Welcome to the Empirical Cycling Podcast. I'm your host, Kolie Moore. Thank you, everybody, for listening. And I'm really excited for today's episode because we've got a coach roundtable happening. And I've got one, two, three, four, five, six of our coaches sitting around waiting to answer your questions, which have been asked on my Instagram. So before we get started with that, I wanted to let everybody know that if you like the podcast, you can always support it by sharing it or giving a five-star review wherever you listen to podcasts. And a glowing review, if you want to write one out, always goes a long way. Thanks so much for all of those. If you want to donate to the show because we are completely ad-free. content, empiricalcycling.com slash donate, and if you would like to work with us, any of our fine coaches, please shoot me an email, empiricalcycling at gmail.com. We have some spots that have opened up recently, and we would be very happy to work with you, especially if you want to get ahead of the fall crush, that always happens in September, or if you are having a hard time managing your fitness in season. It's not a bad time to start with a coach if you are curious about doing that, so we're happy to help you with all of that. Anyway, if you want to keep coaching yourself, though, You can also reach out for a consultation. We're happy to help you with that. And we can review your files, answer all your questions, and help give you the tools to plan and adjust all of your own training. And if you'd like to ask questions for the podcast, Weekend AMA is up on my Instagram, but also that's where I ask the podcast questions, and that's where we have all of our questions for our podcast here from my Instagram question askers, followers. What do we have on Instagram? Followers. All right. So that's where to ask questions in the future for a podcast episode. So go give me a follow over there. And to start with, we have a banger. So our first question, these are cultivated, by the way. We got a lot of questions. We'll do a couple episodes on these, but I really like this one. So we're going to start with... Will a mid-season break set my fitness back to the dark ages? Alex, will it set my fitness back to the dark? My fitness is already in the dark ages, it's been for years, but anybody else who's in training? Oh, gosh. I mean, obviously, the short answer is, of course, it will not set your fitness back to the dark ages. And I think it's like, you know, it's quite the opposite, even though someone would say, oh, I'm not going to be training, then I'm going to lose, you know, everything that I've built up, but especially with like a season where let's say you're starting to, you know, race or compete in the springtime and then you're looking to do that all throughout the summer into the fall, like if we don't, if you don't pull back and let your body get a deeper recovery and you just keep trying to push, you know, Progress in Fitness will just stagnate and performance will go down. So we like need to back off, you know, a week or two, get a good full mental and physical rest. And then for sure, you're going to lose like a little bit of fitness, maybe a little bit of top end. But, you know, I think usually within a block, you know, maybe two to three weeks, you'll get back to, you know, where you were before the rest. And I think and ideally, and in a lot of situations, if the rest is done properly, you'll be... You'll see numbers that are even higher than before. So, yeah, mid-season break is super important. And I think, you know, the benefit of a good coach is this can be planned out really well, especially if you have, you know, a busy calendar. Multiple seasons. For sure. Sometimes working on these breaks can be pretty tricky. Maybe you don't have a good, you know. Clear block of time where you can do it. Maybe it needs to be broken up a bit or it's like a month we're looking at kind of pulling back a bit. So yeah, it can be hard to work in, but like I said, a good coach can help you do that. And yeah, I'd add that sometimes there's no perfect time to take a break. And yeah, you might have to accept that some watts might take a hit momentarily. Yeah, you've also got to think about the implications of not having that break and they could be far worse down the line. You know, sometimes you have to sacrifice a race or two to make sure you're at your best deep into the season. Yeah, I think motivation is a big part of it too. And, you know, even for, because most people... You know, you've got jobs, you've got families, you've got stuff going on, you've got friends that you haven't seen in a while, and you're like, man, I want to stay up late and hang out with my friends one day, you know, this summer while it's nice out, like, mid-season break, great time to do that, especially if you can make it coincide with a holiday and go hard on the hot dogs and beer. Yeah, great time to do that. I had an athlete, um... prioritizing toward the helo, which is the end of April. They raced, they did awesome. Then we took a full week off. And then we had two weeks of kind of, you know, just getting back on the bike and riding and enjoying it. And they are just totally flying right now. They're having like amazing power. So I do think, like everyone is saying here, like, yeah, maybe once you, the week you get back on the bike after your break, you might not feel like the greatest ever. But this person is like, totally ripping after two weeks or so of getting back into the flow with it. So I wouldn't be intimidated by taking a little time off. Yeah, especially after you've been training for like four or six months to a big goal. You know, that accumulated fatigue really builds up and you've got to get rid of it because, I mean, at that point, a lot of the time, you know, people will see their motivation start to wane. Life stuff that you've been putting off will start to catch up with you. So just getting a chance to go hang out with your friends and be with your family and focus on your job, get some extra sleep is really, really fantastic and really helps a lot of people have a strong second half of the year and also shedding that fatigue is really fantastic. Yeah, trying to stay in shape for more than a couple months, that's the dark ages. Yeah, very true. I think one of the things that I see very, very commonly when I consult with people is, you know, we see really good fitness building for a couple months, and depending on how hard they're pushing, you know, it'll be anywhere from maybe four months up to like six or even eight, but at some point, the wheels come off the wagon, and a lot of people's instincts is to double down on the training. Oh, I'm getting less fit. I need to push harder. I'm just not working hard enough. Like, it's not a Word document. You can't just like, you know, you don't just start over from where you hit save. Like, you've got to take a step back in order to take a couple steps forward. Like, this is not the same thing as like just some project you're working on. Like, this is physiology and these are requirements of physiologies to take a break. Any other thoughts? Because we've got two more coaches here who we would love to hear from. I think one common misconception around mid-season breaks is that you need to take one once the performance starts going downwards. But at that point, it's not too late, but now you shouldn't wait for the performance to start going downwards. I often tell people I work with that mid-season break is kind of like an insurance. to reduce the risk of completely blowing up in the second half of the season. Yeah, I completely agree. Megan? Yeah, I mean, those are all good points I would have mentioned. I think, too, a good indicator, like, I've had... A couple folks, like, they feel so good once the racing's done and they just, you know, before they take their off-season break, you know, in August or whatever, they're just riding around, having fun, they're not really, like, doing structured training and they're, like, power PR-ing left and right, like, you know, they take rest when they feel like it, they smash when they feel like it, and I... you know maybe some of that's just taking the pressure off yourself for a while maybe some of that is you just kind of needed some of that extra recovery and downtime you know time spent not worried about training but just doing what you want and like I think that could be really good like placed in the middle of the season and I think a lot of people struggle kind of doing that because they're afraid oh well like I'm not training I'm not getting fitter like that's not you know exactly how it works like you you guys all mentioned but yeah that's kind of one thing I wanted to point out. And, yeah, you might not want to take your mid-season break in June, but, yeah, you don't want to wait until August or late July and then the motivation falls off or the wheels fall off and you realise, actually, it's a bit late. So, yeah, a bit like Jody Myles said, it's good to get ahead with rest. So, yeah, you might not like it, but... see it as something that is going to be an insurance policy for the second half of the year. Yeah, and actually, I kind of like what Megan said about, you know, seeing power PRs because one of the things that happens very, very frequently is when people are fit and they're racing and getting good results, oftentimes you don't see big power PRs. And so it can actually be really, really motivating to, like, take a little bit of that break and, like, take the pressure off yourself and just go test your legs, especially if you're still feeling motivated to. Yeah, because, like, A lot of the time, you know, like, am I going to give somebody like a 20-minute test like a week before their main race? Probably not. I want them to save those legs for the race. So that is actually a really fantastic time to, you know, if you have been wondering like, oh man, I feel like I can PR my five-minute. I wonder if I can. Like, once the season's over, take a little rest and go smash it. And I bet you could, for sure. The next question is, how do you manage burnout and disappointment? Well, the... One strategy is to take a mid-season break, to give yourself some of the rest you need. So what are everybody else's thoughts on managing burnout and disappointment? I've told this one on the podcast before, but I had a coach a long time ago who said, cycling is not a sport about winning, it's a sport about managing disappointment. And then he says, that's why the French love it. Yeah, get to meet us in the chat going, yeah, of course it's a French joke. Yes, yes it is. We were all laughing, but we were on mute, so. Yeah, no, that's why Thibaut Pinot is like the quintessential French rider. I'm so sorry. I'm a fan too. So sorry to do that to him. Yeah, I mean, it's a joke, but there's some truth in that, you know, cycling is a really hard sport and there's a lot of variables outside your control. Things that can, yeah, ruin a race or even a season. So I think just... being realistic with the fact that for a lot of riders, most races won't work out too well. In fact, only one person gets to cross the line first in most bike races anyway, unless you go one, two with a teammate and you're holding hands maybe. But yeah, it's just about trying to be objective and take the positives away from the hard work that you've put in. and, yeah, looking for ways that you've improved even if they aren't necessarily reflected with the result in your target race. Yeah, I think that's why it's so good to, like, come into the season with, like, goals lined up. Like, what's your process goal and what's your end result goal? Like everyone said here, it's like one person gets to win. I swear to God, I just wrote that email. Yeah, it sounds familiar. So if you can say, if you can look back and say like, well, how did I execute my process goals? And like, in what ways did I do a good job of doing that? And in what ways can I make improvement? I think there's some like sports saying where you don't lose, you learn. I think there's- I haven't heard that, but I like that. Yeah, alliteration. Yeah, I think that you just need to look at like, what was in my control? And like, how did I execute on that? And how well did I stick to- my goals and what I wanted to achieve when I went into this. And then just learning from it. And I think also fitness-wise, you still built fitness. You still gained experience in that race scenario for the future. Yeah, it's kind of cliche, but it's not about the destination, it's about the journey. If you're not enjoying that process to your result or your goals, then maybe you need to reshape how that That build looks for you, because, you know, if you're not having fun, then what's the point? Because there's definitely no guarantees that you're gonna cash in big time and win, and then that's miraculously gonna make everything and all the sacrifices worth it. I think if you can figure out how to enjoy the... The training and the steps towards success, then not only will that help lead to success, but also, you know, it takes the pressure off. It doesn't mean that if you don't win the race or you don't achieve your target, then you still had a good time along the way. and yeah, hopefully that will encourage you to keep going back until you do because it won't have felt like such an arduous task. Yeah, and I think also a lot of expectations come from yourselves. I think most cyclists are very highly motivated and most of the pressure that they feel is completely internal. You know, if you show up to a race and, you know, you get 15th instead of 1st and you're really disappointed and you're even embarrassed about it, 9 times out of 10, sorry, 999 times out of 1,000, nobody's looking at you. Like, unless you're Primus Roglic crashing in yet another Grand Tour, like, nobody is paying attention. You know, like, yeah, sorry. Who's up next? Megan. Yeah, I mean, one way to manage burnout, I would say is preventing it. So I think some people could probably be a little bit more realistic about how much they can handle and, you know, not doing like three 20-hour weeks and then being at my 20-hour rest week. Yeah, like, you know, do... What is consistent for you? Like, you know, what you can keep the consistency with so that, like, you have those, like, long-term goals getting met and not just, like, this yo-yoing effect where you just aren't really seeing any progress because, you know, every other month you have, like, a full-on, like, off-season break. So, yeah, I think that's one way, like, you know, consistency is probably going to help, you know, you be less disappointed in yourself when that does happen, so. Yeah, I was just talking to somebody yesterday. and we were discussing how good it is to not be so hot and cold, not to have these huge peaks and valleys in your training motivation and execution. Because if you're on for two weeks and then you're off for two weeks, like you just said, that's a between-season break. And if that's every month, okay, now you've got, okay, we can estimate four weeks a month. It's not really, but whatever. Okay, so that you're spending half of your year not training. When in reality, like most people ride probably like two-thirds of the year or more you're on the bike for days per year. Like it makes a massive difference. So being consistent is hugely impactful. And yeah, even if that means, you know, doing a group ride or a training race, something that maybe on paper doesn't look like it fits the training plan in a... inverted commas, optimal way. You know, if that fills your bucket of enjoyment up and it makes you want to keep riding week after week, year after year, then it's well worth including. And yeah, I think there's a lot of merit to fund stuff that people are maybe afraid to include because they don't think it, yeah, they think they can get rid of that and maybe find a more optimal way when in fact... It could well be the optimal way is just to smash your group rides and do your fun training crits and cafe rides, things like that. Even if they might not be perfect on paper, but the path to you having success can definitely use those things. And for some people, they're really important. Yeah, the whole don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good kind of thing. And I had another thought, but why don't we get our last thought on this question here. Regarding the disappointment, I would also add it's really, really important to set realistic expectations because disappointment is relative to the expectations. And we touched on this on a previous episode, but I think A common mistake is that people assume that if they nail every single workout for 16 weeks straight, they'll see amazing, unbelievable gains, where in practice, most of the gains, regardless of how good the training plan is, regardless of how good the execution is, are still very small, incremental steps. So, yeah, I think it's very, very important to manage. The Expectations. Yeah. Yeah. No, I completely agree. And actually, this is one of the things that I've, you know, I've talked to people recently in a couple of consults where, you know, they stop seeing the improvements that they've had from, you know, they start in the off-season, like, you know, September, November, or January, and they see, you know, five to seven months of really consistent improvements. And they're like, I'm not improving anymore. What happened? I'm like, this is a reasonable amount of improvement to expect for an entire year. And, you know, you could have saved it for, you know, you could have gone easier on your training and stretched it out over a year, much easier on your training, or you could have gone harder and gotten it in like three or four months. But at that point, there's always a cost to pay. You've always got to take a step back. It's not just like you just saved the Word document and tomorrow you wake up and you pick up right where you left off. I don't want to stretch that metaphor too thin. Any other thoughts before we move on? All right, very good. Our next question is... Are U23 athletes vulnerable to overtraining? Is it possible to push volume higher than in adults? So this is really two questions. So why don't we just think, are young people vulnerable to overtraining? I don't know how to tell you this question asker, but yes, absolutely. You can fuck yourself up real good at any age. I think there's also a a question of your training history, like the depth of your training also, versus your biological age. And, you know, even if we're talking U23s or even juniors, like, you know, what is your age around, like, puberty? Like, how are you done growing yet? Is a big question too. Yeah, no, I definitely agree with that. And also, there's something to bear in mind that I don't want to... Criticize all young people, but it's a bit of a cliche that they maybe don't have the best decision-making processes and they can be quite gung-ho about things. So yeah, if anything, most juniors and under-23s often need holding back. They're super keen and overtraining and burnout is a real risk for people like that, especially when... They're becoming adults in the world, they're trying to form an identity for themselves, and if cycling's a part of that, they're super ambitious and want to just smash it, so yeah, I think it's definitely a case that people like that are at risk of overtraining, and combined, they might be doing university or school studies, added pressures, there can often add additional stress, which can push things over the edge, so yeah, there's... It's definitely not the case that just because someone's young and maybe has a good amount of youth to help bounce back from training and recover, it does not mean that they're immune to overtraining. It just comes with their own separate risks and specialties. Yeah, and the number of young people I talk to who tell me I should lose weight to get faster. I mean, if there's anything that's the opposite of true, it's that. Like, you know, especially while you're growing and, you know, you're trying to find your way in the sport and trying to find, you know, what you're good at and what you enjoy doing, you know, maybe it's discipline or like maybe am I a climber, am I a sprinter, am I an all-rounder? You know, there's, you know, nobody's immune to the tropes in the sport of like, you've got to be super skinny. You've got to look like, you know, the top people. Because like a lot of those folks are, are there, you know, it's, you've got to have the genes for it, first of all. And there's only so many meals you can skip before, you know, you pay the cost. And especially when you're growing, you can pay an extra cost because the energetics of making more tissue. is massive. And also, James, I think you're right. I think we're all old enough here on this call to remember when we were younger and going, oh God, did I really think that? Did I really do that? I must have thought I was invincible. And so I think that there is a lot of that. And I think good development of younger cyclists involves doing other sports. And it involves not pushing them too hard until they're ready to be pushed and they want it and then they try it. And if they don't like it for a bit, oh God, it's really hard. I can't focus on my schoolwork. Okay, cool. Let's chill out. Let's pull back a little bit. Okay, so other thoughts on youth and overtraining? I think I work with some high schoolers as well as some college athletes. And I think... Before kind of working with a number of that demographic, I thought like, oh, they have so much time, they're just hanging out, you know? No, these kids are maxed out. They've got AP or additional tutoring or additional school involvement. They have extracurricular in music or whatever else. And a lot of times they have a little bit of a part-time job or if they're in college, they may be working alongside of whatever their study is. Yeah, R-A-T-A. Yeah, exactly. And so, and then they, you know, they do also want to see their friends on occasion. So managing that life stress off of the bike is... is super important. And so, yeah, they definitely could be overtrained in all kinds of capacities, like physical, mental, like social development, just like hanging out with your friends, doing kid stuff, or younger adult stuff. So, yeah, I think that, yeah, it's very, very possible to overtrain at that age group. Yeah. And, oh, sorry, go ahead. Yeah. Speaking of making, questionable decisions and love being busy. I remember, you know, I think we all remember being 18, 19, 20 years old and when five hours of sleep felt decent and anything over six felt unnecessarily long. And we could survive on a bowl of ramen and like half a bottle of soda for like a week. That's what I wanted to say is that like looking at like some of like the high school kids like lunches like as like a quesadilla is supposed to be like a high protein type lunch like I think you know you're kind of forced into these like nutritional like boundaries because you know unless you bring your own lunch but it's just so much to think about as a young kid like trying to perfect your training trying to like you know figure out what is proper fueling how much do I fuel on the bike am I hydrating enough like it's a lot to take in all at once I think kind of easy to do wrong, easy to overdo. I'm making like you're saying, like they don't have total control of their life schedule. So like, yeah, if their transportation is someone else, yeah, it's challenging. Yeah. And also like, I think a lot of young people who are very serious about the sport also take the wrong things seriously. You know, they'll see that quesadilla for lunch and they'll be like, oh my God, my training today is ruined. It's like, No, it's not. Just, you know, pack a snack for tomorrow. Maybe, like, pack a protein bar in your lunchbox or your backpack and, like, you're fine. And when you're hungry, eat. And, you know, I think that also, like, I've also seen a lot of recommendations for, like, you know, potential volume and intensity per, like, age bracket as, like, teenagers are growing up. and that kind of stuff kind of goes away once you get to like 18, 19 and you've got a decent training history under your belt but if you burn way too much energy while you're developing I mean there's every reason to expect that that would potentially delay some of your development as like an actual physical human and so like you know it's In a way, it's dangerous to not eat enough, and that's probably one of the things that I've personally seen the most in younger cyclists coming up. And that kind of stuff, that kind of perpetual energy deficit, even if it doesn't lead to red-ass, it can burn somebody out, no question. So yeah, you got to be careful with that stuff. And even though I think U23s and juniors seem invincible, they're really, really not. Okay, second question is, is it possible to push volume higher than in adults? And I mean, I think for all the reasons we just said, especially, you know, what you were saying, Erica, about they're really busy, they're really maxed out. I mean, if they had time, maybe. But realistically, like, schedules get in the way more. in a lot of ways, like working with somebody who's like 16 to 21, it's almost like you got to treat them like they've got a 50, 60 hour a week high stress job. Yeah, I don't know if I completely agree with that, but I think it's just important that people of any age listen to their body and definitely if someone's newer to training, then... Talking to people with more experience, people who've made mistakes, coaches, and yeah, I think they can often help you avoid making mistakes when you're young. So yeah, I don't know if you need to be always super sensitive, but yeah, just listen to your body and for the young listeners out there, just Just hold yourself back because there's a long road ahead and it's always worth doing a little bit less than a little bit too much. Okay, but to be fair, I know adults who don't know how to listen to their body either, so... is just like balancing training stress. So it's like, can you push the volume higher? Well, it's like, well, if they're exhausted off the bike, no, you know, and conversely, like, you're not going to push the intensity either. Like, you're not going to drop the volume and push intensity. Again, like, the stress is going to kind of just come out equal in some capacity, right? Like, general fatigue, not what you're building on the bike. But, yeah, you just need to, like, manage, like, you need to balance off the bike and on the bike and how much stress is coming from either. Yeah. Okay, so next question is, at what point is intensity more important than volume? One of the things, I've mentioned this on the podcast before also, but I've noticed that in America, volume is like the big boogeyman. Like, you know, oh, you're doing 20 hours a week, ooh. And in Europe, it's like, oh, this person's doing 20 hours a week, oh, that's all? Oh, they should probably ride more. It's such a funny thing because depending on who's listening to this, you may have a notion about the relative training stress of volume versus intensity. And so I'm going to pre-define volume as total time on the bike and recovery rides included. because I personally find that that seems to best predict what we're after with volume. So having said that, who's got some thoughts on intensity versus volume? When is intensity more important? Because it seems like an easy question, but I think we can, there's a twist to it. I would say that you can't really, I mean, if you want to like race well, you can't just like Swap out the intensity for more volume. That would be kind of silly. But I don't think it's quite the same, like, adding more intensity and doing less volume. Like, at some point, like, it's just too taxing. Like, it would be, like, I don't know, going into the gym and one rep maxing, like, everything, including, like, a bicep curl. Like, you know, at some point, that's, like, not efficient. You need to, like, you know, have a balance between, like, the both, like Eric has said, like, You do have to have that balance to make sure that your overall fitness is good and you can't just replace one with the other. Yeah, there might be a time in your training year when you decide to push one of those things a little bit more than the other and the other one can take a bit of a backseat. But in general, you want to have a reasonable amount of volume year-round. But if you are finding that the amount of volume you're doing is impacting... your intense sessions, then that volume probably, you probably need to find a sweet spot where you're doing as much volume as you can without impacting that intensity in a negative way. Yeah, and I actually find that pacing of the, you know, most of your riding matters a lot, where the more you ride, the less you can think about, oh, I gotta push every watt out that I can. You know, just the volume. I mean, I forget who said it. It sounds like a Stalin thing. Quantity has a quality all its own. Might have been Napoleon II. I don't really remember. It's one of those old dudes who killed too many people. I mean, and that kind of goes the same in training where having too much James, not in the chat, come on. We're having too much volume is it's almost like intense. I mean, it is intense to like ride 25, 30 hours a week. A lot of us here have done it. I think all of us here have actually done that. So I mean, and the first time you do it, you know, you finish and you're like, I think I need a rest week, like right now. And you know, how many intervals did you do in that first week? Not many, but you know, as you get into it, you can, you know, and you... develop better habits, better recovery, better pacing. You can do a little more intensity, but at some point, like James said, you've got to find the right balance. And if it's an attrition thing or a pacing thing, it doesn't really matter why you are having trouble with one or the other. You've got to find a balance regardless of the other factors, and then you can think about tweaking things and modifying going forward. I think sometimes when I have clients that, you know, are doing well with the higher intensity efforts of the week, but want to push the volume. Like the first two things I say is like, okay, as long as you're fueling that additional volume well and you're pacing it well. I mean, this is exactly what you just said, but it's like, as long as you're riding easy enough in zone two or your endurance miles and you're fueling throughout, both after the intensity, after the bike ride and during the bike ride, I'm fine with it. I'm always happy to see it, honestly, because everyone is... fairly time-limited. So oftentimes I feel comfortable with them adding additional volume to the week. It's always the limiter of like recovery. And like James was saying, like, can they have quality interval sessions? So that's my two notes for everyone. It's like, are you feeling the effort? Are you pacing it well? And then if so, then happy to see additional volume. Yeah. And like Amina said earlier, how are you sleeping? Like, are you one of those people who could do six hours? Okay, sure. If you're 18, I'll let you get away with six hours of sleep now and then. But if you're training a lot and you've got a lot of other stress, I don't want to see that. Go to sleep. Take a nap. All right. So Alex has popped in. Alex, do you have any thoughts on at what point is intensity more important than volume and balancing those two things? Sorry, you're fresh into the podcast and Bob and throw questions at you. Yeah, I saw that question posed earlier and I mean, I don't know what was already said, but I think, yeah, when it comes time, like if someone's racing and it's their race season, it's like, I've seen athletes be like, oh, I'm not, I'm riding less or I should keep up this larger volume I've been doing. And it's like, no, we need to focus on your limiters, race-specific work, which is often more intensity. And so that's when I would prioritize intensity over volume. And yeah, you can always have both. So let's do one thing. Yeah, so nobody had thought about it in terms of racing yet, so that's an excellent addition. Thank you for reading all of our minds ahead of time. Yeah, something else to add is maybe think about how, what you need to go well in your races. You know, if you're someone who needs a lot of volume, like a high chronic training load when you race, then maybe you need to prioritize that volume over some intensity in the run-up. And likewise, if you go well and you're fresh, then yeah, maybe prioritizing some intensity, dropping the hours as you get close to your event is the answer, but that can be quite individual. Yeah, and speaking of racing and volume versus intensity, I think a good example is people targeting, for example, long gravel races, like six, seven, eight hours. For these people, you know, volume can, volume, high volume, especially long rides can be as specific as it gets. So if you're one of those people and you haven't done a six-hour ride in a while, I think it'd be a great idea to maybe replace one interval session with a long ride like that because it's very, very hard for most people to find opportunity to do a long ride like this. It definitely makes sense to sacrifice one or two shorter interval sessions for a longer ride. Yeah, no, I completely agree with that. Yeah, and I think because we just had Unbound on the calendar a week or two ago, I don't know. By the way, when did Unbound start to have pit stops, like I'm watching an IMSA race? Alright, that's a discussion for another day. I think they always have them. Yeah, I mean, it's a long race. I just never have seen the footage from the Feed Zone, because, like, it's seriously, I was like, did I just turn on, like, what series is this? Oh, it's a bike. No, from what I understand, it's evolved a bit, where in previous editions, people took their time a little bit more, the Feed Zone was a bit of a friendlier place, and now... Yeah, it's just no mercy. Everyone's trying to race through the feed, as happens in the road. So yeah, it's the evolution of gravel. I predicted this a long time ago. Gravel would eventually become road racing. Except with pit stops, which I actually think is really cool. I thought it was awesome when I was watching it, by the way. So okay. Anyway, sorry for the tangent. Next question is, how higher work stress affects training and planning, assuming the same training? Hours. And we've kind of been getting at this, but that's kind of why I grouped it here. So who wants to take a crack at this first? I mean, both things are going to, yeah, both your intensity and your volume are going to need to be managed under higher loads of stress. But yeah, I think they both hold risks. You know, if you're doing, you might be well worth. knocking back some intensity because that's sort of thing that can push you over the edge and you can maybe get sick if it's a period of high stress and it's all sort of thing that you need to be reasonably well rested to perform but likewise with the volume although in theory doing some easier riding might not be too bad if it's been a stressful period. There's a reason you're stressed and finding time to do more volume is probably a hard thing to do as well. So yeah, neither of them are really a magic bullet and the answer as much as it might be unpopular is probably both need to take a bad seat. I agree. And actually, I would say that the how many training hours are you doing is not a major consideration, but it is a consideration. So if your normal training hours is like like 14 to 16, something like that. I would usually want to drop the volume during the week especially, assuming that you work 9 to 5, Monday through Friday. And we'll try to add a little more time on the weekend. But if you're somebody who has a lot of family stuff on the weekend, you've got more time during the week, I'll try to keep more hours during the week, maybe keep the weekend more chill. But a lot of it just comes down to auto-regulation. Like the clients I've been working with the longest, like everybody, you know, we've had a long back and forth with this of like, if you don't feel like you can do the intervals, don't. Or if you feel like you want to move them to tomorrow, if you just want to ride easy, if you feel like you need a day off, take it. Like managing that stress is the top priority. And I think a lot of people at points like that also are afraid that they're going to lose a lot of fitness if they don't do the riding perfectly. And so, and that can, you know, Like in terms of recovery, like if you have all that high work stress and you are nailing all your training, like you're kind of doubling your losses there. You've got to be careful about that kind of stuff. So, all right, that's enough of me blabbing. Who's next? I think that in high stress periods of time, it's really important to decide if you're trying to improve or simply trying to maintain your fitness. and it's really important to be honest with yourself what you can actually do because it doesn't take much to maintain and changing your goal to maintaining can relieve a lot of stress. You won't have to worry that much about trying to fit in training into already busy days because you don't need to do that much riding to maintain. So that's always an option. Yeah, yeah, excellent thought about that you don't actually have to do that much to maintain fitness. You know, doing some hard riding when you can, when you feel good, when it feels good, when you're motivated to, well, maybe not when you're motivated to, a lot of cyclists are too motivated for this stuff, so maybe you want to take a backseat on the intensity sometimes, but, you know, Erica? Yeah, I think like some... There's also, like, hidden stress. Like, as clients that travel, like, fly a lot for work, I think they often see that as, like, oh, you're just flying, you're just going there, and then, like, what training should I do when I get there? Even if it's available to them, like, they have a bike or a gym or such, like, at the place that they're going to work, you still need to be really careful. You need to manage travel stress. It's, like, super exhausting. You're around a lot of people. There's a high potential for... Getting, catching a cold, something like that. So I think just like being aware of like things you may not think are necessarily stressors off the bike and trying to mitigate, you know, maybe fitness loss or just sickness with that. Yeah, Alex? Yeah, it's so weird and interesting. I've had two clients recently experience similar things where it's like they'll either kind of feel more or less fine, but then go to a workout and it's so bad, like legs just... Feel Really Bad, Nothing, Can't Hit Watts. And then other days where it's like, I didn't feel great, but just wanted to go out to clear my mind, and they like, hit great numbers. So it's, to me, it's like, just life stress, work stress, how it manifests can often be kind of deceptive or confusing. So I think if work stress is ever high, it's like, you really have to like... come into training with that in mind and be like some days I'm going to feel bad and some I'm going to feel good and there might not be a rhyme or reason but I just kind of have to accept that so kind of like what it's been already shared before like really approaching the training with a lot of flexibility and being like well if I go into a day and have really good legs maybe I should you know move up tomorrow's workout and do it that day. And if, you know, I go out and my legs feel really bad, maybe I'm just gonna take a, you know, easy day and that's alright. But it's really made me scratch my head a lot about how, like, why, you know, why the stress manifests itself in such unpredictable ways. Yeah, I really can't figure it out. I mean, that's actually one of the hallmarks I find of times of high stress is the, like, what days are good? Who knows? I mean, and this is also something that happens during times of high training stress when life stress is low, is your legs start becoming hit and miss, and that's always a sign of, okay, we probably need to back this off a little bit. So, yeah, you know, different stress, same manifestation. And so, you know, I tell people it's like, you know, at some points we're just going to have to play whack-a-mole with your legs. They feel good one day, all right, mole pops up, whack it with some intervals, and the next day, don't expect to recover from that. because you had a good day and it's stressful and, you know, your recovery is going to be slowed. So, um, uh, who's next? Uh, Megan? I feel like we kind of already touched all the good points, but I think too, like, you know, if you're just going to be pretty stressed at work for a week or two, like, you know, it's okay to just be like, we're going to take it really easy for these couple weeks. And if it's like longer, then it's really more about managing, like, you know, what can you handle? You probably can't handle what you were doing previously when you weren't as stressed at work. And, you know, like someone else said, like, I wouldn't be expecting to make gains. Like, you might. There's a good chance you might not. Like, if you're just that stressed. A lot of times when people are stressed, their diet goes out the window. And so it's a whole cascade. And, you know, like, not trying to, like... overdo it by like, oh, well, I'll just crash diet this week and it'll all be fine. Like all these things kind of like play a big role. But yeah, that's kind of what I was going to say. Maybe you have to like drop your FTP by 10, 20 watts and just to be sure that you're not overdoing it because like if you do lose fitness, you don't want to, yeah, like you don't want to keep training, you know, where FTP is not, that's going to make things worse. But yeah, considering all those things. And your FTP effectively dropping is also a sign of very poor recovery. And realistically, it'll come back when all the stress goes away and you actually recover. And like we said, it doesn't take a lot to maintain. So I think the last point there that I want to get across is establishing expectations of what can you expect from your legs during times of very high stress and not expecting... that much improvements, especially if you are pretty well trained, and expecting hit and miss legs, and also expecting that when it's all gone, you'll be back to normal, or if not, even better sometimes. One of my guys is, he had a long period of high stress, and we're seeing some great fitness from him right now. And I did have to reassure him at one point a couple weeks ago that it'll be fine, just, you know, you're doing great. You're doing plenty to maintain. I wouldn't be surprised to see a little extra when all the stress goes away. And I don't want to scaremonger, but if you don't back off when things get stressful and you just try to stick to your plan and power through, if things take a turn and they get even more stressful than you anticipated, then you've got nowhere to go, really. If you're a little more conservative, then you might have some scope to take on another obstacle if it appears. No, I think that's fair scaremongering. That's fully approved. All right. Next question. What habits do you try to instill in athletes pre and post-workout? Okay. Pre-workout. I want someone to know. Don't take pre-workout. Maybe start with that. That's a terrible idea for gym rats only. Coffee is approved, but coffee is approved. I don't know about, yeah, like powdered, colored, colored, powdered, powdered mix stuff. It's from questionable sources. Also, don't take, yeah, maybe not caffeine at 6 p.m. either. No. If you're, yeah, in the morning, morning ride, coffee is approved. Then I want to know how many grams of carbs you're having per hour on the rides. I want you to know What, yeah, I want you to have your ride snacks or if they're going in your bottles planned out or if you're going to stop at a cafe or stop to refill later on, having an idea where that would be and what you're going to be getting is good because, yeah, it might be a little hard work to plan sometimes but it really can have a massive impact not only on that current day's training but on upcoming days. And then... I'll say after the ride, I want to see a nice workout comment coming in pretty soon, before you forget everything that happened, all the crazy stuff, so yeah, there's just a couple to get us started. Yeah, but also maybe after the emotions of a fantastic or a horrible day have subsided and you have a little bit of perspective, although the emotional comments are also appreciated too, it's just... Harder to know what level to respond to a very emotional comment with. I definitely take an emotional comment over that comment. Agreed. 100%. Alright, who's up? I don't know, I feel like it's hard to top a carb comment, but I wanted to say too, coming into your workout with your day in mind, if you just did... you know eight hours of the most stressful work of your life like don't pressure yourself to like have the workout of the year um so I think that's kind of a good thing to like you know come into a pre-ride with um post-workout you know don't stand the road crying about it because you kind of you know you kind of knew that you know it could not go very well I think that's important just because putting your training and how well it goes or doesn't go, like, into perspective, I think can kind of help, like, your long-term progress with it. Yeah. James, again! Oh, from the top rope! All right, hold on, let somebody else get in there before you take all the good ideas. Go ahead. You guys have hit so many good ones. I mean, like... That's what I would think. Like, that's the flow of going into your training. It's like, okay, how am I going to fuel this effort? You know, setting expectations for the day. Like, how was my workday? Or like, what do I expect? Or what is my personal goal in this workout? Like, maybe it's not the top range of power. Maybe I'm going to just like try to do my best and just put out the power I have on the day. And then, you know, just thinking ahead, like weather, which roads that you prefer for what workout is upcoming. Just setting it up in advance, I feel like makes everything feel a little less stressful. And then post, yeah, get the app and put your comments in as soon as you're done. That's very helpful. And sometimes during. Sometimes stirring. And then, like, recovery nutrition. You know, if you've got to travel somewhere, you've got something else coming up afterwards, like pack a recovery drink, like powder, you can just throw it in your bottle afterwards, something, like some amount of nutrition post-ride, so that the next day when you're going to do some other interval session or just a bike ride, that you still feel good. I was going to say what James was probably going to say, that... Not a good habit. The opposite of it, a bad post-ride habit is that if you feel like you just need to launch around and chill on the sofa for two, three hours doing nothing, being incapable of doing anything, it's not a good habit to have. It might be a pretty strong indicator of you not eating enough. I used to be looking forward to these just, I don't know, periods of time I was just chilling on the sofa. Turns out, yeah, it was a strong sign that I ignored for too long. Yeah, definitely eat enough. All right, well, James, all right, the floor is yours. What else you got? So I think, yeah, not to be underestimated is what are you wearing for this ride? You know, if it's, you check the forecast straight up and if it's going to be wet or there's any chance of rain or you live in the UK, just bring it anyway. I was going to say, this man is from the UK. can have a pretty big impact on your ride. If you get soaked or you get cold hands out on a ride, it can definitely change the training quality, let's say. Just touching on route choices, I'd say most of the time it's absolutely fine to leave without a route in mind, just follow your front wheel, but if you've got some specific efforts, maybe some longer efforts that require Yeah, like straight or sections of road without traffic furniture, traffic lights or downhills, then just bearing that in mind can have a good quality on your training because I've definitely seen rides where people have ended up doing intervals in pretty unsuitable locations, let's say, and they don't usually lead to the best, and straight up can be dangerous. So yeah, don't put yourself in positions where you're taking risks in training like that just to get some intervals done. Think ahead and plan an appropriate route. Yeah, and sometimes that means taking an L and riding the trainer instead. I cannot tell you the number of times where people... Start doing like VO2 max intervals outdoors and like their route is so up and down that they're trying to like push their biggest gear as they're going downhill at like 40 miles an hour. They're like, I can't push. I'm like, just go back. You know, you can go back and like do that same hill again. They're like, I don't want to. All right. Okay. Trainer time. But I actually had a couple that nobody's mentioned yet, which is mental focus heading into your ride is a big one. Like Megan said, having your day in mind in terms of what you can expect out of your ride is totally reasonable. But once you start your ride, it should be a time, unless you've got nothing to do, like if it's just an endurance ride, okay, sure, let your mind wander. The time is what counts. But if you've got intervals to do, you need some focus. getting there, like making it habit. I don't know. Maybe this is what meditation is for. I don't really know. Is this part of mindfulness? I'm not really sure. Those are terms that may be related. Somebody smarter than me can confirm or deny. But like you've got to show up ready to, if the intervals are going to hurt, you've got to be ready to hurt and you can expect that. And when it's over, you can reward yourself for that. Go get a little treat. You deserved it. You earned it. But I think that and this is something that I've noticed in some of my clients and I've noticed it myself once in a while like because my workouts are gym focused mostly these days and it's so easy to just bring your laptop down to the basement where the squat rack is and just like be on Reddit in between sets. It's not a good idea or to put on a podcast. I cannot listen to podcasts now when I lift because I'll take like 20 minutes between sets and I'm like, oh shit, I gotta go warm up again. What is wrong with me? I got lost in the sauce over here. Listen to this interesting discussion. I've learned I cannot do that. So now I just blast metal for the most part. So like focus matters a lot. And I would also suggest going in knowing what counts as progress. and if you even should expect to see progress on that day because I think this is something that some people will get lost in is like short-term improvements like looking for, oh, I got to go faster every day. I got to have more watts every day. Like, no, you don't. Based on what we said earlier, like how much improvement can you expect in an entire year? Divide that by 365 and tell me if you're even going to see that within your power meter error. Is that even like... Is that even close to a possibility? The answer is, for the most part, it's going to be no. So for the most part, heading out there and knowing what counts as progress and being able to focus and know the goals of your workout and execute, I'd say is probably underrated in terms of pre-workouts. And post-workout, I would say gauge your progress goals. Like, what are your long-term goals? Like, maybe it's like consistency during the week. It's like, okay, I've got a stressful job, but I know I can get five days on the bike a week, and I just have to motivate myself to do it. A lot of people in that spot. And like, okay, cool. You don't even have to ride hard, just do it. Did I execute? Yes. Even if it's a recovery ride, great, congratulations. Or if it's like nutrition, or if it's anything related to that kind of stuff, you know, judge your progress on your progress goals. underrated pre-workout, read the workout. Every like six weeks or so, I get someone say, oh, sorry mate, I just did something that wasn't what I wrote down. So yeah, I would say just read it twice sometimes. Yeah, read it twice sometimes. If it doesn't make sense, ask your coach, just double check with the coach what they actually meant and just make sure everyone's on the same page there because yeah. Those little things do add up over a long time, but yeah. Yeah. A couple months ago, one of my clients, I gave, I think it was like eight by 30 second max efforts with five minute rests. And I use the apostrophe mark for minutes and like the quotation marks for seconds. A lot of people do that. This person did not read it that closely and did five second rests between eight 30 second full gas efforts. It was not pretty. So yeah, double check your workouts, especially if it seems like, what the fuck? Because, and I write my workouts by hand. I don't have any saved workouts, so I will typo occasionally or like something will just not save in training peaks or for some reason or other. Shit happens. Double check. And I've got a couple clients who pretty much every Friday or Saturday will read the next week and be asking questions in the comments on TrainingPeaks. Oh, did you mean this? Or how do I do this? My favorite thing in the world. So yeah, 100%. Great, great habit. I have a few clients that do that as well. They'll read ahead of the week and then they'll ask specific questions regarding. And it's really great. We can have like a dial. You can use the post-activity comments pre-activity. Yeah, you've been all locked out. Very helpful. And this is a great segue into our next question, which is what are the top... Three to Five Things Athletes Can Do to Be a Good Student for Their Coach. So we got five people here, and we're going to let that be the first one. So reading ahead. So what else do people have? Like basically, what are great habits that let people get the most out of coaching? Oh, both of you again. Okay. I think Erika went first last time, so okay, give me this, go ahead. I would say that tell your coach how you actually feel, what you are actually thinking instead of what you think your coach wants to hear. Because some people think, including me, well, when I was younger, I'm more naive that a coach will be impressed if I Nailed the execution of every single workout for the whole season. That's not really true. Your coach will appreciate if you tell that, hey, didn't quite feel like doing a hard workout today. You know what? I don't feel like doing the same volume for the next few weeks. Yeah, just be honest, be very transparent. Your coach will not think worse of you. If you want to take a rest, if anything, your coach will be very, very happy because it means crisis averted. 100%. You know what I'm impressed by a lot of the time? It's not anything that's in anybody's control ever. What really impresses us is when we are working with one of those genetic freaks who have an outsized response to training. That impresses us. Well, me anyway. Oh, okay, so Erica said in the chat she forgot hers. Okay, so we're going to let you remember it, and we're going to move on to somebody else real quick. Alex. Yeah. I feel like this is a really big one. It's not that interesting or fun of one, but it's like, I think kind of a lot of the things we've discussed already come back to this, but it's like, trust. The best thing you can do as an athlete is trust your coach. And I think... That has so many effects, whether it's better outcomes, better experience, less stress. You know, if you're always second-guessing or wondering, is this going to be the right thing, that can be the right thing, I mean, it's just such a huge stressor, and I think it's half the reason why you get a coach, is to take that thought out of it. But also, you know, I've had athletes who think, oh, I'm going to add a little more riding today because, you know, I'm feeling good, or like, I don't think my coach prescribed me enough, or I'm going to do some extra intensity, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, I've had to reiterate that to my athletes. It's like, I study, you know, how you react to all of the work and rest I give you, and I formulate, you know, a plan with the most amount of stimulus that we can get away with that you can recover from. And so, you know, setting that balance out of whack by doing your own things sometimes, you know, can really mess up the progress you're making, how you're feeling, how you're performing. I think at least for the first, like, year that you're working with a coach, just do everything they say. Just trust blindly. Let the coach learn about you and how you react. And then maybe after that first year, you can start being like, okay, I understand how all this works. I'm going to maybe add in stuff here and there that I think I could get away with. But yeah, just really, please trust us. Okay, I'll say maybe not totally blindly. Maybe not totally blindly. Well, I don't know about other coaches, but I would say you could trust any of the empirical coaches blindly. I agree. As long as you hold up your end of the bargain. I think that that's what this question is kind of getting at. It's like, what do we expect out of our athletes that let us coach them well is another way that we could frame this. Megan and I have talked about this a lot in just our regular conversations about we actually kind of poke fun at trust the process sometimes because if because if the expectation of the process is that you make progress, you should verify that there is progress. And if you don't see there's progress, feel free to ask questions. And this is one of the things I encourage everybody to do, even with our coaches, especially with our coaches, ask questions. This will probably be mine. It's just ask questions. If you have a question about the plan, why are we doing this interval? Why this much volume? Why this? And if you have any thoughts about why not this? I want to hear that too. I cannot tell you the number of people I've worked with where they're like, oh, I wish we could have done this interval set. And I'm like, well, that would work too. You just got to let me know that that's what you prefer. Or if you want to experiment with it, you don't feel like this is getting the most out of you that we could. Maybe you don't want to do threshold efforts. Maybe you want to do over-unders or something like that. Yeah, we can make that work too. Maybe one's a little more specific, which is why I went to that, but we can probably get the same out of the other one and maybe we need to make some other small tweaks, but yeah, ask questions and trust but verify. One thing that I think is a good habit is to have an open dialogue about what's happening in your races and talking about race tactics really. It's something that We can't see on a computer, just from a race file, what's going on in the race. So having a good race report after you've raced and then being able to work on those, work on aspects in coming races or for the same event the next year can have an incredible difference. So I think, yeah, being reflective about your racing, setting yourself... process goals for what you can do before and during the event. Those things have a really big effect. It's not just about how many watts you can push. I would say that is a massively important part of coaching or getting the most out of your coaches, utilizing them as a resource and someone to bounce ideas off around how to win. And if somebody has GoPro footage or if their race is like, if there's footage of their race at all and I can see them, I want to see it. Because I would say 50% of what I read in race reports is absolutely true. And 50% of what I want in race reports is not left in. And so, like, if somebody says, oh, I was in great position, and I see the footage, and I'm like, your 20th wheel going into the last corner, and there's only 300 meters to the line. Like, if it were 1K, like, 2K, okay, sure, like, that's a good position in that last corner. Not with 300 meters to go. And so, and also, like, maybe somebody's having trouble cornering or staying in the draft, or you can see that, you know, clear as day at any point in footage of a crit. So, you know, and that can be a process goal eventually too. So, yeah, 100%. Oh, Erica dropped off. So, hopefully she'll be back in a second with her thought. But, oh, she had, I think she had a call. Never mind. Okay, so I guess we'll never know. That'll be a mystery. Megan, your turn. Everyone took all mine again. Okay, well, you can do the deep cut. Yeah, the biggest thing I think is like having that dialogue. Like, I don't know, I think not as many athletes as I wish would like do take advantage of that. I have some like they'll email me about this or that or like constant dialogue back and forth and training peaks comments and that's great. And I feel like those clients usually are the ones that come out of coaching that kind of can handle it on their own or at least are ready to like, you know, I think I could do this myself. kind of get the gist of it. And usually by the end of our time, like, they're like, hey, can I swap this with this? Like, I'm like, yeah, that's a great swap, you know, or whatever. Like I had talked with Kolie earlier, you know, some of the athletes that don't quite get it are the ones that's like, oh, I want to put like, you know, my lift before this hard workout. Is that fine? Or like, you know. I don't actually want to have any recovery days, can I just ride all endurance, you know, like, so things like that, like, you know, the athlete is not, you know, having enough dialogue with you to understand kind of why we're doing what we're doing, like, like, we're trying to, like, coach you as an athlete, so, like, you know, trying to pry as much out of us as you can, I think, is kind of getting your money's worth. Yeah, for sure, and I totally agree that the people who have worked with us for the longest, If they love working with us and they want to keep working with us, we're super, super happy to work with somebody as long as they want to work with us. That's great. But a lot of the time, after maybe one to three years, oftentimes people will be like, I think I get the process. I get it and I'm going to take it from here. And we're sorry to lose a person that we really like working with. You know, that's a circle of life. What are you going to do? And we're happy to have people like that too. Or Kimmy says after three years, they leave and rejoin as coaches. That is very true. Most of our coaches have been our clients. So, all right, let's get into the last question. And I want to hear a thought from everybody on this one. What do cyclists put an oversized emphasis on that they shouldn't? I'm going to say They're training. Because it's, yeah, there's a lot more, there's a lot more that goes into your cycling performance than just what you do on the bike. You know, I think making time and having good sleep hygiene around your sleep and your nutrition, managing life stress, planning for races, thinking about tactics, yeah, making sure you're in a good headspace. around racing. All that stuff can have an enormous difference. And I think a lot of people, probably myself included, fixate on their training and they're quite hung up over how training sessions go day-to-day, but really a lot of that energy and focus could be used in other areas for improvements. Who's up next or is it me? Alex, go ahead. I mean, I kind of had a similar one, but it's just... You know, not seeing the forest for the trees, is that how the saying goes? Yeah. Yeah, it's just, I think with everyone I've ever coached, it's, you know, it's like, oh, this interval number three of four was low, and like, or this one session wasn't great, or like, I underperformed, like, I'm sorry, like, I did bad. Or like, you know, my whole block is tanked because this one workout was suboptimal. I had a stop sign. Oops. Yeah, exactly. And it's like, you know, but that's why we're here. It's like, we're here to offer that kind of zoomed out. Like, yeah, this was like, you didn't hit all the numbers. You know, you were like a few percentage low on this interval. But like, in the grand scheme of things, as far as the progress we're making and the direction we're going, this totally fits. And like, Yeah, so just kind of offering that, like, we don't, you don't need to stress all the little small things, and just like, are you riding your bike? Are you happy? Like, you know, I think the consistency is what I always try to stress to people, that as long as you're getting out, you're feeling happy, like, you know, that's, yeah, you're going to make, continue to make progress on your bike, so. It might be controversial, but I think, Some people just spend too much time thinking about genetics, or more specifically like us thinking that they are not gifted, they are not talented, they have wrong genetics, whatever. Because I think once you start going down that rabbit hole, it's just nothing good can come out of it. And I think it's much more productive just to focus on trying to find your niche. Even if you are not gifted, and I think that's true for the vast majority of people, because most people by definition are average, it's much better to focus on finding your niche where you can do relatively well, better than your watts per kilo would suggest, or anything like that. I think everyone can find a niche like that, so I think it's much better to focus on it than just on talent or lack of talent. Yeah, we don't have to, we are not slaves to genetic determinism. That is definitely not a thing. Who's next? Who's got one left? Yeah, maybe just to add a bit on what I've said, I think a lot of people are very focused on power output at the minute. Really, what people should be focusing on is speed and going fast and a lot of that can come down to bike handling skills, aerodynamics and things like that. So, yeah, taking some time to do some technical routes and training, working on your bike handling and descending, things like that. They're often overlooked in kind of like modern day training because, yeah, everyone's just got power meters and they're focused on what's, what's, what's. But yeah, there's a lot more that goes into certainly road racing than just how many watts you push. Yeah. Megan, did we get you on this one yet? No, and I feel like mine's kind of contradictory to James, but I... That's okay, they can both be true. I feel like a lot of cyclists focus on the externals, like, oh, I got seventh place or whatever, and it's so hard to gauge with cycling, because You know, unless it's a time trial where there's like, you know, there's a lot of equipment variation that makes a huge difference on your performance. But like most road races and crits, like a lot of it's like, you know, fitness and luck. Like just, you know, you can have all the fitness in the world and you probably still won't win or you could have the best luck. And if you don't have the fitness and fly off the back, then that's that. Yeah, like, I think focusing on improving, like, becoming the better version of yourself, because, like, you should never have to validate, like, why do I even do this sport? I'm not even that good. Like, you do it because you enjoy it and you like doing it. Like, it just, I don't know. I think just trying to place the focus more internally, I think, kind of helps people from burning out with that kind of thing. I accept, yeah, intrinsic. Motivation is important, and comparing yourself to others is always a path to unhappiness, unless you win, of course. Ironically, a race is just comparing yourself to others, that's why we race. This is true, but I would say, yeah, when it comes to racing and power output, I'd challenge listeners to try and do the least power, or certainly, Overperform with people of similar power, you know, if you've got a friend or teammate in the race with a similar power profile to you, see if you can get a few places in front of them whilst doing less power, you know, that's the end game because, you know, ultimately, as Jedemaier said, everyone's got a genetic potential and we have physical limitations and it's about Giving yourself the best chance to make use of what you've got, and yeah, things like tactics and bike handling can certainly go a long way to helping you perform for the power outputs that you can do. You know what's even worse than genetic determinism? The watts per kilo versus category chart determinism. Just because it says you should be in this category or whatever because of this power output does not always make it so. You've got to show up to the bike race and do the race. And there are a lot of people out there with tons of watts who can't race for shit. And there's a lot of people who are phenomenal racers and you look at their power profile and you go, how? And they're wizards. Or witches, I guess. And that's great. So I guess it's my turn last. I would say cyclists put an overemphasized emphasis on outcomes and letting that determine the – and letting that judge the quality of everything that came before. So if you go to a race and you want to win it and you don't, does that mean you've got to go back to the drawing board in order to – do you need a totally new training plan? Do you need to, like, quit your job and, you know, abandon your family in order to win this race? No, absolutely not. Did you show up? Did you execute your training right? Did you have the fitness improvements that you thought you might get? Did you have good legs in the right day? And sometimes just, there's just bad luck in cycling. There's punctures, there's crashes, there's, you know, you'll make the wrong turn or the marshal makes the wrong turn and half the field goes the right way and you don't and like, okay, well, there goes your race. It happens. Especially on gravel. A lot of punctures. A lot of punctures that on pound I heard about. So, yeah. And so, like, one of the things that I find helpful is, I learned about this a while ago, is, like, what happens if you run the same race, like, 100 times? Like, let's make it pretty simple. Like, let's make it a kilo. Standing start, one kilometer, fast as you can go. If you win, 99 times out of 100, great, congratulations. You're going to show up and everything's going to be fine. But if you win one out of four times and that time that you go race, you win, does that mean that your plan is great? I would want to see you winning at least three out of four times before I'd say the plan is great. So just because you do or don't get a certain outcome does not necessarily say that your plan is great or terrible or anything like that. And this is why process goals are so, so important because if you execute those, you know at some point you're going to get the chance to have the race that you want or otherwise you're just going to have to, you know, hopefully improve more until, you know, those good results start to become more consistent and they're not like flukes, which in cycling, you know. Good days can be flukes just like bad days. They're less common. Good days are way less common than bad days as flukes, but they certainly do happen. So, all right. Any other thoughts before we wrap this up? Alex, go ahead. Yeah, I want to add one more thing. I want to say I feel like it's maybe the most important thing. And like if I were to advise any new cyclist or even veteran cyclist, any cyclist, I probably would say. But I would, yeah, I would. Really recommend not focusing on diet and what you're eating. Like, I feel like, sadly, cyclists are some of the most obsessed about food. And I, yeah, I would just say for the majority, the vast majority, like, essentially, unless you're a world tour pro, you don't need to be thinking about food. Or I would say you don't need to be thinking about all that you shouldn't eat or, like, keeping your weight down. Unless your doctor tells you to. For sure. And yeah, but it's again, that is so rare. It's like, you know, fuel your workouts, you know, meet your caloric needs, meet your recovery needs, and then that's it. But I found way too many cyclists, myself included, worrying about I'm eating too much or like I need to get my weight lower. and it's just not necessary. It's not going to help you. You know the term for that? What's the term? Orthorexia. Oh, okay, orthorexia. I mean, for sure. So, I don't know. I think so many cyclists suffer unnecessarily because of this whole obsession on food and, again, especially if you're talking about the U.S., you don't need to be focusing on it so much. Just forget about it. Just smooth breath. I actually, I had this as mine, and then I was like, you know what, nah, maybe not, because it's such a can of worms, but I totally agree, and the thing that I've been thinking about the most over the last couple months is that the recommendations for healthy eating, you know, are much more oriented towards the general population and not people who burn a ton of calories every day on their rides. And additionally, on those recovery days when their bodies are repairing from those rides. So yeah, there's a lot more to dig into with that for sure, but we'll have to shelf it for another episode. So any other thoughts before we actually, for real, wrap this up? Cool. All right. Well, thank you, everybody, for listening. I want to thank all of our coaches who came to this podcast and gave some really excellent thoughts. And if you'd like to work with any of them, shoot me an email, empiricalcycling at gmail.com. Or if you'd like to consult with us and keep self-coaching, reach out for a consult. And if you would like to give us a nice rating or if you listen to podcasts, five stars always goes a long way. If you want to ask a question on the Instagram, go give me a follow at empiricalcycling. And I do a weekend AMA up there as well. And it'd be great if you want to ask questions. and I'll give you a very brief answer. All right. Thanks, everybody. We'll see you next time.