The Stand Up Cyclist with Sam Bewley

Foreign.

I'm charlie redding.

And I'm claire fudge.

And this is the tribe athlon podcast.

What a character. Assassinating. It's like, great writer, shit bloke. And then he was sort of just like, he was just basically repeating what the commentator had said in a different way. And then it kind of just took off from there, that catchphrase. So we decided, I'll get some T shirts made for the Tour de France this year and we'll, we'll try to give them away to you. Basically, let's look for a bike ride at the Tour de France that did something stupid or did something funny. You know, it was. Obviously we're not accusing, we're not saying these guys are ship blokes. Ship blokes is just an endearing term for someone who's done something funny.

That was Sam Bewley and this episode is the Stand up cyclist. Sam Bewley is a racing cyclist from New Zealand who until recently rode for the UCI World Team Bike Exchange. Jayco Bewley also competed for the UCI pro team Radio Shack with Lance Armstrong and twice won an Olympic bronze medal on the track. He's raced in nine Grand Tours in total, which includes five starts in the Vuelta Espana, three starts in the Giro Italia and the Tour de France in its 2020 edition. Sam is a very amusing podcast host as well, and as a result he is known as the standup cyclist for bringing humor to the peloton. So I wanted to chat to Sam about his transition from mountain to track to road cycling, the highs and lows of his Grand Tours cycling with Lance Armstrong. Of course there was questions clearly I couldn't resist asking. And the importance of culture in the cycling team. Sam is a great guy. He's just. Since we recorded this, he has now officially retired and I know you're going to really love this interview with Sam Bewley. 33 Fuel Produce Award winning natural sport nutrition and everything they do is led by their fuel, loss of performance, health and for a fitter future. 33 Fuel's awesome products have been fueling triathletes since 2012, as well as many of the world's best athletes from other sports like the England football team, Tour de France winners and triathlon world champs, including four times Ironman world champ Chrissie Wellington, who's been using 33 fuel for years. I personally love their products. I particularly love their protein shake. I think it's delicious, but it's also not full of a load of junk. I love their meal replacement, which is kind of brilliant for pre or post workout recovery. I love their chia gels. Actually they work really well for me, but especially I love their energy bars and their protein bars. They feel like a proper treat to eat as well as being packed full of real amazing goodness. So finally out more about 33 fuel.com and if you use the code tribeathlon or click the link in the show notes, you'll get a very extra special discount on your order.

So.

Hey Sam, welcome to the Tribe Athlon podcast. Really looking forward to chatting to you, particularly as I've been listening to your podcast and I know there is, there's some great banter that goes on there. So I'm, I'm looking forward to, to, to getting to know you a little bit more and finding out a bit about your amazing career in cycling. But to kick things off, I always like to talk, hear more about the story. So can you tell us a little bit about how you got into cycling initially when you were growing up in New Zealand?

I mean, I guess like a lot of New Zealand kids, I was just an active, active sports person at school. I did a bit of everything. Played cricket, played rugby, played water polo, did school athletics, did whatever I could. Basically whatever could keep me out of the classroom, I suppose was an excuse to get out of the classroom. But I grew up in a town called Rotorua, which is a provincial town in the center of the north island and in New Zealand.

It's quite a smelly city, isn't it?

It is a smelly city, yeah. I actually, I noticed it for the first time in a long time when I went home last summer because I've been away for a couple of years. And I said, ah, that's what everybody's talking about. But it's quite a.

Those people that don't know that's because of the sulfur. It's not because they don't take the bins out or anything like that that.

You clarified that actually. But no, it's a really outdoors, outdoorsy town. A lot of lakes, a lot of people are into water skiing and wakeboarding and all that stuff. But I guess the main feature of, of the town is the forest. You know, it's right. It's only. We're only 1k. 1k from the city is this beautiful forest with hundreds of kilometers of mountain bike trails. So when I was a young kid, I just started to go out to the forest in the weekends with my dad and just got the bug for mountain biking pretty much straight away. Um, so then I was just. That it started occupying all my time just mountain biking on the weekends, mountain biking after school, even in the winter. Just put lights on and be out there in the dark chasing possums around the forest. And in the end I just, I just fell in love with it. And so I started to stop playing rugby and stopped playing cricket and just dedicated all my time to racing mountain biking. And then from there we just, it led into doing road cycling for training, basically for mountain biking. Then I started racing on the road, started having some success at junior level on the road and then ended up riding, ended up on the track. Because of that, they basically, the New Zealand cycling team said, oh, we want to, we want to see how you go on the track. So they put me on a couple of track races in Australia and then got the bug for that and then spend years and years riding on the track. And now I'm back on the road and soon to retire and probably head back to the mountain bike. So it's been a full circle.

Well, I was going to ask about that. I thought, I wondered if that might be the case. So, so how do you think, you know, when I've interviewed some of the, like, for example, some of the pro triathletes will use gravel racing to kind of hone their kind of technical skills and, and improve their fitness. How do you think the, the mountain biking set you up for, for then heading onto the road and the track?

I think from a physical side of things, it really set me up well for the track because it's such a punchy sport. You know, you kind of like you're either resting on the mountain bike or you're going full gas, full gas up a hill or sprinting out of a corner or things like that. So from a physical side of things, it was quite, quite a good lead into the racing on the track because obviously on the track it's very similar, especially in the bunch races and then definitely from a technical side of things, gives you confidence on your bike, confidence what, what you can do with the bike, where you can, where you can put the front wheel, how you can turn aggressively, all those sorts of things. So there's a lot of skills from that sort of crossed over from mountain biking to track. And then there's a, then there's a really good set of skills that you learn on the track as well that you can take to the road. So I think the combination of both of those early on in my career was, was certainly helpful when I got onto into road racing.

And have you, have you used mountain biking later? You know, in more recent years to kind of continue to hone those skills, or have you kind of focused purely on the right on the road, like in recent years?

Yeah, I haven't, I haven't done. I've barely touched a mountain bike in the last 10 years, mainly because whenever I go out on it, I seem to fall off it. So maybe I've, maybe I should be on it more. But no, I, I just, yeah, I haven't, I haven't done a lot because, I mean, there's, there's less mountain. I, I guess I'm probably what I say to everybody is I'm a mountain bike snob because I grew up in, in a town that has, in my opinion, the best mountain bike trails in the world. Like that. It's unbelievable. And then when I go out mountain biking here in Girona or in Andorra, it's quite. Andorra is good, obviously, but here in Girona it's quite rocky and I just don't enjoy it as much. So I think, I think I'm just grew up with the luxury of such good mountain bike trails. But also I don't have a lot of time in the racing season and when I do go home to New Zealand in the summers, typically I, I definitely get out on the mountain bike a couple times while I'm there. But no, I don't do so much of it now.

Okay, okay, fantastic. And, and so when, when, so when you move through to the track. So tell us a bit about your time on the track because, I mean, you know, you had some, some really big successes on the track, didn't you? So tell us a bit about maybe the, the highs of being on the track and, and also maybe a low, if there was one.

Yeah, the track was a big part of my. Well, it's a big part of my cycling career. I started, I started riding the track quite late. I didn't pick a track bike up until I was second year junior actually. And that was in, that was in 2005, but quickly had some success there. We won junior world title in team pursuit that year and I was second in, in the individual pursuit. And then I guess in New Zealand at the time, and still, still in New Zealand, track cycling was the big, was the pinnacle, pinnacle cycling discipline. And that was where all the funding funneled into, much like the uk big, you know, big pools of funding into the track program. And because there had been success over the years in the track and, and that kind of continued while I was in the program and we, we won the bronze medal in the team pursuit at the Beijing Olympics. And that was a, that, that was again the sort of the next step in the, in an injection of funding to New Zealand cycling and an ability to grow the, grow the track cycling program and employ more coaches and employ sports scientists and all those things. And at the time I was still a young guy. I was, I think I was, I just turned 21 at, at the Beijing Olympics or 20, it might have been 20 and, but I was racing on the track with like my best mates. You know, like these guys were like, it was, it was such a small program when I came in it was just basically a team, men's team pursuit team and a couple of other, other riders. But these guys were like, yeah, like we were thick as thieves, all of us. So I just loved being in the program and I never really thought I'd leave it. I thought, oh, I just want to ride track for the rest of my life. And didn't really have a big focus on becoming a road professional mainly because I didn't think I was good enough to. But I was also just having such a ball on the track and you know, we had so many highs. We had, you know, we, yeah, we had a couple of bronze medals at two different Olympics and but that just that whole period I look back with such fondness, especially now as I start to reflect more on my career, which we'll get to later. But just, yeah, it was such a cool six or seven years with a good group of guys and I mean, I guess it's hard to say that if I had any loads on the track. I guess, I guess getting bronze, getting third at the London Olympics might have been low in some ways because I think when we got third in Beijing we were like, it kind of came out of the blue a little bit. Up until that point our particular group of riders hadn't even won a middle at the world Champs. We're fourth that year at the start of 2008. And then we went on one to bronze. I thought I'll. And there was myself, Jesse Sargent, Wesley Goff. We were all 20, 20 year old kids and we thought, oh, give us four more years, we're going to win gold, you know. And then we just got third again. So we kind of just stayed, it stayed the same. So yeah, maybe that was a low.

But so that's interesting. So, so perhaps your, your first bronze medal was your high and your second.

Bronze medal was your low in some ways. Yeah, I mean obviously it was, it was a bit of A slower burn than that. Like we kind of gathered over the next four years that we weren't going to just go there and win gold in London. But, but yeah, the, the, the, the I stepped off the track at the London Olympics and the, you know, when we rode for bronze, I stepped off the track after that and never, never rode the track again. That was, that was the moment I, I knew that I was going to stop riding the track at least for a couple of years after that race because I was, I was proficient on the road to that at, by this point. But I still kind of, you know, held dreams of coming back for the next Olympic cycle. But once I started on the road then there was no looking back from there. Really. Yeah.

And I think, I think London, London 2012, obviously being a, being a palm, I'm slightly biased towards the fact that it was a, it was a great Olympics and obviously Team GB were doing amazing things on, on the track. It was. How did the, how did the atmosphere as a Kiwi compare between the Latin Beijing?

Yeah, again I've answered this question to a lot of people actually and people are often surprised by my response, but for me Beijing was better. I think the nuts and bolts of that is that it was my first Olympic experience. I think that's why it was so cool. But I mean London was certainly amazing but there was just funny, funny things that are like, you know, probably don't make sense to a lot of people but like Beijing was so fun because afterwards, after we'd finished competing and the Olympics kind of goes through this, this shift over three, over three weeks from a high performing sports event to a massive party essentially, you know, as people start to, you know, finish competing and start to go to the pubs and things. And like in Beijing they had so many dedicated bars that were just open 24 hours a day just for athletes from all around the world. And we met some, met some really cool people and had some really good times and then in London they didn't really have that. We were a bit left to our own devices and like we just have to go to the local pub and. Which was, which was great. But then, you know, the bars shut there at one o' clock in the morning. So often the parties were over before you wanted them to be over and weird things like that, you know, that probably don't make a lot of sense to people. But I guess if you're looking at it as a sports event, London was better than Beijing because, you know, it was embraced by the city, it was English speaking Country. You know, London's obviously a beautiful city and whereas Beijing maybe they, you know, they did some funny things. You know, they kick people out of homes and put walls up to try to protect the image of the Olympics in some way. So yeah, funny, funny, funny you asked that question. But yeah, I think I just. Beijing was my first Olympics, so it's a good, cool experience for me.

So. So next time, if we get the Olympics again, we've got to work better at the bars and the party afterwards.

But other than you need to leave the pubs open till six in the morning. Although I don't need that now, I'm a bit older, but back then I.

Was gonna say that. So having looked at your social media feed, there is, there is the odd that clearly beer features in your, in your priorities because there's a good few photos with the involve a beer that I recall. Um, so, so how, how so as you transitioned into being a pro cyclist, how did, how did that work out? How did you, how did you get your opportunity in the pro team and then talk us through your sort of career in the, in the Grand Tours?

Yeah, I look at my progression to becoming a professional road cyclist as like in some ways quite lucky. I had raced on the road as an amateur in France with the national, with the New Zealand under 23 team at that point that time we had, we actually had a, you know, a small road program. And so I raced in France and a little bit in Belgium before the Beijing Olympics, but I wasn't really, I never really thought I was good. Like I never thought I want to become a professional road cyclist because really I just really didn't think I was good enough to do it. So. And I was coming from a country that we didn't, we didn't have that pathway, we didn't have a lot of professional road cyclists. So it wasn't like, you know, we were watching 25 New Zealanders race a Tour de France every year. Like we were lucky if we had one sometimes. And after the Beijing Olympics it was kind of just came about that I, I met Taylor Finney at the Olympics in Beijing and he was, he was the up and coming American star. So he developed a relationship with, with Lance Armstrong and a couple of other influential people in the States and just so happened that Lance decided he was going to start a development team in 2009 called Trick Livestrong, which is now owned by Axel Merckx. It's called Action. But he, he started this, develop this development team and he wanted to develop American Young American kids. And I saw, I just saw this article on cycling news or one of the news websites, like three months after Beijing Olympics. So I messaged Taylor and said, hey, I want to, I want to come and ride for that team. And basically through Taylor and through a good friend of mine back in New Zealand, Ron Cheatley and Craig Adair, who was helping me, who was sponsoring me through Trek New Zealand, and trick was, I was the bike sponsor for Trek Livestrong. They kind of got in the ears of Trek as well. And then in the end, all of a sudden, I was on this development program in, in America. And that was a great year in 2009, racing over there with all those guys. And then just so happened that halfway through 2009, Lance decided he was going to start his own World Tour professional team, Team Radio Shack. And he wanted to bring at least one, maybe two guys from his development program up to the World Tour, you know, to sort of show that his development program was working. And I wasn't even the best writer in the team, but I was just, I was the oldest and I was probably the, the most mature of the mature of them at that time, even though I wasn't that mature, but I was more mature than the other guys and a little bit more developed. So I was the one they, one of the guys that they took. And then all of a sudden I was in this top tier professional road cycling team and I was like, well, how the hell did I get here? But then I, you know, I struggled for a year. The first year in Team Radio Shack. I just, I didn't have great experiences there. It was still kind of a team that was built around winning the Tour de France with Lance. And, you know, there's a lot of guys here that had come from his previous teams, from Discovery Channel and all those teams that they were part of the team. So it was really this team that was like, it was full of a lot of big characters and big, big named riders. So I was pretty nervous. Although they were all great guys and treated me well, I was pretty nervous. I was still very green when it came to road cycling. There's a lot of things I didn't know and there wasn't. I never really felt like there was a support network there to help me learn those things initially. So the first year I really struggled. And basically after a year of racing professional, I was like, oh, I'll see this contract out. The end of next year, I'll. I'll be done. I won't have another contract. I Don't really enjoy it that much anyway, so I'll go and I'll go back and ride the track, which is what I at the time was, you know, where I was most passionate. And then again I was lucky. Another, you know, fall from grace. That green edge started and it was going to be an Australian team. It was going to run, be run completely different. It was going to be full of Australians and Kiwis and we wanted to, they wanted to create this culture and this family environment and this, you know, like we were going to win bike races but we were going to have fun. And they asked me if I wanted to join and I thought, oh well, we have one, one last bite at the cherry. And then 11 years on I'm still in that, in that same organization.

Amazing, amazing. And, and so I can't sort of pass up the opportunity to what it, to ask what it was like being a part of the team with Lance. I mean obviously I've read, read all of his books and was a huge fan and then obviously there was all of the revelations around drugs and everything else and the more recent documentary where he was interviewed.

So.

So what was it actually like to be part of the team with Lance?

Yeah, like I said, like initially it was, it was pretty intimidating sitting at dinner tables at a training camp and in January 2010, the first, first week of the team, basically sitting there with like Lance, Andreas Clodin, Yaroslav Popovic, all these like Levi Lipimer, Chris Horner, all these like pretty big names in cycling. And I was this little kid from a provincial town in New Zealand who, who had grown up as a kid watching Lance one of those Tour de Frances and then he, you know, that was what I did. I got up at one o' clock in the morning with my dad and, and watched Lance win for the Francis as a 14 year old or 13 or 14 year old. And then he retired from cycling and then he came back from site to cycling and then all of a sudden I was in his team. I was like, man, this is crazy, you know, because he, he was like my, like any young kid back then. He was into cycling. He was everyone's hero, you know, so I would like to be part of a team with, with him was just insane. But he was, he was obviously like a, you know, now that all the, everything's come out about, you know, his, his past. I guess one of the things that was, was quite evident when he was winning Tour de France's was his personality was a bit strong and he was A bit of a bully, but I never saw any of that. I saw, I saw his aura about him. Like, I sensed like the strength in the guy and how much he could move pieces and how much he influenced people and how, how much people sort of protected themselves around him and said, yes, sir, how high, sir? To Lance, I saw all that stuff, but I never saw him being a bully or anything. He was just this really driven guy and he was a superstar so he could do what he wanted and he had a lot of money and all that stuff, but he was ultimately just a really super driven sports person. One of those, one of those freak, freak guys, you know. But I had, I, I did a couple of races with him, I did a couple of training camps with him. He was always good to me. He always protected, protected me, always stood up for me. I think he, he had like, I think he actually had quite a lot of belief in me as well because, probably because I, the first training camp we had in, in Tucson, Arizona, we went mountain biking one day and I was, I was still pretty good on the mountain bike then, so I kind of like was hot on his heels and he'd, I think he quite liked that. But I, I enjoyed racing with them and even when I had a crash out of the, crash out of the Tour de France in 2020 was the only Tour de France I ever rode and I crashed out of it. Halfway through, he sent me a message which was really cool. And so my experience is, you know, I guess, yeah, in a nutshell, like I, I, you can only really judge a person based on your experiences with the guy, I think. And my experiences with him were good. So it was, it was certainly a very exciting part of my, of my career.

How did you, how did you feel when all the revelation, you know, when he finally came clean and said, yeah, okay, fine, I, I was taking, taking drugs throughout, you know, stretches of my career. How did you feel having grown up? You know, kind of look at, looking up to Lance.

I guess. You know, like when I was young, watching Lance, you, you, you were one of the guys. Yeah. Like everybody was like, nah, nah, this guy's just, you know, he's not taking drugs. He's, you know, that they, he's the most test tested athlete in the whole wide world. You know, if he was taking drugs, we'd know he would be found positive, all that stuff. So you had this belief that he wasn't. But then again, I guess over the years as I became more involved in road cycling, you know, I kind of like Started to understand the reality of that era. And I was lucky enough to come along and come into road cycling where there was this new generation of bike riders and this massive shift in that. In that sense, and. Which was great. And I was able to be part of a generation that was. That was changing cycling and getting us out of that. That dirty path. But I think by the time he had, you know, he. He said publicly that he took drugs, I wasn't really surprised because I think my eyes had been open to that era and kind of understood that not just Lance was taking drugs, but probably more or less the whole peloton at that time.

Well, that's. And that's one of the key things, isn't it? I mean, you know, you know, when I read his books, I was like, you know, how could this guy that, you know, I remember him saying in. In, it's not about the bike that, you know, having been through all of this, if you honestly think I could put drugs inside me to risk, you know, kind of undoing my health, you'd be, you know, I'd be absolutely crazy to do it. And then, of course, later, I mean, I remember seeing. I think it was. It was real, but an Aussie library put a sign out saying that nude Lance's books to the fiction section as, you know, in good old Aussie humor. But, you know, you're absolutely right. You know, what he did was wrong. But what. But I would assume the majority of the people he was racing against were doing maybe not quite on the same level. So what he achieved is still absolutely phenomenal. It's just that. Yeah, so it's. It's been taken away from him, but really, you know, I think what he did coming back from cancer and. And winning all those Tour de Frances was just. Was still amazing, wasn't it?

And I. I think, like, he almost alliance in some ways, like, almost did the sport of cycling a favor when he came out and admitted to doping because he was such a superstar and, you know, one of the most famous sports person on the. On the planet. He. And he. And he had come back from cancer and he had this charity that was, you know, known worldwide for doing. Doing all this stuff for cancer. And he. And Lance was genuinely invested in, you know, trying to do his best for that. That. That area. But when he came out and admitted to doping, I think the. The cyclist or the professional cyclist saw the impact that it had on him, like, that he was, you know, this. This huge guy who was like, all of a sudden his charity was Affected. He had to step down from that. He was character assassinated for years. He couldn't walk down the street without people yelling you cheat to him and all these sorts of things. And it was the. It was at the time where cycling was starting, was. Was changing and going away from that stuff. And then everyone sort of saw that and went, all right, now is the time really to make changes. You know, we've really got to go. And, you know, the governing bodies were the same and, you know, the corruption was then, you know, they weren't going to be able to be corrupt anymore because all that stuff had been exposed. And it was just a really big, you know, it was a big tipping point and shaping the way professional cycling is now in some ways. So although he. He had a horrible few years, I'm sure I think he. He actually did some big favors to, to shaping the sport to how it is now.

Yeah, so it's a very good point. So what's. So what's your. What do you think your high or highs and your lows from your time in the Grand Tours has been.

Like, I guess start with a low. The. The low is quite simple for me. I never raised the Tour de France until 2020. I always wanted to go. There was a couple of years before 2020 that I really believed I should have gone. I was good enough to be there, but it was just the way that the team was, where the team was putting its focuses that year. For example, you know, maybe the Giro d' Italia was a really big focus, and I would go to the Giro because I was part of the, you know, the top team there. But I still was. Wanted to go to the tilt of France. And I finally went in 2020, and then halfway through the race, I crashed out and broke my wrist. And that was it. That was the end of the Tour de France for me. So I guess that was a big. That was a big low for me because now when I reflect on my career, I. I only went to the Tour de France once, but I never. I never made it to Paris. So that's. That's going to be. Although I'm okay with it, at peace with it and stuff, it's still going to be something that's kind of gonna be a bit of a tick on my shoulder going. Going forward for rest of my life. You know, like, I can say I wrote I went to the Tour de France. People say, oh, did you do the Tour de France? Yeah, I can say I did. But I never. I never made it to Paris, which was A real shame. And then highs, man, we had a lot of highs. I was thinking about the other day, actually, like, I think I was part of maybe more than 20 stage stage ones at Grand Tours over my career. 2016 was a really cool year because up until that point the Green Edge organization hadn't really, it was still trying to find its feet as to what its vision was. Did it want to be a classics team, a sprint team, or a GC team? And then in 2016 with Esteban Chavez, we finished second at the Giro and third at the Vuelta. And I was at both of those Grand Tours. And that was a moment where the organization started to believe that we could win a Grand Tour. And then we signed Simon. We had Simon Yates, who had just joined the team that year or the year before. And then in 2018 was a really, was a massive highlight for me at the Giro as well, because Simon was just on a charge there that, that year and he, he, we won five stages of the team. He led the race for two weeks. In the end he went, it all went pear shaped when he, when he blew up in the last couple of days. And um, he didn't end up, he ended up nowhere in the, in the result sheet at the end of it, but he led the race for two weeks. And that was a really cool experience because although it all went to shit in the end and you know, we were disappointed and upset. Simon was on such a charge that year and he, it just never looked like he was going to lose the race. And it just, he sort of opened, he sort of gave us as teammates a platform to expose ourselves and to show what we were capable of, you know, and it kind of changed the course of basically what we were asked to do at that race to try to win the Giro. D' Italia exposed how good we were at our roles, what we were capable of, and for a lot of us, kind of shaped the last three or four years for us. You know, like, it helped our value go up as bike riders. It gave us more opportunities to do good races. So that was a, that was another big highlight for me when it comes to the Grand Tours.

Fantastic. It must have been. It must have been amazing. Now you mentioned within that your, your injury in the Tour de France. You've mentioned injuries earlier on. You, you, you've been blighted with injuries. No, I don't think any massive, significant injuries, but that have kept you out for long periods. But you seem to have been blighted with injuries throughout your career on the road. If kind of was watching Sunday, Sunday in Hell recently, which I'm guessing you've probably seen the documentary about the 1976 Paris Roubaix. And I mean I know that the, the, the road racing is not quite as crazy as it was then and obviously you're well, better protected. But how have you dealt with injuries throughout your career? And you know, have you got any advice for people that are injured and trying to get come back? Because you've obviously come back time and again.

Yeah, I've had a lot of injuries and like you say, I haven't had any big, you know, I've had when I broke my wrist at Tour de France that ended up being quite major in the end and I was off the bike for eight months from that, from that injury. But otherwise it's just been, yeah, like broken collarbones, broken hands, all those sorts of things that keep you off the bike for 10 days or something. But yeah, I had a lot of them back to back. So you know, those periods sort of extended out. But I guess like my, my attitude towards injuries have, has kind of changed over the years. So like when I was younger and I'd crash and break my collarbone or something, all I want to do is get back racing, get back on my bike, start training, start racing. Okay, what are we going to do to make that happen as quick as possible? Right, get me under the knife, chuck a plate in there. All right, still a bit sore, but ah, it's all right. I'm going to start riding again. As I've got older, I start to look at injuries, especially after I had this, this one with my wrist because I probably didn't take care of it enough initially and ended up being quite a long injury. I look at things now and go, okay, I'm injured. What have I got to do now to make sure that I have a functioning shoulder for the rest of my life? When I have kids, I want to be able to pick them up. When I want to be able to swing a tennis racket, I want to be able to go swimming or whatever. So what am I going to do to make sure that I get the best out of my shoulder when I'm 50 years old as opposed to getting myself back on the bike as quick as possible. So it's always, I find it's really important to acknowledge the injury. Like an. Acknowledge your emotions. In some ways, like what's always been helpful for me is when I get injured to go like, okay, yeah, I am pretty pissed off, I am pretty disappointed, but I'm not Going to try and be like this guy that's hard ass and not acknowledge that and just like get on with it. I'm going to give myself a couple of days to sit on the couch and feel sorry for myself and feel crap. But just, just for a couple of days, you know, just acknowledge that and then once that's out of the way, go, right, okay, now what's the plan of action? When can I start riding? What have I got to do for rehab before that? What's the process of getting back to racing my bike in six weeks time or three months time or whatever the timeframe is. So just to sort of, yeah, feel those emotions, feel the disappointment, acknowledge the injury, get that out of the way and then you can, then you can make a much clearer path and much clearer plan to how you come back from that injury. And how you come back from that injury is smart. I mean I, I would, I would always say I've got a young Kiwi guy who injured himself this year actually, and that's the first thing his first year professional and he broke his pelvis. And I said, mate, you've got years and years and years ahead of you. Don't, do not rush this, do not rush this at all. Make sure you're, be patient because these injuries, if you do rush them in five years time or 10 years time, you'll feel them again. So just be patient. Don't, you know, try to, try to take the heat off a little bit. Everybody wants to get back as quick as they can, but trust me, it's worth, it's worth the extra week or two at the other end.

Yeah, I think that's great advice. Just kind of, yeah, you're think and thinking about the long term impact, not just okay, how is this going to affect my cycling this year, next year, but actually, you know, picking up your kids and in the future and all that sort of stuff, I think is, is brilliant advice. You, you obviously cycle for several different teams throughout your career. How has the culture change differed between those teams and how important do you think? You sort of briefly sort of touched on, you mentioned culture in your, in your kind of final team, but yeah, how's culture changed across those different teams?

Yeah, it's been, been different.

And how important is that culture? I suppose in the, in the, you know, in how well you perform.

Oh, it's hugely important to culture. Like and like, like I said sort of touched on briefly in Radio Shack the culture was, was quite different. It was, it was, yeah. Team centered around Lance. It was A team centered around winning the Tour de France. And I, I, I often felt like that team as a young rider who was so green to road cycling and was just going to bike races and getting my head kicked in and then, you know, getting told before I got on the plane, make sure you're better next week. But I, I was never told how to be better or I never really given the, you know, the, the, the coaching or anything like that to, to be, I, I, I used to say, yeah, I want to be better, but I have no idea how to be better. Like what do I need to do? But that it was just like, it's almost like I felt in that team they didn't really care that much about the young 20 year old, 21 year old from New Zealand who was just there by chance. But so I didn't, I didn't enjoy it that much in that team. The second year was a little bit different because I started to get a grasp on things and there was, I'd kind of identified by that point who the, who the riders in the team were that I wanted to surround myself with that would help me and were good people. But then when I went to Green Edge and well, which is Bike Exchange now call it Green Edge because that's basically the name of the organization and it's had many different sponsors but that this team, yeah it's been the number one focus, like when the team first started was we need to build a culture that's, you know, encouraging to people that people have, feel safe, feel people, you know, want to perform because they're racing with people that they really care about. And a big part of that was just communication. You know, it was, people have always been encouraging this team to, to speak and talk and he, you know, share opinions and you're never going to be judged. And you know, it's basically about like a collective, like high performance. High performance is like high performance is a result. I think at the end of the day, first place, second place, third place is high performance. But I think high performance sport is about a group of people with a collective goal and a collective buy in into how we're going to achieve it. That's what high performance sport is. Let's do this together. Everybody has, everybody has different roles but everybody's trying to do their role the best they can to push the other guy to the top of their level. It's about doing all this stuff together and that's what this team's always been about. And yeah, a lot of it and, and that I think it's so important to longevity in the sport as well. Because, you know, I, I've had, I mean, I, I love cycling, but I've, I've never been the kind of guy that's like, my life is dedicated to this. I've got no other interests, I've got nothing else. I just want to race my bike for as long as I can. Like, I've had periods where I'm like, oh, how long do I want to do this for? And I've also had times where, you know, I've, I've been in negotiations to leave this team and go and ride for another, another team. And then I, then I kind of would reflect and go, man, I'm getting longevity out of the sport because of the people I'm with, the organization that I'm in, you know, and that, and it's, it's so a good culture is, is really important to longevity in sport as well, I think.

Brilliant. And I'm guessing there's a great book that I'm guessing is a Kiwi you might have read called Legacy by James Kerr, that's all about the culture of the all black team. And I remember seeing Dave Brave. Brailsford. Dave Brailsford do a talk and he was talking about the importance of how essentially it's featured in Legacy, but he described it as role modeling within the cycling team and the importance of kind of those more experienced, you know, older members of the team kind of acting as that role model for the younger guys. So essentially what you lacked when you first joined Lance's team. But do you think that, you know, you've been one of those people, as now one of the most experienced riders coming towards the end of your career, you've been able to role model for the younger riders in your team and, you know, what do you think the importance of that is in that sort of community?

Yeah, definitely. I feel like I'm, I've developed into a leader in this team amongst the, amongst the group of, amongst everyone, you know, not just the young guys. I think leadership is, leadership's a really important thing to have in a, in a, in any organization, you know, whether it's sport or business or whatever. And sometimes I think to myself, you can't train that. It's a net, it's sort of a natural thing. But I think people can develop, develop their leadership skills for sure. But it's really, it's, I think like in a high pressure sports environment, you know, being a leader is about sharing your experiences with young Guys, you know, like at the end of the day, sometimes a young bike rider will go through something that I've never gone through before, but you might have been through it 10 times before in your career. And just to acknowledge that, you know it's going to happen, we've all been there. Share your experiences, share how you came, came out of those experiences and also just to make them feel like, I think it's really important. Like I always try to create relationships with the young guys. You know, they're all, they're all good, good people. Everyone, everyone in this team is a good people. So you don't have to put barriers, barriers up and say, hey, I'm a, I'm the old guy that sits at the back of the bus. You'll be the young guy that sits at the front of the bus. You know, I mean there's those size hierarchies do, do exist. But I think you should always keep the barriers down and say, look, at the end of the day we're just, we're friends. It doesn't matter that I'm 15 years older than you, we can still be mates and you know, share a room with them and have a laugh and take the piss out of them and you know, go. 20 year olds, listen to crap music. You know, you can do all that stuff because it creates relationships, you know, and it create, and it makes them feel comfortable around you and then they start taking the piss out of you as well for listening to Bruce Springsteen or whatever. But all that stuff is important, it's banter that's important in creating relationships. And then also it creates this, it knocks the barriers down and then they can say, okay, I feel comfortable around Sam. He's a good guy and he's an experienced guy. So I'm going to listen to him as well. When, when he speaks up, when it's important, I'll listen to the guy and I trust him. So it's those, those sorts of things are really important in cycling.

Brilliant. And are there any practical, you mentioned, like sharing a room with them, Are there any other practical steps that you take as a team to try and enhance that role modeling impact?

Nothing that's like really, you know, like written down as a rule, but just, just those sorts of things. Yeah, just basically just trying to involve everybody. I think it's really, it's, it's, it's often if there's those, if there's barriers up and there's segregation, where it's the old group and the young group, you know, the Young group will always listen to you and, and acknowledge what you're, acknowledge your experiences and, and stuff like that, and respect you. But I always find it's different if there's like an intimidation aspect of that. If, if the young guy feels like, oh, yeah, okay, I listen to Sam because he's experienced, but I don't feel like I can really take the piss out of him, for lack of a better term. I think it's, it's such a different leadership in that way. But if it's just about involving everybody, making everybody feel comfortable, because it's actually really important for those young guys to be able to speak up as well and, and say. Sometimes they say silly things or they say, okay, why don't we try to do it this way? And you look at them, okay, mate, you're being stupid. That's not going to work. But sometimes they'll say something and they go, hey, actually you're right, you know, that's a great idea. But you'll never find that out if you don't give them the, don't create a comfortable environment for them to be able to speak up and their opinions and things like that.

And that, I suspect applies not just amongst the fellow races, but also amongst, you know, like if the race director says something, I think you should do this. Is it, is it that ability to speak up and go, well, actually, I don't feel like that's the right thing to do.

Yeah. And that, that is, that's a big part of what this team's trying to do. And it's, it's so important for the, for the riders to be able to say, nah, I disagree. And that's. Often that stuff will happen on the, on the road as more than in the bus. So we'll have the meeting before the stage and effectively a strategy is made from the sports director. And I mean, cycling sort of, it's not an overly complicated sport in some ways. You know, there's, there's, so there's certainly intricacies to, to tactics at times, but ultimately, you know, most, most teams will follow a pretty simple model to breakaway, chase it, catch it, sprint or whatever. But when this, when things are happening on the road is where the, where the riders, where you need a really good leader or a good road captain, we call it, because something will happen so quickly and the guy, the sports director in the car doesn't see it and you haven't got time to get on the radio and tell him, explain to him the situation and then wait for him to Come back with a tactic. You have to respond, you know, quickly, and that's where decisions will be made from the. From the riders. And that's where you need to feel comfortable in your environment, because sometimes you might. You might make the wrong decision and you. But you need to back yourself. You need to back the decision you made, and you need to be able to contest. You need to be able to sit on the meeting, in the meeting after the race and say to the sports director, I backed myself. I think I thought that was the right decision to make. Turns out maybe it wasn't. Or vice versa. You. They tell you to do something, the sports trick tells you to do something, and you disagree with that decision. And you have to be able to have the character and the strength to say, no, it's the wrong decision. We're going to do it this way. And if they, no, no, we're going to do it this way. You've got to come back and come back and come back and almost in some ways argue with them. But at the end of the day, you just have to back yourself. And then if it's wrong, you need to be able to take accountability for that as well and go, yeah, okay, I stuffed up. Yeah.

Yeah, no, brilliant. Now, I know that I've. When I've heard you listening to Ahead, listening to your podcast, and you interviewed on other podcasts, that humor is a big part of your kind of. Your belief in bringing humor to the team is part of that leadership, part of that community. And I also see that from your social media, particularly. You know, I think you were the lockdown chef that on. On social media and also teaching people to clean mirrors on social media. That was slightly intriguing, but I couldn't.

So.

So given that humor is so important, I couldn't help but ask you what your funniest moment that has involved the bike has been.

Oh, geez. Oh, we've had some pretty funny. We've had a lot of funny moments. Oh, I don't know. Actually probably should have studied this when you sent me the. I just find humor really, it's really. It's a relaxing. It creates a relaxing environment. And sometimes you can be crucified for humor as well, because it's easy if you're a joker, for people to think that you're not serious, which is. Which is never the case. It's just that there's a time and a place. Of course, sometimes you've got to go, hey, now, it's not the time to be making jokes, but, I mean, I Guess I always use this as an example of how humor can solve us, can make a situation feel better. I was in an airport in New Zealand once in Auckland Airport and there's a, I was flying to Europe and I checked in at the, like the Gold, Gold member, you know, whatever special chicken area. And then there's a private elevator from there that goes up to the, up to the security check or the, the passport control. And there was a, there was an older couple there who was saying goodbye to their daughter. American, American family. She. So the daughter obviously lived in New Zealand. They'd come over to visit her and they, the mother was in tears saying goodbye to her like, you know, absolutely crying her eyes out saying goodbye to her daughter. And then I got in the elevator with them and the, the lady was, the, the daughter was sort of waving as the elevated doors closed and the mum was just absolutely bawling her eyes out. And as soon as the doors closed I just pressed the open door button again. So. And there's a daughter standing there and like I, I took a risk, I took a gamble, I didn't know these people. But immediately everybody started laughing, you know. And then once the door closed again the mum said to me, oh, thanks, I needed that. It was this humor that like sort of lightened up the situation in some ways. And so I think there's always moments where humor can be important and it's just. Yeah, I guess what it does is it's just a real reality check that like, hey guys, let's come back to earth. But you know, sometimes shit happens, sometimes things don't go, go our way. But it's not the be all and end all. It's just a bike race at the end of the day.

Yeah, yeah, no, brilliant, excellent. I love that story. So you coming, coming to the end of your career, what sort of made your, what's you know, behind you making a decision to retire and what are you looking forward to post retirement? What's the next chapter look like?

Yeah, the decision making process was, was a strange one. I think I kind of came off the back of a rough couple of years. Obviously we in 2020 goes without saying. Everyone is locked inside for months. There was no racing on. I was living alone when we, when we had the lockdown here in Spain. We were inside for three, home confinement for near on three months and I was by myself and I was doing these stupid cooking videos and stuff just to try to keep some sort of sanity. Although probably looks like it's the other way around. And then I came out of that and then I went to the Tour de France and I had this crash and I had this injury and then I was off the bikes with from September until March and then I started racing again and last year and I was, I was well behind the eight ball because I hadn't trained, been able to train because of my wrist and had a rough year last year. So then I started to think, ah, maybe one more, one more year, that's going to be it. You know, I'm going to retire at the end of the 2022. And then I started to race quite well at the start of this season and I was doing a lot of racing with the young group of guys which was really fun. You know, I was 35 year old going away to races with 21 year olds and I felt, I sort of felt young again and had had a lot of fun with them. So then I started thinking, oh, maybe I could do another year. But then I can kind of see that, you know, the direction of the team, it's sort of going through a bit of a rebuild phase at the moment as well. And you know, I'm sort of at the age now where I'm not part of the rebuild. And then I, so then I was thinking, n, I'm actually ready, I'm ready to stop. And then I, at one point I thought, oh, what am I going to do when I stop? And maybe I could do one more year just to make a, make some more money for another year. And then I, then I was like, what the hell are you doing? Well, don't ever make a decision based on money. Like, you'll work it out. You know, if, if the only reason you're racing your bike next year is for, to make a bit more money, that you shouldn't be racing your bike. So I quickly got that idea out of my head and then, yeah, I just decided I'm ready to stop. I, I love cycling. I love, I love everything about it. I love the travel, I love the social side of things and I just got to this point where I was going, I was really excited to be going away to a race and then I remembered I had to put a number on. So like I was like, ah, I've got a race while I'm there. But I loved everything else about it, you know, so that was when I decided, look, I'm ready to, to quit racing, but I'm not ready to leave the scene. I want to find a different way to be involved in the scene and not, not be A not not be racing. So, yeah, I decided to stop and then started to look for other opportunities and still working on it at the moment. But it looks like I do have a couple of opportunities next year to stay in the sport and in a, in a different role, in a different capacity and get to do, you know, all the stuff I enjoy and don't have to put a number on. I can just go out. You know, I love, I love riding my bike and I just, I just want to do that just recreationally. I don't want to have to press set and do repeats on the back of a climb and all those sorts of things. Want to ride my bike for fun and I want to be involved from the different side and try to develop cultures and, you know, implement all the things I've learned as a bike rider and try to teach the next generation of, of bike riders, I suppose.

Brilliant. And. And so what does riding for fun look like? Is it mostly road? Is it mostly mountain bike? Is it a bit of. Bit of everything?

Well, I've, I just bought a new. Ordered a new gravel bike and I don't actually. I assume the team's going to ask for the bike, my road bike back, so I might not even have a road bike next year. I might just have a gravel bike. So it might, might answer the question for me. But no, I want to do it, but bit of everything. I want to, yeah, get back into, get back into mountain biking. I really enjoy riding the gravel. You know, a lot of, a lot of pro roadies are going, retiring from road cycling and going to race in the gravel. I don't have any plans to do that. There's no chance that's going to happen. But I do enjoy just the social aspect of gravel riding and the peacefulness of it. And yeah, I'll be on the road bike as well. So I'll do a bit of everything just recreational and, oh, I'll probably have other things to do. I'll have a, have a job that I've got to focus on as well. So I'm sure the hours of cycling will be cut down considerably. But you know, if I can get on the bike a few days a week for a few hours, that'd be great.

So what gravel bike did you buy and what road bike, given that, you know, you're now, you know, the cuffs are off, you can have any road bike you want. There's no sponsorship issues. What road bike would you be buying?

I bought a. I bought a giant gravel bike. Is our sponsor at the Moment. So ordered a bike through them and if I was to buy a road bike, honestly I reckon I'd buy a Giant because it's actually, that's such a comfortable bike to ride. I mean it's quite a high performance bike. Like maybe I don't need a high performance road bike, but I reckon I would buy a Giant because it's so comfortable and honestly, like they're actually quite cheap compared to a lot of other.

You get a lot, a lot of bike for your money.

Yeah. So I reckon I would probably buy a Giant. Yeah.

That, that is not necessarily the answer I expected, but I think there's a lot of sense behind that. Having ridden Giant, I've got several Giant bikes. I think they're, they're fantastic bikes.

But.

Yeah, that's really good. So which, which of the Giant range would that be?

That.

What's the TCR or the propel or.

Tcr? Yeah, I mean, just, I don't, I mean, I guess like it'd be. Be cool to go and spend 20 grand and have like some, you know, Specialized with Envy wheels and all that stuff. But like, I don't need, I don't need that. I'm just going to be riding for fun. I've ridden all the good thing, all the high performance stuff, you know, for years and years. As long as I've got a solid bike with a good set of wheels and I can get out and just have fun, that's, that's all I want to do. And I mean I don't need to, I don't need to buy a propel, I don't need to have an aero bike. And you know, the, those aero bikes are often quite a bit more stiff, a little bit more unforgiving. So I want a bike that's comfortable to ride, which is ttr.

Brilliant. Excellent. Now you've obviously, you, you've obviously set up the, the social distance podcast which as I said, I've listened to a few episodes of and I assume that was a, that was born out of lockdown given the name. But one of the things I picked up from that is this. In fact, I see you're wearing your suit where you're wearing the cap at the moment. You, the, the term that gets thrown around quite a lot there is great rider, shit bloke or ship rider, great bloke. So firstly, tell us, where did that, where did that phrase originally come from? Well, yeah, let's start with that.

It came from George actually. So, yeah, the social distance podcast is a podcast that myself And George Bennett started in Lockdown. It was basically the brainchild of Dan Jones, who's the third host. And he, he was putting pressure on us years ago, actually, like when Dan was living here in Girona. We were at the pub one night, I think, and George and I were just going off on these rants. And Jones is, you should start a podcast. We tried a few times, had plenty of false starts, never got around to it. This was in like 2016, 2017. And then, and then we had lockdown Covid in 2020. So it was like, oh, well, let's do it now. What else are we doing? We're bored. And then Jonesy was. Jones was doing some other podcasts. So he sort of set it all up for us and taught us how to do it. And we started this podcast and we thought we would just do like, we'd get a guest on from. We didn't really want to do a cycling podcast. So we were like, oh, we'll just get guests from, you know, we had a journalist on. We had a guy from the America's cup sailing and all these, you know, we'll get a guest on each week and we'll do that. And then after three shows, like, it's too hard to get guests. Let's just get Jonesy on as the third host because he's funny and he just tell stories. And then, so he joined and then the show just started evolving and eventually we were like, oh, we, we are professional bike riders. People want to hear about cycling, so. But we don't want to have a mainstream cycling podcast. We want to be a bit loose lipped and we want to swear and we want to be different to other cycling podcasts. So that's how the show evolved. And then there's just been a few catchphrases, which is, he's a great ridership bloke was where it came from initially because George, we were talking about, we were talking about commentators. That character assassinate riders. So instead of a commentator just commentating on what's happening in the race, they'll say something. I think, I think it spawned from Gianni Moscon and Torino Adriatico earlier this year. One of the commentators was like, oh, he's had a bit of trouble, you know, like, you know, he's a good, he's a good writer, but, you know, maybe not the nicest, nicest guy out there or something. Rara was, was essentially what the commentator said. And then George just said, oh, you know, what a character assassinated. It's like, great writer. Shit bloke. And then he was sort of just like. He was just basically repeating what the commentator had said in a different way. And then it kind of just took off from there, that catchphrase. So we decided, I will get some T shirts made for the Tilde France this year and we'll. We'll try to give them away to you. Basically, let's look for a bike ride at the Tour de France that did something stupid or did something funny. You know, it was. Obviously, we're not accusing, we're not saying these guys are ship blokes. Ship blokes is just an endearing term for someone who's done something funny, basically. Like gear ain't Thomas starting the time trial with his G lay on. We're like, oh, you shit bloke. You know, or like things like that. So we just started to nominate bike riders throughout the Tour de France who'd done silly things like that. And then we got these T shirts made and we were going to give them away to. We're going to give two of them away on. In. In Paris. So G. Durant. Thomas won. Won one of them. And who would the other one go to? I can't remember who we. We picked on the end. Maybe Magnus Court for saluting for winning the first kom of the Tour de France in Denmark. So we were going to give the two T shirts to those guys on the Champs Elysees, but then they were in George's suitcase and George got covert and had to go home. So he. We couldn't do the T shirt delivery. But then we just. So we started playing on that, on that phrase a bit and we made some. Got some T shirts made that anybody can buy now online. And. And then we switched it around. So I went from great rider ship bloke to ship bloke. Great writer, because no great ridership bloke. It's confusing, isn't it? Great riders.

When I wrote it down, I had to retype it twice, I think.

And then rider, great bloke. So we. We switched it and basically we just accusing George of. When the season's on, he's a great rider, but he's a bloke. And then when the. When it's the offseason, he's a great bloke, but he's a rider. So we just sort of switched it around like that.

So which one of those are you?

Well, I'm transitioning to a permanently rider great bloke, I think. Yeah, make sure I'll be permanently there, hopefully.

Excellent. Now, I always ask every guest of the podcast for books that they have found influential, find themselves recommending, find themselves going back to, if not books, then other resources. But are there any particular books that stand out for you that you think have been really, really helpful?

Not really, to be honest, I, for a long time in my life, I never read a book. I didn't start reading until I've been reading for a little while, but I didn't read when I was younger. And now I pretty much just read like Jack Reacher books. Right. He's my hero. I always, I always say to Hannah, my partner, that when I retire from cycling, I was going to become Jack Reacher. I'm just going to put my passport and my toothbrush in my pocket and just go and travel the world. But I don't know, like, I, I, I don't know. I think I've just been, I haven't been really inspired by books and things like that. I've just been inspired by the people I've been around and the people that I've met, Met so many different people throughout my career and, you know, some good, some ship blokes, some great blokes, but, you know, I've just really been inspired by my family, inspired by the belief that my, my parents always had in me, and inspired by the, by my friends, basically, that I've met and, and shared these experiences with over the, over the years. That's what's kind of inspired me more than, more than anything else.

Okay, brilliant. Brilliant. And then we've, we've gotten a habit for this season of asking the previous guest to ask a question to an unknown future guest that they, they would, you know, want to hear the answer to. So this, this question actually comes from Ryan Strumrood, who's a, an, a South African ice swimmer. And his question is, are you happy? And what defines happy for you?

Oh, Ryan, take one.

That's tough, isn't it? I know, that's. I was glad I wasn't answering that one.

Are you thinking about that when he's under ice or.

Yeah, I think, yeah, apparently, apparently ice swimming makes you think deep thoughts.

Yeah, I'm happy. I'm definitely happy. What defines happiness for me? Again, just the people that I surround myself with, I guess being a, being a, a Kiwi that's living on the other side of the world, so it would be easy to be, to miss home and all these things. But I've been so lucky that I've, I've met this amazing group of friends throughout my career and we've developed, there's about 10 of us that have just developed this like, you know, I, I, I guess I look at them as my, as my family, as more than my friends, you know, that stand up for you. We stand up for each other, we help each other out. We're all living on the other side of the world and we've all made our made homes over here and those people are what make make me happy. The people that I'm, I spend my time with, the people that I surround myself with. That's for me, that's, that's what defines happiness, is the people that you have in your life.

Brilliant. Well, Sam, it's been an absolute pleasure chatting to you. It's, it's made me laugh as I expected it would do. But there's some brilliant stories and some fantastic advice in there as well. So a huge thank you for coming onto the tri bathroom podcast and I will, I look, you know, I wish you every success having, you know, I'm actually my normal day job is specializing in retirement planning. So I understand the kind of challenges of going through retirement and you know, I wish you every success with that and look forward to seeing you seeing how the next chapter evolves.

Thanks very much, mate. Really enjoy being on here. Thanks for having me.

If you want to find out more about Sam, you can find him on the greenedgecycling.com page. He's Sam be at on Twitter and he is just Sam Be on Instagram. And as per usual, all of these will be in the show notes. Well, what did you make of that interview with Sam Bewley? No Claire Fudge on this episode. We just couldn't get our diaries aligned. I mean with the dark. Thing is, we've just been out to Kona together for her racing in the Ironman World Championships, which was absolutely amazing. She did brilliantly well. But we'll tell you more about that on a future episode. But we just, just have had both too much going on. Both while we were in Kona and since we've got back to get together. Anyway, I love that chat with Sam Beuley. Such a nice guy, really approachable. Just really, really enjoyed chatting to him. Funny guy as well. I thought that was some brilliant takeaways for me. I love listening to him talk about cycling with Lance. We've got another cyclist coming up on a future episode that spent even longer cycling with Lance. So I'm looking forward to digging into even more. But I'll save who that guest is as it for as a Surprise. I thought his take on injuries was really interesting. I thought, you know, that that whole kind of allow yourself to get really mad and frustrated and just lie around the sofa sulking for a couple of days and then accept it, move on. And it's like, right, what's the best I can do to recover? I thought that was really, really good advice. I love talking to him about the kind of different cultures of, of the, of the different teams and particularly the whole concept of role modeling and how kind of the older guys in the team can really help those younger guys move up and kind of become even better cyclists and become better cyclists much more quickly as a result of that kind of wisdom that's been passed around with the team. I have been buying. I've been in the market for buying a new bike this year, so I, I was surprised by his selection of a giant tcr. I, you know, I just thought it's really nice actually, that it wasn't a. Some super flash kind of super expensive, super kind of iconic bike, the giant tci. I know he's giant riding giant at the moment, so he's probably slightly biased, but just a great bike for the money and so I could understand that. And, you know, I also finally loved chatting to him about his retirement and his social distance podcast. I really encourage you to, to give it a good listen. It really made me laugh when, when I listened to it. Love the whole great ridership bloke stuff that they do, you know, and I can really see how him bringing humor to the peloton has helped the teams around him. So I hope you got loads out of that episode. We've got some amazing episodes coming up. I think the next episode that we release might actually be my favorite episod far. So I'm not going to tell you who it is, but that the person that it. It, that features in it was voted the top endurance athlete of all time. Now that's a pretty amazing accolade to be awarded, so I know you're going to love that episode. So in the meantime, and by the way, Claire's back for that episode, you'll be pleased to hear, so you won't be just stuck with me. But anyway, I hope you enjoyed listening to the interview with Sam Bewley. As always, check out 33 fuel as well. Loving their products. And in fact, actually one of the people I was out with in Kona was James Ecot, who works at 33 fuel. So I've been talking a little bit about that and we'll talk more about that on the next episode, but absolutely, you know, chuffed a bit that 33 fuel are still very much a part of a sponsor of this podcast. So give them a try. Remember there's a discount code and a referral link in the show notes. So so check that out. And in the meantime, keep on training. And remember this podcast was sponsored by 33 fuel so rethink your sports nutrition with 33 fuel award winning natural sports nutrition for your performance, health and a Fitter Future. It's the 33 Fuel Fuel Osophyl. Get yours at 33fuel.com and if you use the discount code Tribeathlon or the link in the show notes, you'll get a discount at the checkout. If you enjoyed this podcast, please do review it and share it because it helps other people find what we think is really valuable learning lessons from amazing athletes. So please do that. You can also find the whole back catalog@tribathlon.com and you can also find out about the Tribe Athlon app which helps people find events find people to train with and enjoy their events through their tribe. So check out tribathlon.com.

Sam.