We Tried To Win Paris Roubaix Grand Fondo (Crazy Experience)

These are all the things that you have to think about and stay concentrated on. And this is why you say that you should finish a race as mentally, as exhausted as you are physically. And we can see that in the pros. They just have to be there 100% of the time. This podcast is brought to you by Trivelo Coaching, where we help triathletes and cyclists like you train smarter to race faster. I'm your host, Jordan Donnelly, and on my left is former Australian Ironman champion and head coach of Trivalo Coaching and Jared Donnelly. In today's episode, we are dissecting everything that has happened over the Spring Classics racing season of the past few weeks. We've just gotten back from an epic two weeks over in Belgium, the Flanders region and France, and we have to say that there is copious amounts of lessons that we've been able to learn in just two weeks. It feels like so much has happened and it doesn't just apply to bike racing. And in today's episode, we really want to discuss how everything we've seen happen, everything we've experienced personally as well as everything we've seen happen from the professional level, has taught us so much about what you can do in your own bike racing, whether you're in triathlon, cycling or running. The lessons that we've learned we want to talk about today are really applicable to every single amateur athlete out there. So we can't wait to dive into it. Massive episode ahead, a big one to discuss today. I know we're going to talk for a fair bit about the Spring Classics and how exciting it's been. Before we get to that, what is your gratitude?

Thanks, Jord. Yes, it's been an amazing couple of weeks to be back in Belgium. We've talked about it on the podcast many times over the last 170 episodes and it was really good to be back there after 2019 is the last time we were there. So all the hype before it lived up to its expectations. It was one of the all time best trips I've ever been on. And look, there's too many gratitudes, really. I just, I have 50 that I could say, but I'm going to say one that's. It seems insignificant, but it, it allowed us to have more of an enjoyable tour as a group by the fact that we had Patrick, our guide from Belgium, who happens to be the father in law of one of our, one of our main men, Dasha. Dasha Young. For those who know Dasher, he's, he's won two Austral track titles. He's a bit of a gun cyclist, but his father in law lives in Belgium. His daughter Tina is married to Dasher. And over the years Patrick has volunteered to drive his car in front of our group each day. And that doesn't seem much to those listeners out there, but when you're in a foreign country and every hundred meters there's another turn left or right or straight ahead choice, and you're trying to get, get a circuit going or a training session to have a car in front of you, a lead car telling you which way to go and saying to him, I want to ride 120k, I want to have 1500 meters worth of climbing. And he just plots it out for me and I want to see some of the better, better climbs. Show the, show the boys some of the, the really good climbs such as Aquarium, like the Cockenberg and the Paderberg and all those things. And he'll take us around and, and the second part about that gratitude is if you're doing that by yourself and you can do this by yourself, you don't need a guide because you can just put a map and make, make the effort to make your own map the night before and put it onto your garment and follow, follow what the garment's telling you to do. But the thing about that is you're continually looking down and you're not looking around wherever you're going. And the enjoyment factor of looking around and taking in the scenery is the key. And so when that, that looking down at your garments taken away from you, the ride becomes so much more enjoyable because you're actually enjoying the roads and the countryside and not worried about am I lost or what's coming up in the next one minute, am I turning left, right or going straight ahead? So my gratitude is around Patrick and, and I've known him since 2015 when I first met him. So it's been eight years of him coming to Australia and us showing him around here and him doing things for us. But I'm so grateful for our relationship and I'm sure the 11 riders on our Tour felt the same way that without him, it is such a frustrating experience to continually have to stop and find out where you are in a country where, you know, there's so many great places to go to, to ride on and he knows them all. And that, that's my gratitude.

Yeah, we definitely experienced the range of rides when Patrick was taking us around. It was just so easy just to enjoy the ride. And when we had to kind of Create a route ourselves. There was a lot of stopping and a lot of mis turns, which is natural whenever you're traveling somewhere new. But also we had a local rider, which was actually Pete, Patrick's son, just take us once for a ride. And he just following him was fine. So. And I know a lot of people do that. They try and meet up with anyone in the local area and just get them to take them on some paths. And then again, you don't have to worry about looking at maps or anything. You can just get taken by a local. And one of the guys in our group actually had done that in America. He had Strava stalked someone where he was going and what kind of rides they were doing. Actually messaged them on Strava. And when, when he got there, he said, oh, can we? Or he organized to go for a ride with them before he got there. And then ended up building a really good relationship. So that's a good strategy as well. My. There's so much gratitude for the trip. The whole everything about the trip. I was just constantly grateful. The fact that our bikes were mostly all good, although we did many trips to the Belgian bike store back and forth. I think there was 20 trips. They were. They knew us as if we were regular customers by the end. I was going to say, you know, a lack of crashes and injury because we got through so much of the trip with it's. It's quite sketchy riding in some parts and we just had done so well to avoid a lot of crashes. And then we'll talk about this. But in Roubaix, we had four crashes in the actual race and thankfully three of the riders were fine and one broke his collarbone. So I was grateful that, I guess that happened in the last ride of the trip. Thankful to the weather gods for giving us the true Flanders experience early on. And we had to ride through a lot of rain and mud and cold, and then the weather just completely cleared up. And we had the purest blue sky days, which, as you said, you never had that good weather in Belgium before. And I guess this is where I get to with my specific gratitude, which is we were on one of the rides. It was one of the most enjoyable rides of the trip, where it was just perfect day, no wind, we were following Patrick, so we were just able to enjoy the scenery. We were cruising, we weren't going too hard. And I said to myself, I reckon 60 times in the ride, how good is this? Just how good is this? I was looking around going, how good is this? And then One of the guys came up to me and just said, if you ask me what my gratitude is, this is it. And because he's a podcast listener and, yeah, I just laughed at that. I thought you couldn't have summed it up any better. And so, yeah, that's definitely it for me. And I guess with that, we want to dive into what's been happening the last few weeks with the spring classics and what's. What's caught our attention and what's worth talking about that we. That helps us. As always, we want to improve ourselves when we watch the pros race. And it's hard to compare to the pros because they're absolutely different animals. And that was the biggest thing I got from, again, watching them live and doing the same climbs as them. They're just absolute animals. But start us off with dad. What's the first thing that caught your attention that's. That's worth talking about?

The conditions that we had for Flanders were the worst conditions I've had in five Flanders races or rides that I've done. The Gran Fondo and the Roubaix seven days later was the complete opposite. It was perfect conditions. So we had epic rain, sideways winds, sleeting rain, and it was just, just, you know, Patrick actually said, you are true Flandrians now. You have ridden in the most hardest conditions that he's seen. So it was really great to actually experience it at its worst. That sounds a bit masochistic. A bit. I think. But, yeah, it is really good to get through it. And gee, you're tested continually with the cold in your feet and your hands and can't see and the cobbles are absolutely saturated. Trying to ride up a hill and, you know, know that's where the gear selection and tire pressure comes into it so much. And had I not learned from the previous years about having tire pressure too high? You just can't ride wet cobbles with the tire pressure. You know, basically anything above 70 or around that area is too. Is too high power pressure and you just. Your back wheel just slips every time you put the power down.

So on that PSI note, I would say that not one person had their tire pressure above 50 this time around. And one of the lighter guys had his tyre pressure at 38.

I was shocked how low you could have it and I was amazed how good the grip was. It was such a different ride when you had the tyre pressure down. And there is a few problems with that, which we'll talk about with punctures, etc, but the lower the pressure you have and obviously the heavier the rider, you can't have too low a pressure, but the lighter you are as a rider, you can really afford to drop your tyre pressure down. And everybody's individual. There's not one tire, tire pressure that's going to be right across the board for everybody. So that's one of the key things we learned in the group of 11 riders. We had, I don't think anybody had the same tire pressure. They were basing their own tire pressure on their weight and, and we had plenty of practice during the week to see what, what pressure was working and. But you can't be prepared for the difference in cobbles between Tour of Flanders and Paris Roubaix. The cobbles are extremely different in size and, and they're spread further apart. Whereas the roads of, of Belgium seem like they're more, the cobbles seem closer together or tidier so that the, the bike rolls across the cobbles better. But when we hit Arenberg Forest for the first time, I, you know, bottles were coming out of drink cages. You know, bikes were going left, right and center because of the, the violence of when your bike was hitting the cobbles for the first time. Arenberg Forest is, you know, is really a, a rough section of cobbles and there's plenty of other rough sections in the rest of the ride, but that is the, the one we hit first. And because we're not hitting it at speed, the slower you go on the cobbles, the worse it is for the bike to be bouncing around and, and, and obviously they're the. Then therefore the pressure of the tires is key to, to getting over the, the cobbles as smoothly as you can. And the faster you can ride, the easier the cobbles are when, but it is hard to ride fast on the cobbles because they're so debilitating and so draining on your legs. So there's so much that goes into it.

And I would add a caveat to that that I wouldn't say I think easy is the wrong word. I think faster you're going, managing over them faster. But it is, I think it's harder to handle the bike. So when it's slower you're getting bumped more, but because you're going slower you can handle the bike a bit better. So you're less chance of sometimes you're slipping around no matter what. So it doesn't matter. But I think that does a bit of discredit to the pros. I think them hitting Arenberg at 60, 70k, it is so much harder for them to handle the actual bike compared to when you're going 20Ks an hour, 25Ks an hour and rolling into it. Yes, it's more bouncy, it's more uncomfortable because you are going slower across them, but I think it's your less chance of falling off.

I have to disagree with you there, but we'll move on.

Explain that to me why you think that.

I just think when you've got more momentum, you're more on top of the road than you are when you're going slower. The bike seems to hit every pothole when you're going slower and therefore you're going to bounce around more. What you just said, you do. That does happen. You do bounce around the bike more. So therefore, I'm just thinking it's a smoother ride, it's more manageable ride when you're going over the top of the surface at speed. That's all I. That's my difference. I think any times I was riding my best on the cobbles is when I was going fastest.

Yeah, I agree with all that. I think we're saying the same thing, just slightly different, I think. Yeah, potentially more manageable, but more. The higher speed, the more dangerous. And I think it's just. Everything's coming at you so fast, so it's just so much easier to hit a bad pothole and come flying off, you know. Whereas true, when you're going slower, you're getting bounced around more and it's more. It's really uncomfortable, but you're kind of hitting everything slowly, so it doesn't feel like you're gonna necessarily fall off. It's just. It just sucks. Yeah.

I think the danger factor, spot on. It is a little bit more.

Chaotic.

The consequences are huge. If you're going. You're going to come off at speed, as we found out. Yeah. So. So that's kind of. That I want, I want to make that point that the conditions really contribute to, to the, you know, the experience of, of writing these, these events and, you know, if any, if anybody gets a chance to go and do a Gran Fondo at during the Spring Classics. And, you know, we've got, we've got Amstel Gold coming up. We've got Liege, Bastogne, we've got Flesh Wallone. So there's still quite a few more. You know, we had ghent wevel gamma E3, Skelda Prix. There's so many classic events that, you know, in this space of March and April, starting with Milan San Remo, obviously, so. So you've got all of these events that you could, you know, pretty much spend March and April riding your bike and having a ball. But the conditions and the, and the, the difference in terrain is quite vast across a lot of them. And not just the rain, but the wind. And as we experienced, when you're out on those Belgian roads and it's so exposed and 30, 40 kilometer crosswinds, oh, boy, it's hard work, hard work staying on the road. And position. In our little bunch of 11, the position was hugely different to the performance or the actual training effect you were getting. If you're on the front or if you were sitting, you know, on the side crosswind, you know, with a really good sit, you were getting such an easier ride. And I think a lot of the guys in the group really understood how important position is and, you know, little things like the front two guys who, if we're riding two abreast and, you know, there's a group of five or six rows, the front guy, if the wind's coming from the left, has to be in the middle of the road. So the rest of the group get a seat, you know, just learning little things like that. And if the wind's coming from the other direction, you'd be on the other side of the road. So you're giving the group a sit. So all these little things, you start to understand how much energy you're saving. And when it comes to you putting that into a race scenario, you know, they're the things that, as you know, I think I really saw Wout Van Aert against Van der Poel. Van der Poel was so aggressive in Roubaix, and Wout Van Aert was trying to just follow all day. That seemed to be his plan. And Van der Poel's plan seemed to be as aggressive as possible. And, you know, you could. Vanderpoel was on a. You know, I think he was the best rider on the day and, and that's a great outcome that he won, but he was the most aggressive and he would have burnt more fuel than, than Van Aert, I think. And had Van Art not got the puncture, we wouldn't, we won't know what the outcome is going to be. But, but certainly I think that Van Aert was. Had a lot more savings because of the way he rode compared to Vanderpoel, as an example of what I'm talking about.

And we saw that play out at the early stages of Tour Flanders in the men's, when the Alpecin guys, including Van der Poel got caught out in some crosswinds. And you and the like, as you said, the crosswinds can be crazy in that Flanders region. And there's so much change of direction that you're constantly turning between a headwind, a tailwind and a crosswind. And very early on there were some big splits. And you just see straight away what happens in that. The top eight people who are kind of rolling at the front in that diagonal echelon that you're describing are actually having an easier time, even though they're doing turns in the front because they're in good positions and they're getting some protection. And then everyone else that's in the gutter and then it's single file down and into the gutter is just every single individual person is working as hard as each other and you're just losing that draft effect that you're so used to with cycling. And this is where these echelons form and then groups form. And that happened. And it took, it took the Albason guys half an hour to drive themselves back on to the main peloton. And even when you were watching, you could just see the guys that were rolling turns at the front, although they were working harder, were getting better sits as they were coming through the roll compared to everyone else that was sitting in the gutter. And I'm surprised that van der Poel did so well after burning so many matches there. But maybe that hindered his result and that's why he wasn't able to stay with Poga in those back end attacks.

Yeah, definitely. And you know, that's the thought. The thing I want to lead onto next Jordan is, you know, what is the difference between all these top riders and how do you decide who's going to win on any given day and what are the factors that contribute to that outcome. And this is kind of why I wanted to talk about, you know, the little experiences we had as a group and what you've just summarized there in the race where, you know, it was playing into the hands Pocketar and Van Art with the Alperson guys getting separated so early in the race. They burned a match. That whole team burned a match and including Vanderpoel. And you know, w wasn't on form that day because poker and Vanderpoel rode away from him on one of the climbs. But, but I think Poga had an easier ride than Van der Poel on that day, even though I think Van der Pole was, was, was in good two week form there. But when you start looking at the results over the last month. You know, on any given day, like, one minute, Van der Poel's beating Wout, then the next race, Wout's beating Van der Poel, and Poca Cha is coming third, and then he's coming second, he's coming first. So there's just. They're either first, second, third, or fourth on any of. One of the last, you know, eight races that they've done. And so my question was, you know, who is at the moment, you know, the current form writer and, you know, how do you come to the conclusion of. To the answer to that? And it's not easy because I've been sitting here for an hour looking at the data, trying to come up with an answer, and my persuasion is always to be where it's the best and forget the rest. But just so far from the truth is there's really five riders now, I think, who are, who are on any given day capable of winning any race at this current time. And, and for me, it's Pocket Char Vanderpoel, Van Aert Roglichen, and Remco Evanopol. And those guys are, are just absolutely dominating World Tour riding. And it's like they're on another. Another level. And Peacock could be pushed, put in that, in that group as well, but he's not quite done much since he won it in Italy at Bianca Strada Bianca. So. But that was an outstanding ride there. But, you know, the point I'm trying to get across is these are the guys who, who are in current good form, but what are the things that, that distinguish who wins on any given day? And, and that's kind of where I want to go with this conversation.

Yeah. Well, one of my favorite things that you always say is it's never one thing. And as athletes, we tend to fall to this trap of always looking to blame something, and we always try and look for one thing. And this is the problem. That's the problem. But, yeah, it's always a combination of things. And I guess. What's the conclusion you've come to with what does determine how the result of race day?

Well, this. You've just summed it up, but I want to, I want to hone in on two, and I think there's probably eight or nine things that will contribute, but I just want to pick on two today. And I think, like, experience should be mentioned as the third, but I don't want to use that. I just, I think these guys are all experienced enough now. They've done enough races and they've they've all won key races, so, so we can discount that. And I mean, key races like monuments or Olympic Games or world titles, they've all won them. You know, when it counts, they've.

Yeah. Big Tour de France stages. Yeah, yeah.

So I think the timing of your attack and then you won't believe it, but there is some luck that plays a part in the outcome. And I think we all, you know, the harder you work, the luckier you get that will, that will play a role in it. But the example would be Roubaix, where, where Van Aert got the puncture right when the two of them were riding off into the sunset to find out who was going to win Roubaix. And Van Aert gets a puncture and that's the end of the ride for him, basically. He can't win from that point on. So that's an example of how luck, two riders who are in the best form of their career at this particular stage of the year leave the rest of the field behind them. And then, you know, one gets a puncture and the other one doesn't. And one comes first, the other one comes third. And you know, is it luck that caused the puncture or is it poor technical advice? Tire pressure, wrong tire. You know, you could, you could use those examples as it's not luck, it's. It's poor decision making on the team's behalf. And I'm, I'm not sitting here saying that, that, that's what happened because I had four punctures myself at Roubaix in the one day which I've never had in my whole life.

It's still so funny. Not funny for you, but still so funny that that happened.

No, and it's, it's very frustrating. It becomes infuriating when you get back on your bike and you know, you ride another 5km and everything seems fine. And then you hit the cobbles again and get a pinch puncture again.

The ironic thing was you made the decision a few days into the trip to change from tubeless to tube tires and how that kind of worked against you in the end.

And that's what I wanted to use the example of just an amateur making decisions. And I'm the one who's ridden the most out of the whole Tour. I've done five Roubaix and five Flanders. And here I was having the worst equipment or tie up issues because I did change from tubeless to tubed. And I think for me that was probably a mistake. I was running my tyre pressure around 50 and, and funnily enough, my front tire punctured four times. My rear didn't. And, and that seemed weird to me as well, but I think, you know, just the wrong cobble at the wrong time and, you know, there's so many things that can happen.

Yeah.

So you're not really sure about what's going on. But. But yeah, look, I just. I just feel like at the end of the day, the, the number one thing is when, when you put the pressure on the other riders and the timing of that is, is the clear indicator of who's going to win. And, you know, you can have six goes at something and, and five times it doesn't work. And then one time you. And the example, again, I'm going to keep using Roubaix a bit, but I want to use Poga char at Flanders as well as another example. But just stay with Van der Poel and his aggressiveness at Roubaix was a real standout to me. And I've been a little bit critical myself, personally, just thinking that wout's a more attacking rider and many people will disagree with me after I've just said that sentence. But I just felt that his attacking mindset for Roubaix was way above everybody else's. He was. I know that whenever Vanderpoel did something w was, you know, aggressive as well, following him, but he was taking the role of a follower, not as a. As the instigator. And, and I love it when the instigator wins. And even though I'm. I'm a W Van Aert fan and I'm not such a fan of Van der Poel, I just thought that was fantastic what he did, and he made the race and eventually he won. Whether the bad luck played the role in it, we'll never know. And when they came into the velodrome, the two of them side by side, who was going to win that sprint? You know, five out of five. You never know times. It could be a different rider every time, you know, multiple times. Yes. And I think in the velodrome, I actually think Van der Pol has got more chance than Van Aert because we've seen Van der Polk and win. He won the cyclocross world title from a short sprint. He also won Flanders last year against Van up from a short sprint. And then Van up beat him at. At Ghent Wevelgem with a long sprint. Oh, E3. It was. Sorry, yeah, E3 with a really long, long sprint. So. So the velodrome doesn't give you A long sprint, you come off the bank and it's just a short sprint to the finish. So. So I think Vanderpoel probably would have won it, but we never know. So. But the point is, if you're aggressive and to make the race, eventually you will succeed unless you're too aggressive and doing it at the wrong time. So that's why I said the timing of when to attack is the key thing. They're all going to attack. It's just when do you do that attack? Do you do it early? Do you do it with 50k to go? Do you do it with 20k to go? Do you do it when, when it looks like there's nothing happening? Do you do it when everybody's absolutely on their knees? And these are all the scenarios these riders are faced with because let's face it, they are all equal in ability, give or take half a percent on any given day. So we're not talking about differences in fitness here, we're talking about form only and when to attack and the timing of it. And so how can Poguchar beat Van der Poel, Remco, Roglich, Vanart, and then how can one of those beat the other guys? Because they're all equally as good on any given day and it's got to be with the timing of your attack. And that's the thing that I think could be a really good lesson for the listeners out there is to just thinking about what's happening in the race. And one of the things I was talking to you guys about when we did the Gran Fondo was we had a group of guys who were racing against us as a trivelo team against this group of German riders. And I was watching the German, German riders really closely to see who I thought was the strongest guy and who needed to be watched the most. And, and you know, they're things that I think the pros do very well. They're, they're doing little mini testing attacks and seeing who's responding better on a day because, you know, you could be informed last week and then all of a sudden you lose, you lose a little bit of form from fatigue or you've, it's the end of your six week period or it's the start of your six week build. You know, it doesn't, it's really hard to know which each rider where they're at in any given week or day. So all these little tests, you'll get to see who's strong and who's not and if other riders are pushing the pace. You can watch the reaction of other riders. And I'm always looking at what, how they're pedaling, if they're riding a good cadence and all of a sudden they're under pressure and what do they do? They go to a bigger gear. That's a sign to me that they're. They're losing a little bit of their fatigue is growing. Riders who can hold form, and there's a few riders who can hold beautiful form and not even look like they're under pressure. And then one minute later they're dropped. That's just the way they ride. They ride with beautiful form, whereas most riders will have good form until they're tired and then they'll start to get ragged and the gear will be a bigger gear because they're trying to keep their heart rate down. And they're all telltale signs of who's struggling in the group around you. And they're the things you should be looking for when you're racing in your club race or whether you're racing at the Olympics. The good riders are always watching the competition to see who looks like they're in form and who should I be worried about. And that's part of when to attack is to know that the only chance I'm going to get is if some. Let's take Milan San Remo. This is a really good example. When they got to the. The. The last climb, when the uae. I can't remember who the guy was. I thought it might have been Matteo Trenton, but it might not have been who was leading Pogachar up. Up the, up the climb and he really split the field. And the only people who could follow was Wout Van Aert Van der Poel and Mats Petersen and, sorry, Ghana and Poguchar. Ghana, sorry, Garner and Pocket Chart and. And so Van Aert was gapped by 10 meters and van der Pole was behind Van Aert and Petterson was behind Van der Pol and Ghana. Sorry. Anyway, yeah, but the person who had to bridge the gap was Wurt Van Aert. And the only person who was getting a free ride was Van der Poel. And when he bridged that gap, then that gave Van der Poel a free ride to then attack Van Aert. And that was a really good example of just getting a little bit of a sit for 30 or 40 seconds will enable you to. To do that 1% more than your opposition at the right time. And you know that that's what won in the race. That. And he got to the top of the climb with a five second gap because he'd ridden over the top of the other riders with that. He had that free little ride behind Wout Van Aert and then he was able to attack when the other guys were on their knees. They would have kept going with van der Poel if they could have, but they couldn't because they'd done a little bit more effort on the climb than he had. And this is a great example of the timing of your jump when you know the opposition is, you know, struggling more than you are. And he was able to hold that all the way to the finish. Actually it went from 5 seconds to 12 seconds, I think with Ghanaat and Poga Char chasing. And to me that's that timing thing. And then understanding what's happening in the group, how, how are they coping with, with the, the attacks that are happening, happening right now and then, and these are decisions you have to make instantly and, and the person who can just react rather than the person who has to think and then, and then count to five seconds and then react, those five seconds are going to cause you enormous trouble and massive fatigue because you have to do the effort for longer. And we've got some good club writers that we coach who are really good at.

That.

Little guy Russell, who's an unbelievably good reactor at when a, when a moves made, he just naturally makes a decision to go and it saves him 15, 20 seconds if he didn't go by hesitating for 5 seconds instead of having to close a gap for 15, 20 seconds and burning a lot of energy. He's already on the wheel of the person who's attacked instantly because he reacted and didn't second guess himself. And the reason he reacted is because he rated the rider who was attacking. And so all of these things he does very well because he understands who he's riding and racing against. He knows their ability. He knows that if some rider goes up the road, they're not a threat to him, so he won't do that. So you can learn a lot from watching other people and watching the pros do this because they're all very similar ability and fitness and experience, then it, it is coming down to when to attack and understanding who's tired at any given time because they've done an effort. And if we go back to Flanders as the other example, when I think it was Italian Berg, that last climb where Van der Polk got out of the seat and attacked Van Aert and Pogucha and got a gap and Van Aert couldn't close the gap. By the time we got to the top of the end of the Tamberg cobble section, it was still uphill all the way for another three or four minutes. And the two of them rode away from Van Aert and that's. That was basically the race there and then for Van Aert was gone. And, you know, that was an example of really good tactics by Van der Poel to surprise Van Aert. He came from behind him, surprised him, put five meters into him. Only Poga Ch could react and Van Aert could not close the gap because two were working against one. Another great example of surprise attack, you know, when, when you're not ready for it. And then using Poguchar on the Quaromont, he got a beautiful lead into there from the UAE teammate and he just rode them off the wheel, basically. It was one of the more outstanding attacks that I've seen in a long time. And as much as Van der Poel tried, Poga Char just rode higher power. And once, once it's one against one with no ability to sit. Poga was a better rider on the day and, and you know, eventually rode away in one solo, which is, which is, you know, again, an absolutely brilliant result for someone who deserved it because he made the race. So I'm talking about two races and I can use the women's race as well as another example with Alison Jackson from Canada. She was just so aggressive all day long. And the second bunch were closing in on the breakaway bunch, of which she was doing most of the work and trying to get the rest of her group to, to stay away. The logic says that if you come to the finish line with 20 riders compared to 10 riders, you're going to have better chance with 10 riders of winning than you are with 20. So logic would say you wouldn't want the other group to catch up. And the other group had unbelievable sprinters in their group who could possibly beat everybody in the first group. So for me, I was disappointed with the other girls who weren't really helping to keep the other group away. But, but she made the race by. Even though they got close to what, seven seconds was it. The chase group got. And then she got into the velodrome and basically out sprinted them all. And it was just a brilliant win, one deserved by someone who attacked the race and made sure that when it looked like it was going to get closed down, that it's never over till it's over. And if you just keep the pressure on Pidcock that happened to him at Strada Bianca. The chasing bunch got to within, I think, four seconds and he still won solo. So just because that you think that you're going to get caught, you shouldn't drop your bundle and just throw the white flag up and let the other bunch close that last 50 meters. You should make them work for it. You've done the work to get in the break. It shouldn't be over till it's over, in my opinion. And so there's a lot I've said about tactics and when to make it and luck. But they're the things I wanted to get across in this podcast that the everyday cyclist can think about in his D grade club race or his A grade club race or his masters club race. That there are things you can do other than your current fitness that will help you be more of a chance in riding in your local bunch on a Saturday or a Sunday or midweek where you're doing these little mini races in your bunch, or whether you've got a number on your back and you're doing a proper race in a club race. And there's so much that you can do, more than you think that will give you a better outcome.

Yeah, it's, it's absolutely brilliant topic and there's so much in, in everything you've said there about trying to combine all these factors of your actual ability versus when you time your attack and, and how much luck you have. And that Alison Jackson example, I just think is, is as brilliant as an example you're going to get because there's a great, there's great footage of when the chase group was, yeah, Getting within that 30 seconds, 20 seconds, 15 seconds is great footage of the lead group and they're all looking at each other and no one's willing to keep the pressure on the chase groups catching them. They're getting that close and then she just gets on the front and launches an attack and it sparks that whole front group again and they pick the pace up and when you look at that attack, it looks like a little bit of a last ditch effort. You know, there's still 20k to go or 30k to go. And it looks like, oh, you're just trying to make the most of this, see what you can do. But it's probably hopeless because we're 99 times out of 100 in this situation. That chase group are all working really well together and they're going to catch them. But that was the move that sparked that speed again and kept them away. And exactly what you're saying, the person who's the most daring deserves to win. And they held off that gap, and because of that, she did that multiple times. But that specific one, it was a great example of exactly what you're saying and making your own luck and getting into the velodrome. And they. They got into the velodrome 15 seconds ahead of that chase pack still, and gave her a chance the best. Gave herself the best chance to win a sprint out of seven riders because she knows she has a really good kick compared to 20. If. If both groups joined and. And in. In the velodrome, the exact same thing happened. Of what you talk about. The SD works rider, Femke Marcus, was in a perfect position right next to Alison Jackson. They were both fighting for that second wheel. And Femke Marcus has a good kick on her as well. And she just hit a bad patch in the velodrome and came straight down. And that's her. You know, there's three quarters of a lap of the velodrome to go, and that's her out of the race. And she's been in this front pack the whole time, and that's that bad luck coming in as well. And there's some funny footage of that crash going around because they're calling it the ghost crash because she doesn't touch anyone's wheel. She doesn't seem to hit anything specific. Some of the riders have said there was a bit of water on the velodrome in that section, but if you watch it in slow motion, she's just riding perfectly straight, and then her wheel just slips underneath her on the velodrome. And, yeah, that's. That's 200 meters to go. But she was fighting for that, for that win and didn't get it. So. But Alison Jackson absolutely deserved it, I think, from what she was able to do later in that race. But I do want to keep diving into some of these examples that you spoke about, because I just. I do think it's. It's a brilliant topic to think about with any form of racing, not just bike racing, but triathlon as well. And this concentration thing that you're talking about, of when to attack and focusing on riders around you and knowing what to look for. And it's not about does a rider look good necessarily. They might have all the gear and might look flashy, but you're more paying attention to their actual performance. So how are they pedaling and what's their form like? And again, you're just using these as potential examples. You're trying to calibrate does how they look equate to how they're responding to attacks or how they're handling hard sections? Because someone might have really good form, but as you said, they get dropped off the back. And someone might actually ride with horrible form or run with horrible form, but they're actually really talented. They just. They just run with horrible form. So you can't judge a book by its cover. But we had an example of an athlete of ours at the recent 70.3 who was stuck in one of the pelotons in the 70.3, which is happening a lot lately with such packed fields. And they found that on the uphills, the group they were with were riding too hard, so they didn't want to go with them. And then on the downhill, they were riding too poorly and not keeping even pressure. And so they were catching up to them. But they were constantly finding that the peloton was in the wrong place for them. And it wasn't specific to their race plan and their numbers. But they couldn't get ahead or couldn't drop behind either, because it was stuffing up their race. And this is where paying attention and understanding the art of racing, whether it's bike racing, running racing or triathlon, is really, really important because they could have. They would have to start making the assessment of looking at the riders around them and deciding, okay, who's riding up the hills? Well, who's got good form? Who realistically, could I just try and stay with on this uphill and then keep the pressure on and get past them on the downhill? Who looks like they're going to start fading later and they're going too hard early, it's not worth trying to go with them. And these little factors of trying to adjust your race plan based on what's actually happening ahead of you. And I think the triathlon example is really fascinating because is it's not as easy as a bike race, because in a bike race, if you want to win, you've got to stay with the lead pack no matter how hard they're going. We see this with van der Poel and Polkashar van Aert. No matter how hard they go, you've got to be on their wheel. But I hadn't spoken to you about that triathlon example specifically, but it's a really interesting one where you've kind of got to look around and be really concentrating every second to make some pretty snap decisions about what am I going to do here? Am I going to try and keep getting my race interrupted by this group that's around me, or do I push a little bit harder in this section and go above my race plan just to get away from this? Because it's going to suit me better. Am I going to assess the riders around me and they're actually going to be strong for the 90k. So I'm happy to sit here. Yeah. These are all the things that you have to think about and stay concentrated on. And this is why you say that you should finish a race as mentally, as exhausted as you are physically. And we can see that in the pros. They just have to be there, there 100 of the time. And on that, I do want to talk about the. The Poguchar attacks on that second lap of the Quaromont at Flanders. He gets a brilliant lead out from his UAA teammates. And don't believe that Vanderpoel and Van Aert expected him to attack on the second lap. They expect him to go on the last one. And the UAE just launched this really fast attack. He was at the front and suddenly he put the pressure on and you see the aerial shot. Vanderpoel and van aert are 10, 15 meters behind. They were near the front of the race, but they weren't on Poguchar's wheel. And they kind of panic and they have to ride around everyone to go get on his wheel. And when you look at the Strava segments, they actually wrote a faster time than Pogachar on that second one, even though he attacked and he kind of had a bit of a gap towards the top hollow. They got on his wheel, but they've had to put in more of an effort. And just another example of all these things coming together. It's never one reason, but. But potentially, you know, they've done a harder effort there because they weren't concentrating. Even though it looks like Poga Char's burnt a match, three of them basically get away from the group, but they've worked harder to get back on Pogaar's wheel than he did when he led the attack. So I thought that was fascinating.

You've brought up a whole lot of good points and the Poga Quarrel example was classic. And that's just a little bit of laziness and positioning, poor positioning, because, you know, there are only. There are only a few places where the break can potentially happen. And the Quarrymont is one of those. And sure, they were going to have to do it again because they were doing three Quaromonts. Three, three times up that same Hill and two Peterburg. So there was plenty more opportunities. But you can't just guess that they're not going to be used at any, any point. So you have to be ready for all of them. And I think it's disrespectful to not be near your contenders. And they were quite a fair way behind. And but what I talked about reacting before, boy did they react. They reacted violently. And you know, and you're right, they would have burnt matches doing that. In the triathlon example, it is a tough one because there's so many factors that come into it with drafting and you know, you might think that the group is strong enough, say you're trying to ride, you know, 36Ks an hour as your average speed. And if you have to ride 200 watts to get 36Ks an hour and you're in a bunch that you're still doing 36Ks an hour after 20 or 30Ks of, you know, can't get away from this group and you're only riding 180 watts, then my opinion is that, that you're actually going to be able to run much better because you're pushing way lower watts and you're still getting the result you want. I'm not encouraging anybody to stay in bunches. That's not what I'm saying. It is sometimes impossible. You've tried many times to go past the bunch and then all of a sudden they come back past you and this happens backwards and forwards for half an hour. If you really want to get away from the bunch, exactly what you said should happen. You should wait and, and be willing to burn a big match and not do that early in the race. But if you think that the bunch is going too slow, you're not happy with the average speed that you're doing. Now the example I use with 36 k's an hour is now back to 35 or 34. That's the time to leave that bunch. And you need to actually do it in the hardest part of the course, not where it's easy for them to follow. You need to do it in a crosswind where they can't get a sit. And you sit at the furthest point of the road to where the wind is. Legally if the wind's coming from the right and you're on a road where you travel on the left hand side and that's different in other countries obviously. So you need to be in the far left gutter so that no one sitting behind you is getting any free draft. And if the wind's coming from the other direction. You need to be as close to the middle of the line as you're allowed to be in a triathlon, which is, there are rules against being in the middle of the road. So burning a match. There are times when I would say to the athletes that I coach, it's worth doing, doing. If you're trying to ride 200 watts, you have to ride 350 watts for 30 seconds. It is okay to do that if it means you're going to be able to ride a better speed than you're riding with the group. And that would be the decision you would make. And you wouldn't know that until you've ridden for quite a bit of time. And you know, if the road's flat and the wind is calm, it's easy to find that out. But if, if it's got hills and it's windy, you've got no idea whether the speed is correct or not because you're sitting in a bun where you're getting a lower power reading, which you're going to panic about because it's not what the reading is supposed to be riding at. And that's why I use all those other factors to make decisions. But, but yeah, there are times where you, you will have to, if you want to improve your, your time. And time is related to the average speed that you have to make a decision to burn a match. And I'm all for that.

This is why I just love racing. I love the art of racing. No matter what the sport. Sport is, and we focus heavily on bike racing and triathlon racing. But there's just so many nuances to it and so many factors. Like you said earlier on, there's eight or nine or maybe 80 or 90 that come into play about what's happening. And I just love the concentration part and the mental side and the fact that you have to get really good at snap decisions and understanding what different contexts mean. And you get that through experience and what to do in circumstances. And I've had plenty of experiences where you do it for the first time and you go, I had no idea what to do. Then you try something and then speaking through it with you after, and you go, actually, this was the right decision. And you go, right. So next time you're in that context, you know exactly what to do within a second and how to do that. And I just, I just find the art of racing so fascinating. When you compare the top five guys that you're talking about right now and how even they are in ability. And there's been, I just, you know, over the last decade it hasn't been this tight in, in how matched they are. And normally one person's a bit stronger or someone's in the, in their form year and they're just too strong and the strongest rider kind of wins. But in this sense it's coming down to all these other factors which to be honest for me makes the Lottie Kopecki win at Flanders really, really impressive. Because she's gone back to back at Flanders two years in a row. She broke away solo this year. And I think given how hard it is to win a race and how many things have to go right and exactly what you're talking about, you timing your attack perfectly, you being inform you having some luck on your side, all to culminate in a win. It just shows how hard it is to win a race. And for you to be able to go back to back at the Tour of Flanders, I think shows how strong a ride you've actually done and how well you've executed that because a lot of people can't do it. And Vanderpoel did it in 21 and 22 going back to back. I just think if you're doing it as a one off, you know, chapeau to you, unbelievable effort. But if you do it twice in a row, that is just fantastic. And we were in the Belgian tent on the Choirmont getting. We got to see the men come past three times and the women can't pass once. And anytime a Belgian is doing well, the whole tent is erupting. And it was, it was quite goosebumps worthy to see Lottie Kopecki coming through the finish line as a Belgian to win the Tour of Flanders. And the tent gives a standing ovation. Everyone's so happy. It was, it was really, you know, spine tingling to watch happen. And we knew that happened the love for the Belgians, but the guys were with, I don't think understood that kind of love that the Belgians had for their Belgian cyclists. And on a side note, we saw the amount of media attention that wout was getting to the point where it is hard to see how much, much you don't realize here in Australia how much media pressure he's in over there. Every single news report, every single thing that's happening, the lead waking up to Flanders is about Ken wout win, you know, and that is a lot of pressure to handle. And again, this just circles back to the same topics we're talking about in how Much luck happens in the race because he had that crash. So he got back on his bike. He didn't seem too injured. He said after the race it didn't affect him, he just didn't have the legs. But you don't know when you have a fall how much that actually does affect you. You know, you can't actually quantify that. There was one climb where van der Poel dropped his chain and Bernard, you know, they and Poguchar got a 10, 15 meter gap and the tent absolutely erupted. It was like being at the mcg, you know, everyone just sees their Belgian love getting up this hill and van der Poel kept pedaling. He's chained, jumped back on. And then he puts in a massive surge. And again Beck gets back on them. And this is just tying again to the fact that now Van der Pole's done, done more work early on because he got caught, caught in the crosswinds. More work than Pogachar in the second quarrel want because he was just, you know, a few positions too back, he had to make up 10 meters. He's chained drops. He has to do a big surge to get in the back of them. Maybe those things are all what culminated in the last climb where Pogasha was able to get away from him. And you just don't know. It's a bit of everything. But this is just racing and this is why we love talking about it.

Yeah, you're spot on. The accumulation of efforts really took its toll and that's what enabled Poga Char to actually get away. And yeah, call it bad luck, call it bad positioning, call it timing, but they all add up. And, and at that level, you can't afford to give anybody an inch. And I often say to a lot of the guys, one of the examples you could use is we do the Saturday ride sometimes where it's figure eight and everybody knows where the figure eight starts. And you need, in my opinion, if you're not such a good hill climber, to be near the front when you hit the first hill. And in my situation, I'm riding against a whole group of guys who are way better than I am. And so therefore I'm not going to start at the back and give guys who are already better than me 20 meters head start by. Because the bunch size covers 20 meters, maybe 25 meters, I need to be at the front of that group. And they're little decisions that you should be making based on what's happening in the race or what's happening in the scenario around you to enable you to get a better outcome. So what would be the point of me starting at the back if I'm the 20th best rider? That's probably where I should start, to get out of the way of the guys who are better than me. But that's not my mindset. My mindset is I need to be as close to the front as I can. So if I can hang on for this minute 30 climb, by the time we get to the top, I may still be in contact with the group. If I start at the back, I'll be 40, 50 meters off the back by the time we get to the top of the hill. And therefore I'm going to ride solo for the rest of the figure 8 loop that we do. So they're examples of making good decisions to put yourself in better position, to help your weakness become a strength by actually using your brains to enable you to still be in the race. And the other things, you know, that's just one example of what you can be doing. And of course, as you said, if you're not thinking about those things, you're just riding and following wheels and physically putting efforts in, but not actually thinking about what's happening right now, what's going to happen next, what hill is next? How far away are we from the hill? Where should my position be? And even in our little Gran Fondo, before we came into the Arenberg forest, you could feel the tension in our pack of 20 riders. We were jostling for the front four or five, five places, trying not to get on the front. So because there's quite a bit of a win there, but trying to be close enough so that when we turn right onto the Arenberg, that you were right at the beginning of the bunch. And they're examples of having to be thinking about the right things at the right time and not just daydreaming.

Yeah, we did want to kind of touch on our experiences of the two races in comparison to the pros, because it's really fascinating to do essentially the same course, just less distance distance, you know, the same sectors and see how you go with it. See how you go on these climbs with some fatigue in your legs because we ride some of the sectors fresh as well and then compare it to the pros times. And that, to be honest, you just, it just makes you feel like a bike rider because it's really humbling just to go. Sometimes you think you're going pretty well and then you look at the pros times and they just seem like aliens. It is Just absolutely absurd. But you touched on it before. You know, we, we felt like true Flandrians in the Flanders gran fondo. And we were using. We thought about racing it from the start because with any gran fondo people, you know, a lot of people just getting through the day, which is a great way to enjoy the experience. But we thought about going to the start, official start time, and having a crack. But because it was so wet, we just thought it'd be a bit risky to try and be racing around those roads. And I think that was a really good decision because it is quite dangerous with how many turns there are and the cobbles. But we got through that day and suffered a lot in, in those conditions. It was just cold, wet and windy from the start. And that was an experience of just, you know, grinding through. And I laugh about the fact that we kind of. We all got split up a little bit into little pods. But our pod, there was a section between kind of 60 and. And 90k in the middle there, where you're going through these very open fields in Flanders and it's, it's just constantly turning again, headwind for a couple minutes, tailwind for a couple minutes, crosswind for five minutes. And in that 60 to 90k period of approximately an hour, I think there were two words spoken. You know, the. Everyone went very quiet and we were just all trying to do some as long a turn on the front as you could handle before you jump off and try and let one of your teammates help. But to me, that just kind of summarized the experience in how grueling it was. You were just focusing on getting through and you weren't. You couldn't put any more energy into talking or it was just head down, not that enjoyable, just suffering through. But at the same time, in that section, we all said afterwards, in hindsight, that we were all saying the same thing to ourselves in our head, that this is an experience. This is what this is about. And although it's tough and although it's super uncomfortable and I'm freezing, this suffering is what it's about. And that was kind of a summary of our Flanders experience.

Yeah, look, Flanders in, you know, it's such a different ride because it's got so much climbing on cobbles. There's a lot of climbing off cobbles as well. Almost every time you turn a corner, there's another hill and they're, you know, it's like doing 30 VO2 efforts of between one and two minutes and you're not riding on a smooth road. You're Riding on a road that's throwing your bike around and it's slippery and, you know, and there's other riders around you because it's a Gran Fondo and they're so steep.

Yeah, they come off, you're gone.

Yeah, they could be walking because they've come off. And let's face it, we've seen the pros walking up at Koppenberg and the Paderberg. So it's not just the amateur's walk, but once you lose momentum on a steep 12% gradient, you're not getting back on your bike. And so there's lots of people around you walking. So you're trying to fight your way around people who are walking on a narrow road that's literally three bike widths, you know, wide and, and you're yelling out, you know, trying to be polite, yell out, get out of. Get out of my way, otherwise I'm going to be stopped and I'm going to be walking with you. So, so concentration on that was pretty epic. And yeah, so you've gone from that to then jumping into the Roubaix experience where it's going to be beautiful weather and not as windy as, as that's the least wind I've ever seen, I think. And look, it was pro race ever. And, you know, I don't think the riders are any more talented than they were last year or the year before. It's just the conditions were unbelievably perfect and, and for us, we had our own little race. We decided that we would ride, you know, at the front of the group and, and make a race of it and see, see where we, you know, we ended up. We did the 145k for both events and, you know, the time it takes for the, that for those, those grand fondos as an example of how hard the ride is, because, you know, 145k, you shouldn't be riding, you know, that much past five hours. And here we were really, you know, struggling to ride anywhere near that. And the story that we have for, for Roubaix was such a contrast. We're at 60k of pretty much just flat road with no cobbles and, you know, the group, the, the start of the, of the actual event, the, the commentator was introducing a lot of the riders and he could see, you know, we had 11 trivella riders all in the same kit. It was a fine, a fair, intimidating start line because we were right at the start and there was a lot of German and French and Belgium riders who were kind of eyeing us off and. And after about 20 or 30 k's, it looked like there was only maybe 40 riders left out of the whole peloton that started of, you know, So the race became almost everybody against the trivalo group. And it was a great experience and I really felt like our group understood about concentration and what to do and making decisions. Exactly what we're talking about here year. And you know, we had a little bit of fun with it early and a couple of attacks up the road and a couple of dummy attacks and making the other guys chase. And. And so we had, you know, few of our guys go one at a time and it was good fun. And. And then finally it got really serious when we hit. Hit the cobbles properly in Aaron Burgers first. And it was just riders going everywhere, bottles flying off bikes, bikes flying under the, under the dirt. It was chaotic. Chaos is all I can describe it. And it was such a contrast from Flanders where this time we are actually racing and, and really trying to, to really beat the people around you. And that's, that's a different way to do a gran fondo and it's not the way we've been doing it over the last period of time that I've taken riders. And it was, it was really fun to do it this way for the first time and, and it was great watching all you guys up the road. And a couple of times a couple of our riders got. Got distance from the front group, so we rode back, rode them back onto the group, which was, which was really fun to do. And. And eventually the group really got narrowed down after about three or four sectors of cobbles down to. I don't know how many was it Jordan, 15 riders.

Yeah. There's still 20.

Yeah, maybe 20. Of which we had five or six in that group. And then we had really.

It was. It was five or six of us. And then there was this German team of five riders and then it was all individuals. But it was pretty interesting with, you know, team versus team.

Yeah. And. And then, then you've got the, you know, the luck factor where Julian and you know, last seen flipping onto the, onto the cobbles on his side. And then John Cartwright doing a full somersault on his bike and landing on the soft grass and standing up and continuing riding. And then unfortunately, Joe hitting the deck and breaking his collarbone and actually getting back on his bike and continuing to ride the rest of the race with a broken collarbone, which is pretty impressive. Not a complaint, you know, just got on with it. And the good thing I You know, want to tell everybody out there was the, the camaraderie had amongst the group was if someone was in trouble, one rider was staying with them. And, you know, we had Dave from Perth who's. Who's. Who, you know, sacrificed his whole race to stay with Joe to make sure he was okay, which is pretty, pretty big effort when he was in the middle of a race himself. So, you know, I got a big shout out to that. And they're decisions that you make on the spur of the moment when you know that one of your mates is in trouble. And, you know, it was a pretty bad crash Joe had. And, and for him to get back on his bike was pretty impressive, but to have Dave stay with him and sacrifice his opportunity up the front was pretty impressive. But taking away from that, once the race started to go, you had to make a decision yourself. And I know you don't want to talk about this, but this is not the reason why we're bringing this up. But for you to go up the road by yourself with 50k to go, what was going through your mind when that decision came to your thought process? How did that come about?

Yeah, I'm keen to give a good summary of our 11 riders as well. Well, what you started with, but, yeah, I'll answer these questions. Yeah, it's. It was interesting because the two German guys, the pace was. The pace was quite slow in between the cobble sectors just after those first few. And I actually said to Nick, I said, this is too slow. There's too many riders who are getting dropped on the cobble sectors, but they're getting back on in between. So I said, after this next sector, we need to start, you know, ramping up the pace in between and working together. And finally when I said that the next sector, two of the German guys launched a big attack in the in between, and we closed them down. And then on that next sector, I just decided I'd put the pressure on and just see what happened. And I ended up gapping the German guys that just attacked and it got to the end of the sector and I had a fair gap and exactly what you're saying. I turn around and obviously our Tribala riders are sitting behind them because they're not going to chase me down. That's just awesome cycling teamwork. They're of kind keeping the two German guys on the front. The three other guys had been dropped completely. They were another 100 meters back or so. So there's two German lefts and three traveller riders. And again, it's those snap decisions. I turn around and go, okay, this is the position. The Traveller guys aren't going to chase me down. It's going to be up to those two Germans. I look down, there's 50k to go. And yeah, you go, well, what do you do here? And I think that's one of the things you've taught is that in a race, when it's time to go, you just gotta go. You can't hesitate and sit back and let them catch back on. And so I just thought, here comes a 50k time trial on the Roubai Coggles. Let's see what we can do. And also in my head I thought that if they brought me back, it's just perfect for the team because then one of our other guys can just go because they've just been sitting in. So, so it was a win, win situation, I think.

Yeah, it's a great, it's a great summary because, you know, one of our riders had to do something if we're going to race this race as a team. And that's what team tactics is. So someone has to go up the road. It could stick. 50k, that's pretty long way for it to stick, in my opinion. And it probably won't, won't last. But, but if you keep riding at a threshold that's sustainable and even the people behind are always going to be on, off, on, off. So the rider who rides consistently against a group of riders who are riding on, off, on, off. We see this all the time in the pros where how can one rider stay away from a pack of 12? It doesn't seem logical, but that's what happens almost every time. And so I know talking to you afterwards, that was your mindset of, if I just keep riding at my threshold for as long as I can, I'm going to open up this gap. And you're hoping that's what's going to happen. And, but when it comes into reality, it's kind of exciting because a lot of the sectors in Roubaix, you can look across the fields and see, see because you turn left and right in a lot of the, you know, some of the actual cobble sectors aren't straight as well. Flat open field and they do a complete right angle so you can see across to see how close or how far the bunch is from you. So you're getting feedback instantly from, not from race radio, but just from looking, looking. And so, you know, what was your feeling like when you could see that the gap was growing every time you got to the next sector and all of a sudden they're coming out of sight. What were your thought processes about how to ride that next section?

Yeah, it was really encouraging to see the gap growing. That was one thing. And I found that in the early sectors I was quite strong on the cobbles. I was riding them really well. Well, and even when I got away, it wasn't. I didn't actually attack. I just, I just put real big pressure on and that was enough to get a gap. So I thought, well, I'm riding the cobbles really strong. And so like you said, I. I picked my number for 50k. I said, this is about what I think I can hold for 50k. And I was riding a little bit more conservatively in the in between bits because I knew that we're probably going to be riding even pace in those parts. I knew I could gain time on the cobbles, so I was conserving a little bit so I could hit each cobble section. And I was basically just riding flat out and allowing my heart rate to get up at this 50k. There was 13 sectors left or something. So I thought, all right, I've got 13 efforts to do, basically, and the last three are actually quite short. So I knew There was basically 10 serious efforts and I was kind of going not absolute max, but on each of those sections, willing to go quite over threshold and just for those few minutes of what they were, and then in between, use that to recover, probably sit just below threshold and try and ride consistently. And the logic behind that is try and make up the most time when it's hardest, as if the sections are an uphill. And then the in between sections are the metaphor of a downhill, where if we're riding relatively even power, they might be going slightly faster than me, but they're not going to. They could be making up five or 10 seconds or so, but I'm going to be making up more than that on the cobble. So that was kind of my mindset.

And that's actually everything we've done on podcasting for how to ride well in time trial. And it's amazing in a cycling event you've had to use your time trial knowledge to actually benefit you in the long run. So when the bike's going slowest, that's the time when most time can be made up. And so on the cobbles, the bike is going slowest. And so that's the period where you're going to put your most biggest efforts in. When, when you're on the Bitumen where, you know, it's not as hard. The time gap between. And I looked up Strava compared to what my little group was doing, compared to a lot of the front guys. And on the, on the flat sections, we were riding similar speed, but the difference was on the harder sections, the better guys were putting 10, 20, 30 seconds in each sector, whereas on the easy sections, they were putting two or three seconds into us. And those two or three seconds, sure, they do add up over 20 sectors, but not as much as 20 sectors times 15 seconds or 20 seconds. It's phenomenal, the difference. So when the bike is going slowest, that's the hardest period. It's either a headwind or cobbles in this place or uphill hill. And, and that was really intelligent writing and, and that's kind of what kept you give. Getting more distance between them and where you were. And as the time goes down in, in the race, you're actually, you know, getting a better outcome every single time you get to the hardest section. So you're adding more time onto them. So, and you know, you won't tell anybody, but you had to get off your bike and unravel your tube that had fallen out the back of your saddlebag and it was wrapped around the, the, the rear derailleur. So, you know that, that panic that can cause all sorts of problems. But you were off to bike for a minute or two and, and you still didn't see them in sight. So that would have been another reaffirming of I have got a really decent gap here. Was that what was happening when you were, when you were off your bike going on could not. This couldn't come at a worse time. Time to have this little mini mechanical.

I just, I just love everything about Roubaix because of this. We had 11 riders and every single person had a different story about what happened. And that is just the race to a tee. And we saw that in the pros, you know, just stuff. There's just chaos going on everywhere. And I was so pumped because as the K's were ticking down, you know, I just, I couldn't see the gap behind. I had no idea what it was. But you get to, There's a lead motorbike and you get to ride behind them. And it really feels like you're a pro because, you know, and they're very good at not letting you draft. I was really trying to get close to him and he's, he was making sure he was staying 40 meters up the road, but, you know, You've got this lead motorbike in front of you, and you're absolutely hyped. And this is getting towards one of the last few sectors. And, yeah, the. It's. It's insane to me that this actually happened. My saddlebag came loose and fell into my wheel, and the tube came out of my saddlebag and wrapped itself around my disc brake. And for that to happen just shows the violence of what's happening on the cobbles. You know, your saddlebag is wrapped so tightly around the bottom of your seat, you know, and it's. It goes under the little metal parts of your seat and it's wrapped through a clip and Velcroed on for you to thread it through the clip. It's quite fiddly. You know, you really have to fiddle it through there and wrap it around and pull it tight for the bike to be shaking so much that the Velcro, not only the Velcro comes off, but it gets through. That little G falls off my seat. To me, that was just shocking. I couldn't believe that that. That actually happened. And it was also infuriating because I. I didn't know if there were 40 seconds behind or three minutes or. And I had to jump off. And I'm desperately ripping this tube out of my disc brake, thinking, this is my gap gone. You know, this is my chance at the race. Wind gone. Trying not to panic, but getting super frustrated. Little did I know that Nick had actually. Our Trivalo guy who's been on the podcast before, and he's actually our cycling coach at Tribello, was coming across. So he was in between. He was second. He was in between me and the chase group, and he actually came past me, and he didn't see me, and I didn't see him as I'm on.

The side of the road.

This, I guess, is a representation of how chaotic it seems. And also there's. The 70k riders are kind of in between us, so sometimes they're on the course as well. Well, so he came past me, so I didn't know I'd lost the lead. I thought once I got it undone, I couldn't see the chase group, and I thought, I must have a decent gap here because they still haven't come. I got back on the bike. Next sector, I passed Nick, and I didn't see him. He's had a puncture. So he's got into the lead and then had a puncture, and he's on the side of the road fixing that and sees me go past him. And he's bewildered because he's like, how did I get in front of. Of Jordan when he. We both didn't see each other. It's just hilarious. We talked about it after the race. And so again, this just represents Roubai, but, you know, he took the lead of the race and then he got a puncture and I. I retook the lead. And yeah, that was just a representation, I think. To summarize, our 11 riders, we had multiple bottles lost in the first 50 meters of Arenberg. There was. There was six bottles lost or something. They just popped out of the bike. We had had five punctures. We had two mechanicals. We had four crashes like you said, three of which were the people were okay, obviously banged up a bit, a bit of blood, a lot of mud, but okay. And then one broken collarbone. And as we said, Dave really sacrificed himself to make sure everyone else was okay. And he was the one that actually stopped next to Nick and helped him fix his tire. Again, this comes back to the kind of tubeless versus tubes issue we were talking about, where, you know, those of us that had tubeless didn't. Didn't have a puncture bad enough that stops us during the race. And that at the end of the night, when we unpacked our bikes in the van, you know, eight hours later from the race, my back tyre was dead flat. And so something that obviously happened during the race, but the tubeless tire had allowed it to stay up, whereas anyone that was getting punctures or pinch flats with tubes in having stop to stop on the side of the road and fix that. And so for a lot of the group, we kind of summarize that that's a big indication that it's probably a big advantage to race, especially in that kind of race. But any race with tubeless, because it could stop you from having to sit on the side of the road and potentially give up the race. And I don't know what the pros were doing, whether they're tubeless or not. And sometimes it's unavoidable sometimes with those cobbles. And this is what we're talking about at the start with how fast the pros are riding. Sometimes those cobbles are hitting the wheels so hard that it's going to cause a flat no matter what. And I tell you what, sometimes some of the bumps you were hitting, I was just going how my wheels were still okay here. You know, you would hit some jagged rogs, just rocks, just full pelt, just straight into the edge of them. And I just go, how did that not pop my tire just then? And turns out the rear, the rear wheel copped it enough that it did go flat, but it got me through the race. But yeah. Anyway, I just wanted to summarise the 11 kind of different experiences the riders had and how much that represents the freaking crazy hell race that is Roubaix.

Well, I'm not going to let you get away with this because the race did continue and at this point now you're back in front and you've passed Nick and he's had the puncture, which would have been fantastic had both of you been able to ride in together. But you've still got what, how far to go? Was it from that point?

Yeah, from that point. That was the. There was three sectors to go and the fourth last sector is the Tardis one. It's the five star. That's colder. Lafleur or something. It's where for Delabra carpool to Labra. Yeah. Thank you. That's where Vanderpoel attacked. It's where Decongol crashed. It's where Van Art actually attacked first, got his puncture, then Vanderpoel went over him in that sector is just messed up how hard that is. And then you get 100 meter break and then you hit the next sector, which is just brutal. And then there's two kind of tamer sections left and then it's a 12k ride to the finish. And after I got back on the bike and, and saw that the chase, I couldn't see the chase group still. I thought, this is great. I've lost a couple of minutes there changing my bike. But I didn't know Nick had gone past. But I thought, but I'm still in the lead. And the motorbike actually didn't see Nick E either because he stayed in front of me. So which was interesting. But I thought, I'm still in the lead. I couldn't see them coming, which means I must have put three or four minutes into them. And so I just thought, just ride hard here and you're going to get to Velodrome first. Which was pretty exciting. And I spoke to you about it after. You can see how people talk about the. This kind of mythical power surge you get when you're in the front of a race or they talk about the Tour de France when, you know, people get extra power when they're wearing the yellow jersey, but you get that hyped energy and suddenly you can ride harder. And.

This is not just a club race. We're talking about. We are actually on a. On the course that has the Velodrome Paris Roubaix to finish. So it's a little bit different. So the adrenaline's going to be a little bit different than riding at the back of Warrigal in a club race.

And I'll be honest, that's what was hyping me up so much. I was just getting so amped thinking about riding into the velodrome. It was just a really.

So you're still. You're still following the motorbike, and you must get to a point with 4k to go, 3k to go, because it's a really special finish at Roubaix. It comes down this avenue and you go down. And as you've seen people say it on telly, you go down the middle of the avenue and you swing with 1k to go, go around. And you eventually make your way into the. Into the velodrome. And it's a. It's a. It's almost surreal. You know, even when you're coming 400th in the race, it still feels fantastic. What was the feeling you were having when you finally got your bike onto the velodrome?

Yeah, it is just. Just awesome. To be honest. I rode. I rode that 50k as hard as I've ever ridden anything. And when I went through the last sector, I did. I ex. I kept turning around, and I expected at any time, you know, Nick or someone to be coming around the corner and the group be chasing. I just kept thinking, they're a group, you know, they're going to be stronger than me. I was expecting them to come at any point, and it still come down to a sprint finish or something. And in that last 12k, I just ignored my power threshold and just wrote as hard as I could, and I was just going harder and harder, and legs really, really started to fade in the last couple of K. And I was just thinking, you just to keep it together here, you know, don't. Don't hit that wall and get past. I'd had a really bad experience at a club race before we left where I got passed. I did try to do a solo breakaway, and I got passed on the line and lost the win, which was. I just had that in my head. And so I was really just riding as hard as I possibly could. And then it's really, like you said, it's really fun. You're following the pro course, obviously, and, you know, you do this right turn into the. The kind of velodrome area, and then It's a few turns and there's a big atmosphere around because the women's race was on after us. And so they came through a few hours later, and so people were already out in the course. And there was heaps of people around the Roubaix village and the actual velodrome itself. So it was a really cool atmosphere. And the bike peels off like it does, you know, in a pro race, where all the cars go off to the left and then you turn right into the actual velodrome. And I was just so hyped and, And I heard the French announcer announcing and got the crowd hyped, obviously. And there was. There was a crowd there on the bank watching the finish, and they're all cheering and clapping and. Yeah, it was, it was. It was honestly the best feeling I've ever had on the bike. And went around the corner and I. There's cameras and stuff. And I sat up on the, on the bike and pointed to the Trivello jersey, and with my hands up, I was. It was awesome.

It's funny hearing you say that. And look, riding that last lap on the velodrome, it's. It's pretty special. And by the way, the velodrome is. Got steep banks. For those who don't realize, it's, it's, It's a fair dinkum velodrome, and it's a big velodrome. It's almost, I think it's over 400 meters around, which is way bigger than the velodromes we ride in at home. But, but yeah, we have joked over the years about what would be your winning salute. And that was a classic. You set up with no hands and put your hands across your trivalo thing. And we all had a great laugh. And yeah, it was fantastic to see you actually get the victory there. And it was almost felt like a bit of a team thing when we got to the finish.

Absolutely.

And to get second and third. So we got first, second and third. And unfortunately, Nick. Nick had to walk. Couldn't repair his tire, so he had to walk 2 or 3k and got a. Got a lift from some other car and had to walk another section. And so there was so many epic stories. But, yeah, congratulations to you on, on winning a Paris Roubaix Gran Fondo. And it, it was, it was one of the more outstanding rides I've seen from your good self. So well done.

No, I appreciate it. And, and the joking thing is so true. We joked about, oh, imagine if you were ever getting to there first what would you do? And I just couldn't believe that even though it's a Gran Fondo and it's not a serious race and it's not a massively deep field to enter the velodrome leading a race, it just is so cool. But I will challenge that and say that I think the ride of the day still goes to Joe because he broke his collarbone with 50k to go or 55k to go. And I remember complaining to myself in the third last section, just going, my hands are so sore. I could, I was just. I could barely hang on to the handlebars. I just felt like they were so sore. And I was just. You just. I'm like, please get off these sectors. And I thought I was doing it tough. And then Joe's behind, you know, riding the same sectors with a broken collarbone. And he wrote that whole last 55k and he put himself into a really deep state. He wasn't in a good way when he finished the race because he put. He'd gone so deep, he was actually. His body actually went to a bit of shock and his front tire punctured really badly with 3k to go. So he ended up walking the last 3k himself as well. So we had two riders walking and he walked into the velodrome and he was in that much pain. And the announcer walked up to him and kind of asked him what happened because he's, you know, he's seen this guy walk in and Joe can barely speak and he's trying to say he's got a puncture and the guy's asking questions and, and Joe's kind of in that much pain. He's almost non responsive. And there's an epic photo of Joe walking around one of the bank and he made sure he walked all the way through the finish. And it was just one of those moments that was incredible to see. Hard to watch because you don't want to see one of your friends and a rider in that position. But the mental toughness to do that for me was a pure representation of what the Roubaix race is about, I think.

And there was nothing stopping Joe from finishing that race, was there? His determination to get to the finish? You know, he'd have to be run over by a truck for him not to get to that finish line. And, and you know, you know, he ended up in the ambulance in hospital, you know, six hours, you know, straight after Roubaix. And it dampened it for him. But he still smiles and says it's the best and most epic thing he's ever done. And. And you know, he wouldn't trade it for the world. And that's what, that's what trips like this is all about, the experience. And there's stories that you gu have forever. And you know, everybody in our little group on that one day has a story to tell. And whenever they watch Roubaix in the future, they'll know almost every bump and cobble and sector. And that's what's fun about going and doing these events because it's the exact same course as what the pros do. And you get to sort of mini experience it in your own dreams of what it's like. And it is as hard as it looks. And it looks, looks. It looks hard and I think it's way harder than it looks. And.

Yeah.

And you know, I just. It's something you can't explain to people. You've just got to experience how hard it is. And the only way to describe the cobbles are they're violent.

Yeah.

And I just can't imagine how the bike stays together. That's one of the things I think.

Yeah. I think for me the best way to describe it is the fact that my saddlebag came off. I just still can't comprehend that. And also the fact that, that we all lost our bottles in the first 50 meters of the first couple sector of the day. I think that just shows, shows what's happening to the bikes. And last detail I want to touch on. And this is Joe again, but just again kind of shows what's happening in the chaos of the race. But he lost both his bottles in Arenberg and there's still 90k to go when you hit that first sector. 95k to go. And you can't do that. 95k without nutrition. And he actually in between, rode up ahead, started like went off the front and he said to me, I'm going to go off ahead and get to the feed station early and pick up two bottles because there's fe where you can top up on stuff and refuel. But because we were racing, we weren't stopping at the feed stations. Everyone was just, you had to get through the 148k with whatever you were carrying or you were going to miss the group. And he went off and the German team started getting really edgy and I just went up to them and said, oh, he's lost both these bottles. He just wants to get ahead and get to the feed station. I didn't know how they would react, but they said, no, that's okay. And so they backed off the pace and let him go off the front, which could have been an interesting race tactic if you were lying or making it up. But they trusted that, and he actually got to the feed stat and he came out of there as we're riding past. So it was good timing. But I think that, yeah, I wanted to finish on that story because it really does summarize kind of everything that's happening. So we've spoken a lot about the Spring Classics. It was epic. I think it's so worth talking about because the. All the lessons you learn from watching these races just apply to your own personal experience. And then you can. You can learn these things. And then when you find yourself in that position to race, even if you haven't been there before, you've seen the pros do it. So you can kind of take that and emulate it. I think. Think it's, as you said, it's so worth sharing and understanding.

Yep. And that's exactly right. Jordan. There's so much you can learn from every event that you go in. And the Spring Classics are an extreme example of lessons that are hard to learn. You make a few mistakes there, and the consequences are quite huge. And it's one of those ones where mechanical, and we've seen it in the pro peloton, mechanical issues can play a role, and you've just got to be adapt at trying to make the best out of a bad situation and trying to get your equipment as good as possible, and you can still make mistakes with that. The pros still have punctures and still have things go wrong, so you can't prepare for every single thing. But attention to details could be not more important than days like these. So everything we're trying to get across here is to explain that there are lots of things that. That contribute to having a great experience as a bike rider or any athlete. But it's just not about the fitness all the time. The fitness is the key ingredient to everything we do. The fitter you are, the more choices you have. I'm convinced of that. But it's not everything. And if you have that willingness to race and desire to put yourself on the line and take risks and be aggressive, you will, nine times out of ten, be more effective. And that sounds quite different to a triathlon tip that I would give, because in triathlon, you need to be the opposite. You need to be patient, because the endurance events are not built for aggression. You need to be more patient type of rider who's really following the numbers. Whereas in events like this, this, you know, you really need to, to think strategy. And there is strategy in triathlon. Don't let, don't let me think that. That's not what I'm saying. The strategy is to be more even and the strategies in, in an event like the Gran Fondos that we do, whether it's Roubaix or Flanders or, or any of your local Grand Fondos, it's, it's to be tactically conserving and, and being ready to give your aggression when it counts. And you can make the difference between winning and losing if you really think carefully about the timing and when to attack. And that's kind of the key thing, I think, from, if you can get anything from what we talked about, is making good decisions with aggression will normally get a good result.

Spot on. Yeah. I just think there's so much to learn, as I said before, from watching these. And there's tactics and everything and. Yeah, I guess the summary lesson is exactly everything you just said then. It's. And it's concentration and it's, it's physical fitness as well as mental ability. And that's what it seems to come down to. So that's it for this spring Classics edition of the the Episode. Thank you very much for listening as always, and we'll see you next.