'd lost, I'd lost a fair chunk and it, yeah, I don't think the rest was the, it wasn't just the time I'd spent off that kind of made sense to explain that gap, it was probably something from the virus as well. So, yeah, it took me a long time to kind of build back my fitness and that's... probably partly why I was kind of panic training the next spring before Lincoln and got myself sick again, not with COVID but yeah, I just had a nasty cold so yeah, it's a very good lesson to kind of take all illnesses seriously but especially COVID and if you're a little bit behind where you might expect to be after coming back from a virus like that. It's, yeah, it's probably not just because you've had a bit of time off. There's other things going on there too. Yeah. And you know what's interesting to me is that just looking at the metrics, like all of the stuff I have for, you know, 2024 to 2025 to like try to predict your like level of fitness and stuff like that. None of it fully matches what was actually happening. And I think that that's another thing that a lot of coaches get to at some point, which is that getting somebody's actual feedback matters way more than just what are the metrics. And I think it's... It kind of takes two to tango in a coaching relationship, obviously, because without your pretty consistently excellent feedback, I would have been flying blind in terms of your programming and making the coaching decisions and stuff like that. And so I think that your comeback from COVID, it was a lot longer and harder than I think that either of us expected it to be based on the kind of recovery from COVID that a lot of our friends and clients have had. Some people with COVID, they've got a head cold, basically, and riding is fine. And there's some people where it's like they're out for a month and then it takes forever to get back. And sometimes, if ever, they do. Yeah, I think I was somewhere in between. I felt... I remember feeling pretty normal in myself, which is why I was stressed out about where all these what's have gone. I was like, I'm fine, you know, I'm fine. But yeah, I was not fine. And it was pretty obvious the reason why, even if I didn't want to accept it. Yeah, I don't think either of us wanted to accept it, honestly. And it was, you know, it was nice that like you basically could Train, because I remember as soon as I started programming kind of higher intensity training and higher volume training for you, I was really nervous. I was like, are the wheels going to come off the wagon? Because that can happen sometimes. But it was like months of just, is he still sick? Is there still some infection? Is there some kind of... very slight long COVID thing happening, like, you know, and you don't know, and there's not, like, a test for that kind of stuff either. No. No, not so. So, yeah, we just had to play it by ear a bit, and yeah, it was a long road out, but it was a pretty linear road out, I would say. Yeah. Even though I... I, uh, was it that year, or was it, yeah, it might have been 24, actually, there was one year, I remember, I forget which one it was, where I was thinking, I'm not seeing the fitness improvements that I usually would see. I think that was it. That was it, yeah, that was the, yeah. And, and I, I remember, yeah, I started programming higher, higher intensity training for you earlier than I usually would for anybody. And I was, yeah, I was very, very nervous. I was like, okay, we get one little sniffle, one little not good recovery day, and like, this is done. Like, we're going right back to getting some rest, and yeah, and you were fine. It was great. But I was still nervous for months. Yeah, and it's actually something we used again this winter, getting started on that higher intensity a little bit earlier than previous, just because of kind of how well it had worked. the year before. So I think we, yeah, we learned something good about that as well. Yeah. And so I actually, you and I haven't talked about this. I want you to tell me how Lincoln played out for you. Because I don't know, I had another client there who just, she was in a women's race and she texted me, I think James won? Yeah, we were talking before, well, before her and my race. Yeah. You'd asked me to give her a few tips on the race and I did as much and then I think afterwards I was, she didn't get the same result as me but I did feel afterwards that maybe I was then qualified to give such tips. I would say for sure. Yeah, okay, so before I have you, Kind of give me the breakdown on Lincoln. I wanted to remind you of one of the things that you had said, I forget where you said, I forget if we were talking or if it was somewhere else, where you had said, I think it was like in 2021, you expected to never win a race again. You would just be happy to, you know. go okay at a couple races or something like that. Yeah, well, there's a bit of a story here. In 2021, I did Lincoln and I didn't finish. I just got spat because I wasn't at the level that day. I actually told my team manager at the time that I wanted to lead the team because I just wasn't competitive at these races. And yeah, he said, you know, I said, I'm just not good enough. And he said, Just shut up and crack on. I think there's more there than you think there is. I'm sure I probably said similar enough things to you. My confidence was probably at rock bottom. I definitely had a bit of physical ground to make up to. Both those things came on pretty well the past few years. How did Lincoln happen? I want to hear it. Give me play-by-play. This year. This year. Yeah, so I was just vibing in training, as we said, and I had an At-B race the week before, which is a bit of a lower-level race, although some of the same guys would have been at Lincoln the week after. And you had won that race previously, too. Like, that was your second run there. Yeah, yeah. I liked the course and obviously I knew it well because I'd done it before and I remember it, yeah, that and that B, it didn't split up, there was no breakaway really, there were a lot of attacks and well, I got on some breaks and things but we never really got given, the elastic never fully slapped, snap basically and it came down to a bunch kick which isn't a bad scenario for me and I remember, yeah, I opened up on the climb and it kind of crushed the climb and there's a few hundred meters to the finish and I was saving something to kick again because I assumed that there'd be people in my wheel or someone trying to come around me but yeah, I looked under my shoulder and I had like a few hundred meter gap so I was like, okay, I'm just going to start posting up now because that's pretty sweet and Yeah, it's always nice to win a race. And hopefully it doesn't sound too cocky, but I was, yeah, I didn't take too much from that to Lincoln. It's definitely a much harder race at Lincoln. So I was like, I just kind of acknowledged it. I was like, that's interesting. I didn't think I was going that well, but yeah, you know, I didn't think it was that hard of a race. And I won pretty comfortably. And afterwards, I had people saying like, oh, it's so hard. And I was like... Okay, like this isn't a bad place to be if you're, you know, you've got some people telling you they thought it was a hard race and they're solid riders. So I was like, okay, that's pretty interesting. And to add a bit of kind of murky water as well, I'd got a new power meter not too long ago as well and I didn't know if... Yeah, my numbers didn't seem to be amazing, but it was also on a new power meter, so I had this all in my head as well, like, am I going well? But, yeah, if you win a race, and I had people telling me on the kind of chain gang group ride I go on that I was going better than ever, and the numbers didn't necessarily say so, but, yeah, it gave me some confidence. Yeah, those numbers gave us both a lot to think about for quite a little bit, heading into these. At which point you had actually said something like, I feel like I'm going well, the numbers just don't show it. And I'm like, fuck it, let's go. Lean into that. Yeah. No, I think power meters can be a terrible, terrible thing for your head. So sometimes it's worth just putting it in your back pocket or at least take it with a pinch of salt. If you're feeling good, you're moving well, you're going fast. Yeah, it doesn't really matter what the numbers say in your head unit, I think. So, yeah, I was, I remember after that race at the week before, Lincoln, I didn't, yeah, I hadn't felt amazing up until that point, but then I'd run the race and I was like, that's pretty sweet. And the whole of the next week, I, I was just floating in training. I didn't feel like I had a chain on my bike. So I was like, okay, no, this is good. This is actually really good. And yeah, I don't usually get too nervous before races, but I was pretty nervous before Lincoln this year just because I knew how well I was going. I was, yeah, like I said, I'd been feeling really, really fit on the bike and I didn't know how long it would take me to get. you know I didn't know if it would take me another three or four years to get these sensations to line up with my favorite race again so I knew it was a good opportunity but yeah I slept well leading up to it ate well and actually yeah kind of trusted my instincts a bit more in training I didn't maybe taper as much as I might have done but I'd done, I kind of replicated the week that I had done the previous for the NADB, I'd won, I thought that went pretty well so I was like okay we'll just do something similar again and yeah it didn't do me any harm and certainly yeah I went to the race with a really strong team that's definitely kind of a bit a massive asset and we were always well represented at the front of the race. I actually, the only time I wasn't really there was the first few laps. I couldn't get a feed. It was pretty fast through the feed. And like I said, it was a hot day. So I was like, it got to a point about four laps in and I was basically at the back of the bunch because I had to drift to the back through the feed to try and slow down to get a feed. I think I got like, we had ice socks. I ended up getting like four ice socks, but I couldn't get one bottle. I was like, this is just ridiculous. And then I was like carrying, I don't know, like an extra kilo of ice up the climb on my back, but I guess it was nice and cooling. But yeah, I remember thinking like, if I don't get a bottle next time through, I'm going to be in trouble here. But fortunately, like next time through, yeah, I got two or something and then my teammate gave me one as well and it was all hunky-dory. After that, I just made sure I... went with the next splits. Um, and yeah, I was, after that, I was never really not at the front of the race. I had really, yeah, I had really good sensations and it never felt like I actually went deep in the race. I was able to follow everything fairly comfortably, which is not normal for me. Um, so yeah, I was definitely on a good day. Uh, and previously you had over, you've overraced yourself like that, but yeah. When you've felt like that and you've over-raced yourself, it has actually not really cost you that much. I think I'm fairly in tune with like how good my legs are feeling. And yeah, I made probably multiple moves that I guess, yeah, I would consider burning a match. But usually when you make a move like that, you know, a moment or two later, a minute or two later, you're aware you've burned that match. You can kind of feel it. I noticed at Lincoln that I was kind of burning matches, but didn't feel like it was taking anything out of the number I had to burn. I was able to go hard, but nothing really didn't take too much on my legs. So that was obviously, yeah, that gave me a lot of confidence. And I had a big group of friends on the climb. every lap, cheering me on, so yeah, just seeing them every time through gave me wings, you know, my girlfriend was there, and some of my best friends, both, yeah, I think the friends that I do the majority of my training with, all those big rides, like, they were nearly all in the race with me, or cheering me on, so it was a, yeah, pretty inspiring, yeah, home advantage, definitely, I had wings, and, Yeah, I knew that, yeah, eventually it whittled down to like a small group of about seven or eight at the front of the race. When I got there, I knew that I wasn't going to let this chance go, really. I had a teammate with me, and he's not as fast a finisher as me, so the plan was that he would attack solo, and I could sit on. And don't get me wrong, I would have loved to see him win solo, but it was always going to be a bit of a long shot. and yeah, he had about a lap off the front or just under and then he got brought back and yeah, it's kind of hard to quantify how much that helps you but certainly it was good for me. It came back and people who'd been chasing, some of them were dropped and yeah, I was able to kind of keep it together on the last lap. I felt like... There was a couple other fast finishers in the group, like Matt Bostock was there, and Alex Peters, who's both, they're both pretty punchy. But I backed myself from that situation. So, yeah, I managed to keep it together along with the others to the bottom of the final climb and then, yeah, just sent it from the bottom and managed to hang on for the win. So, yeah, still... Still a pretty surreal moment for me. Like I said, it's something that I've been, I've dreamt of for a long time and just, yeah, just a couple of years ago, three, four years ago, I couldn't finish the race. I didn't think this was going to happen. So, yeah, it's, yeah, a bit unreal, to be honest, but I guess a credit to some hard work, some good planning and Yeah, a bit of determination and kind of following my dreams, I guess. But yeah, it sounds very cheesy. Yeah, well, the thing is, I think even if you hadn't won, I think we would still be having a very similar or nearly the same conversation because, you know, one of the hardest things in like pretty much all of athletics is like getting the right form on the right day because sometimes they don't quite line up and actually I remember heading into Lincoln in 23 one of the things that that you had said like the a couple days prior or maybe it was the day prior like you would I think your ride was like two and a half hours and I think you had mentioned in your post-ride comments, you said, you know, I had the diamonds in the legs after the first hour and if there was a team car to hop in to save my legs, I would have done it right then. And I was like, man, so few people have that attitude. You know what I mean? They're like, oh, I got the diamond legs. Well, maybe I should just try to... See how good they are. Maybe I'll try to figure out my 20 minutes. Polish those diamonds. See how good they are, yeah. Polish the diamonds. And then you polish the diamonds into dust and it's like the next day, like, where'd they go? You know, I tell people, like, good legs are, you gotta put them under museum glass. Like, do not touch. I know. Like, I was so excited with the legs I had this year, in the week before. And those kind of feels don't hang around for too long because otherwise they wouldn't be that exciting. So, yeah. I knew kind of how, time-sensitive this form was. And yeah, we did a great job of getting me to the race with those legs, but it was a relief to... Yeah, I knew on the way to the race that I'd have good legs. I knew like a top 10 was probably doable if I stayed out of trouble, maybe a podium, but yeah, it's always good to win. You know, it's just... And credit to your team too. Oftentimes teams don't get enough credit for this kind of thing. I mean, especially if it was like you and one teammate and everybody else in that last select group didn't have a teammate. I mean, like, you know, his attack for sure probably helped out because, you know, people motivated to chase back are definitely burning their legs out. And like, and one of the things that... you know that we know is that even no matter how good you feel and how in shape you are you still only have limited energy reserves and getting to that last selection as fresh as possible makes a massive massive difference yeah I think something that quite is quite big and I've noticed more actually this year than ever is that every year my race tactics and my ability to save energy in a bunch just grows and yeah the past couple of races I've done I've felt like yeah playing on slow motion or something it just feels like it's quite predictable and I feel more confident than ever in the bunch and that's just down to race experience really it's kind of no replicant for it and you know even if I maybe yeah I might not have had any better form than I did a couple years ago when I was fourth. But yeah, I don't doubt that that race experience can be the difference between winning the race or somewhere else in the top 10. Because yeah, there's probably not that much difference between the fitness of those riders, but it's just how they play their cards. So yeah, there's another benefit to kind of sticking at it and playing the long game is that... every year you grow, not just in your kind of target race, yeah, the more you can do that, for sure, like, if I could do, every year I did Lincoln, even though it didn't, even though it, even the years it went badly, like the year I didn't finish, great experience still, you know, you got to race the race, you got to look at the course, you got to see how riders were moving on that course, you probably made some mistakes, wasted some energy, and then, yeah, those are all things that can contribute to you. winning, you know, it's not like, it's definitely not so easy to rock up and win something that you've never done and certainly just every race that you do all season, you know, even if it's a bit different on paper, yeah, it's all invaluable experience really and I think once you start becoming pretty well trained, that race experience and... The way you play your cards is probably more important than squeezing out that extra 1% or 2% in training. Yeah, and actually, I need to credit you with one other thing, which is that this year, you did not try to lose weight into your season. which was a novelty and you raced at like 72 kilos or something like that, 72, 73 and actually I'm not entirely sure because you kind of stopped logging your weight, you stopped tracking your like motivation and soreness and all that stuff like basically two weeks ago and I think that you know kind of letting all that stuff go and also like you know when we talked last fall you were like you know I think being a little heavier would be good for me. And I wholeheartedly agreed. And I think that despite the fact that I think the kind of spotty recovery we had seen from you earlier this year was at least not down to that, that's for sure. Because otherwise, if I see some of these weight kind of tipping down to certain levels. heading into a season. I'm like, well, clearly this has to be the culprit because it's, you know, it's been the culprit previously. So why wouldn't it be this time? So I think that, you know, it's like a game of whack-a-mole. Like you kind of get rid of one variable and something else happens. You're like, oh shit, why is this happening now? But I think that, you know, I think that... It was definitely good to eliminate that as a kind of question mark over form and legs for sure. Yeah, for sure. And I think once you kind of let that pressure off yourself, and you could really recover, and you could really just vibe and have a good time, I mean, I think that that really probably played the biggest part in how you've performed the last couple weeks. Yeah, I mean, it's certainly the biggest change, so yeah, it makes sense. Yeah, biggest positive change. So that's, yeah, I think that that's a probably pretty good roadmap from where we started and where you're at now and kind of the things that have gone into the mind of James McKay and the legs of James McKay last couple of years. So yeah, do you have any other thoughts? Because I didn't ask any listener questions or anything like that. I figured we would just have a chat. Yeah, what's on your mind? I can't think of too much to add, really. Obviously, I'm... Well, because you're a coach with us. Because I remember, when did I bring you in for coaching? Like, was it last fall, last summer, something like that? Yeah, last summer, I think. Yeah, and I, because I remember as we were working together, I was like, man, this guy's always got a... He's always got amazing questions. Like, our calls would go for, like, three hours sometimes, and I usually try to keep them to, like, one. It's just like, and, you know, we would kind of spend 45 minutes on one question about, like, why you probably shouldn't look at doing 45-hour weeks for training this year and stuff like that. But I was like, yeah, lots of, you know, just like, man, this guy's got a quite ahead on him. Like, why wouldn't I want him with us as a coach? And I think that, you know, this, our conversation here kind of shows why, you know? Yeah, I think we've definitely both learned from my, from using me as a bit of a guinea pig, let's say. But, no, I think it's been really Rewarding for me to kind of push the boundaries of what I thought possible but also learn from the mistakes most importantly and yeah, we're definitely better equipped to help other athletes now after trying a few wacky things. Yeah, so what would you say of all your training experience the last couple years and all of your training experience really what do you think you reach for the most like what of your personal experience do you reach for the most when you are coaching people yeah I think something that maybe the biggest lesson I learned was that training not to be too scared of training volume I think you broaden my horizons a lot of how much easy riding can do for your fitness and also how much easy riding is pretty easy to recover from if you're assuming you're eating enough and your life stress, things off the bike aren't too manic. So yeah, I think that's something that I have changed in my own coaching a bit is maybe thinking about just easy volume as a maybe the most powerful tool to unlock someone's fitness. And then being a little bit more cautious with race intensity, races, things like that. Yeah, higher intensity is definitely something that I've learned the hard way can be a dangerous thing. But I'm trying to think what else we've learned. Well, let's make it more practical because a lot of the people that we coach... cannot ride easy volume. So, based on your experience, what do you do instead? That's a good question. I think, yeah, maybe if someone's got more time to recover, that's truly recovery. They might be able to handle a little bit more intensity or moderate intensity. But, yeah, sometimes there's, people just have to face up to the fact that, Even though they don't have the time to do more easy riding, that doesn't mean they can do more hard riding. There's a pretty hard limit over what most people can recover from from an intensity point of view. Whether you're riding 30-hour weeks or you're riding 10-hour weeks. And yeah, that's a bit of pill to swallow for some. But yeah, it's about prioritizing. Not only the fitness and the performance of the athlete, but like their well-being and their health as well. So yeah, it's okay to go easy even if you've not got too much time to burn, that's for sure. Yeah, so let's give people an idea of your thresholds and how easy you actually rode because I think only once ever did you ask me, do you think this was too easy? And I said yes. Yeah, I remember that ride. But it was a ride that you were doing with your girlfriend, I think. And she was on an easy day, so it was like super, super easy for you. She was on a bit of a bad day as well, so I think it was quite slow even for her. But yeah, I think most of the time I'm riding, you know, if my FTP is around 400 watts, I'm riding. at half of that or below sometimes on my endurance days. Like I said, it's surprising how effective and how much you can recover from that kind of thing because it's not that hard really. It doesn't feel that hard. It's like walking, right? Yeah, it's pretty chill. It's a nice chat pace to ride with some friends but if you do enough of it. It's going to make some excellent adaptations, and it's also going to allow you the time to recover between harder rides that maybe have more of a stimulus to drive those higher-intensity things. Yeah, good balance. And your first threshold, which we've also had lab-confirmed, was about... 330 watts, and it's been as high as like 350, especially as your FTP has climbed past 400 watts or so. So, I mean, and that's about as high as I've ever seen it from anybody, like at any level, like World Tour included. So I think that, you know, that's probably something that maybe doesn't get enough attention. I don't think we've ever talked about it on the podcast where... you know having that first threshold be really high has a massive positive impact on endurance performance itself because every time you know because you can hit up to like you know low to mid 300 watts in a race and like it's not taking any more out of you really than other than the kill jewel burn it's not taking much more out of you than like riding at 200 watts and if somebody's got that first threshold at like 250 280 watts you know riding at 350 is like adding some fatigue for sure. Yeah, something I noticed like even just at Lincoln on Sunday, you know, when it's full beans up the climb, 500, 600, 700 watts, yeah, I'm going really hard and so is everyone but if it backs down and the pace is still kind of semi on but you're then riding like a tempo kind of pace, my recovery at that intensity is... has really grown over the past few years as that LT1's grown. Yeah, you're just back nose breathing again and you can then whack it again when someone else who's, yeah, maybe doesn't have such a good LT1, they're still recovering. So, well, they're still, yeah, they're still trying to recover. So, yeah, it's definitely a bit of a secret weapon for me. I don't think I've got... I definitely don't have the world's biggest VO2 max and my FTP isn't enormous but my LT1 is definitely something that is probably my strongest attribute so if you've got a big LT1 and a good sprint a long race that's pretty on the tools all day is going to suit you well because I'm saving glycogen a lot of the time and if I can get to the end which I probably will then It's going to be, yeah, it's going to take someone fast to stop me. Yeah. So, all right. Any other thoughts before we wrap this up? Because we've been at this for, where are we at, like 90 minutes? Yeah. No, I think I'm pretty happy with this. Me too, man. I'm, well, as you take a step back from being coached and you just ride to vibes more, I want to say in public that it's been an absolute honor to have been your coach for the last couple of years. And I'm extraordinarily happy to have you as a coach with Empirical Cycling as well. So I'm happy to keep you in the family in that way. But I'm just kind of excited to just kind of see you, just be happier with your riding and training and everything in the future. I think your happiness quotient is going to just kind of blow through the roof, especially kind of this year and probably next many. Yeah, I think it's pretty funny that taking that pressure off and kind of riding to Vibes helped me win the thing that is also making me really happy. So now... the vibes are just gonna be even better so yeah it could work out pretty well that's for sure yeah definitely um All right, man. Well, let's land this plane. So thanks, everybody, for listening. And if you would like to reach out to Empirical Cycling, especially if you want to work with James, he's got a couple open spots. So shoot me an email, empiricalcycling at gmail.com. If you want to donate to the show, because we're ad-free, empiricalcycling.com slash donate. And if you want to ask any questions, we can AMAs, and sometimes we'll ask questions for the podcast. So follow me on Instagram. And is that it? Oh, yeah. Rate us. Five stars on the podcast platforms and a glowing review. Thanks so much for all of those and we'll catch you next time. Cheers.