Summary

The conversation delves into the significance of structured training in sports, particularly focusing on how managing intensity can lead to better performance outcomes. It highlights the importance of recovery and adaptations over time, while also addressing the complexities introduced by variability in training methods that comes with group riding.

Takeaways

Structured training is essential for performance success. Managing intensity is crucial for recovery and adaptations. Variability in training can complicate performance outcomes. A well-structured plan can lead to year-on-year improvements. Intensity management should be considered in all training cycles. Coaching plays a vital role in structuring training effectively. Recovery is as important as the training itself. Performance peaks can be achieved through careful planning. Uncontrolled rides introduce variability that can hinder progress. Understanding the science behind training can enhance coaching effectiveness.

Monthly coaching RCA: https://roadcyclingacademy.com/one-to-one-coaching/

Transcript:

Cam Nicholls (00:00.322) Welcome back to the RCA podcast where today I am joined by RCA coach Ben Treville, who's a science data geek or data nerd. I always forget which one it is. I think I say that every time, Who's actually in the middle of Australia at the moment, traveling with his partner in the Northern Territory. So thanks for joining us today, Ben.

Alright, this podcast is brought to you by Starlink.

Yeah, the internet connection is actually pretty good based off of the last podcast we did. So hopefully no issues in this one today. I wanted to talk about group rides and bunch rides because a lot of people that come to us, they're doing them and they want to incorporate them and we want them to keep doing them. We call it the not negotiable rides because we want people to continue doing the rides that they enjoy doing.

you know, people also need to recognise that if you're overdoing them, which a lot of people are doing as well, you know, there's maybe some considerations you need to, you need to keep in mind. So in this chat today, I wanted to, you know, ask you with your, you know, partial science hat on, because I know there isn't a lot of science in this space specifically, this kind of indirect stuff that you've looked at, but also your anecdotal experiences as a coach, you know, working with amateurs and, and recreationalists that are doing

know, group rides as part of their training, you know, how does it look? Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? What do we need to consider? So the first thing I'm going to ask you, because you know, a lot of people come to the RCA, they're making inquiries, I'm having conversations with them, and they're like, they're worried, do I have to let go of, you know, my group ride or my social ride or my, you know, we call it in noosa, the Tuesday world champs, you know, go smash fest with your mates. Do I have to get rid of that if I want to improve Ben?

Ben Treble (01:53.484) My favorite statement. depends. It's a point. I feel like I wear two hats. My lab coat as a sports scientist, and then I have my coaching cap and my sports scientist lab coat says, you know, from a technical point of view, structured training wins out. It's really about managing control and intensity and the more, even from a science or a coaching point of view that we can.

I can't.

Ben Treble (02:22.402) control, manage, intensity throughout a week, a block, a macro cycle, like a year on year within the plan, the better we can manage the recovery and the better that we can peak for a certain performance and find year on year adaptations. Once we add in variability, and I'm going to...

call on your bunch rides as highly variable uncontrolled rides, that's when things get a bit more complicated, right? And that's when you find that it's going to be difficult to plan a little bit, right? So that's the, we can dig a little bit more into the science side, because there is some science that's, would say, directly, or sorry, indirectly related to this topic. And that would be the science around what we call training intensity.

distribution, which is fancy words for, you know, how much time do we spend in each zone when we train? So I think a lot of our athletes and listeners are used to thinking about, you know, in training peaks, we can see that how many hours in a week have we spent in each zone, week on week, and you can see the general structure. The two most common would be targeting for either a pyramidal structure, where the higher the zone you go, the less time you spend.

And then you have probably what's got a bit more science behind it in terms of better outcomes, which would be polarized training or the 80-20 approach where you try to spend 20 % of your time at high intensity zones. And you spend 80 % of your time at the lower zones, so zone one and two. And you spend very little time in the middle in that zone three tempo space.

Can I, before you continue, can I just play a little bit of devil's advocate here because you you talk about the unpredictable nature and not being able to control what's happening in a group ride or a bunch ride and I get that but isn't that what happens in the events that a lot of people are targeting like their Fondo events or maybe they even want to go to a crit race so isn't a group ride like the perfect conditioning tool for those?

Cam Nicholls (04:40.64) No, it's unpredictable. Like you don't know what you're going to get. It's like for like.

This is where I put my, my coach had on. said it in our last podcast, but, I am an advocate for bunch rides in, two scenarios. One is when you have a rider that's at risk of burnout from structured training, because I think we need, we need two things long-term. The most important thing that I think we could all agree on in, in cycle training is consistency over the long-term.

Right? So how do we maintain consistency on the long term? The risk to achieving that is going to be burnout that stops you from training, taking a hiatus from training, which could be from work, family, travel, whatever it is. And then you have illness and injury. How do we reduce the risk of those things interrupting training?

Ben Treble (05:43.636) And I believe that you need to keep training fun and interesting. And one of the most motivating things, but nothing is more motivating really than chasing your mates. many of your PBs can a set by on your Tuesday worlds versus on the indoor trainer?

it's definitely, definitely Tuesday Worlds. But I do know, I mean, that other thing that's resonating going back to something you just said is burnout. I know if I do Tuesday Worlds and maybe if I did Saturday, the Saturday group ride as well, if I did that week after week after week, I'd be probably burnout within eight weeks, maybe even six. Yeah. Because there's too much for me. I know my body well now because I'm chasing wheels and you you're pushing yourself. You said, you know, you're getting PB's and stuff.

You know, if you're your one minute power and your five minute power and, you know, 20 minute power, PBs or close to every other week, there comes a point where the body's like, I know, I've had enough of that. And all of a sudden you're not even anywhere near those PBs and you're all of a sudden you're on a plateau and that's demoralizing too. So while the bunch ride is fun, when you're plateauing and your mates are going faster than you now and you can't pull turns.

maybe that affects the motivation. I there's certainly been a story of my past, not so much anymore because I'm a lot smarter, I listen to people like you now, but in the past, that's where I've been.

Yeah, in science, we call it social facilitation. Right? know, when you put yourself in an environment where you're surrounded by people say pushing harder than you, the sciences has researched this topic a bit and it applied to both this research on both, like, sort of real world sport and eSports. So they've had the same outcomes indoors and outdoors on this and people were able to achieve more PBs within that social

Ben Treble (07:45.496) group environment than outside of it. So there's still, think there's a lot of value to be had from Bunchrides, but it comes back to the individual and I think the timing of their program.

So with my writers, yeah, with my writers, what we try to do is let's say you have a goal, a target event that's in four months time.

Maybe within the base training, that's the time where we're going to make space for bunch rides. It might even be, or in the off season is a good time to make space for one or two depends on the individual bunch rides. But then as we get closer to the goal, we're probably going to reduce that to one bunch ride a week. And then when we'd say two months out, I'm probably going to say, look, let's keep this focused. Let's just do solo sessions for eight weeks. And at the end of the eight weeks after the target.

We have a couple of weeks where we do two social rides a week to bring back some of that. The social aspect's really important, but also it's fun and motivating, I think, bunch rides for people.

Okay. So what would you say then to somebody that, you know, has not negotiable to two group rides a week, but they want to improve. And I'm going to throw a curly one at you here as well. What if, what if their goal is actually to, to beat them like that? Cause we do have people that come to the RCA and like the number one goal is I want to beat my mates in the local group ride. Like that is, that is the goal, but they're also the irony of that is they're doing group rides all the time.

Cam Nicholls (09:23.746) You know what I mean? So they're probably hit a plateau because they're just doing the same thing every single time and fatiguing themselves as well. I know, like I think sometimes people forget that the heart's also a muscle. And if you're like two or three times a week going to max with your heart rate, know, stretching your heart every single week, two or three times a week, even I feel like that in itself, like there comes a point in time where it's like, well, the heart doesn't tend to ache like your muscles do and your joints do.

It tends to shut down the whole body when it's fatigued. So that's a pretty serious thing.

Yeah, I would agree. think what needs to happen is people have to remember that the work you do in the training isn't where you get the gains. It happens afterwards in the recovery. And if you don't get enough recovery, doesn't matter. Often you see this with the people who don't follow structured training as you're talking about, they might come to the RCA all the time and say, well, you know, I'm plateauing, but I'm doing more hours and more intensive than I ever have before.

Simple answer is you're not getting enough recovery and allowing the body to adapt to that training stress response. And because that's not happening, it doesn't matter how much more you push, if anything, all that's gonna do is take you from overreaching to over training and put you in a burnout mode.

right, which is what we want to avoid. So sometimes you have to go slower to get faster. I would suggest to those people, pick one bunch ride a week, skip the other one. The other thing, if we think about the polarized training model, right, 80, 20, if you're too long rides of the week, a bunch rides that are high intensity.

Ben Treble (11:13.582) There's a pretty good chance that you're not doing an 80 20. You're probably doing 80 20, but the 80 is hard and the 20s AC, which is, which is not what the science supports in terms of good outcomes in the longterm. So there's a balance to be had. And at some point you need to put the ego to the side. Now, if you really can't get rid of the two rides, the next step, the next best option would be.

In one of those rides, I would say one of them go hell for leather, like have a free ride, bunch ride that lets you, you know, get your fix. But the second one go on it, but you have to learn to say, okay, I have to learn how to drop the wheel or go off the front and drop back at certain points, right? So that will let you control the intensity. I remember doing bunch rides and I've had friends who were training come to bunch rides and they might go off the front and do an effort.

And then they'll come back and they might just sit on the back, right, to recover. And they'll actually use the bunch dynamics. They might talk to the bunch ahead of time. And I would say it's a courtesy to tell the bunch, guys, I'm actually doing a training ride. So they don't think you're just attacking the punch. So they know if you go off the front to do an effort, they're not going to chase you and kick things off. Or if they decide to kick things off, you might need to say, I've got to have the self-control to let it go and potentially get dropped on this bunch ride.

Hmm. Knowing that that will help me drop them next month when I do my free ride bunch ride. Hmm.

And what sort of stuff are you, you know, and this is a pretty broad question because everyone's different and everyone comes in at different levels. But let's just say as a general blanket and maybe I paint a bit of a picture here because a lot of people that come in, you know, I'll ask them and even if you look at and you go as a coach, I know you guys go a level above this because when somebody joins us, I'll incorporate, you know,

Cam Nicholls (13:19.37) import three months of historical data. And if I've been doing a lot of group rides, you can see what zones that they've really been hitting and focusing on. And quite often, because there is a lot of intensity in there, there's kind of like this gray area in the middle around sort of threshold, sweet spot. And in particular, I always ask people, do you ever do exclusive zone two? They've heard about zone two and they think they do it.

But like I'm talking about, no, no, you just actually go out ride for two or three hours and you just do zone two and you don't touch threshold. You really wanna focus on just nice, consistent, constant pressure at a zone two level. wow, I've never actually done that before. So there's often like looking at the data, lot of low hanging fruit items that you can focus on.

So if somebody's coming to you and they're doing a lot of group rides and say their goal is to improve in the group rides, but you've now convinced them, right, we're just gonna do one a week. What are you gonna put in sort of surrounding that, you know, in terms of training for the rest of the week?

I mean, how would I plan around a single bunch ride in a week?

Exactly. over a time as well, over a progressed 12 week period, how would you kind of start? let's assume that at the end of the 12 weeks, they want to now, they've been getting dropped off the back and they can't pull turns, but after 12 weeks, they want to be getting to the front and pulling turns again and feeling really strong again in their group rides and impressing their mates and doing all the things that we love to do in the group rides.

Ben Treble (14:59.438) I'd spend, I'd probably spend the first block weaning them off bunch rides, to be honest. So I would let them, at least the first week, I would let them have status quo, put in a couple other structured rides and see how well they can actually hit the target intensities of a recovery ride. I often find with new riders, when I give them a recovery ride, they turn it into something else. And the TSS looks way higher than it needs to be.

And they don't realize that a recovery ride is very low intensity. It's like if you were running and I said, go for a walk, that's like the equivalent of, you know, think of what is a walking pace on the bike. You might think to yourself, why would I bother? That's the right pace for your recovery ride. The point that you think, well, how am I bothering with this? That's the good intensity for recovery ride. so that's where I would start. So first block, wean them off.

In the middle, I would try and even get them off bunch rides completely for at least one block. I think most people are willing to do one block with no bunch rides, just do some focused efforts. In the final block, bring them back into the bunch rides once a week, manage it. And then towards the very end of a 12 week program, give them free rein on a bunch ride and see what they can do.

Okay, and what sort of training would you be prescribing if they're not doing bunch rides? Well, what are they doing then? Are they just doing recovery rides?

No, no, it's going to be a mixture. ideally on the weekend, you're doing, let's say one or two long rides, but let's say you get someone who has six to eight hours a week, and we're going to target for say four rides a week. We're going to do one long one on a weekend around two and a half, three and a half hours. This will be predominantly zone two with some high talk efforts. So that's a low cadence intervals in the sort of zone three range.

Ben Treble (17:00.846) Then mid-week, you probably have two full days off at least, and then split up to structured intensity days, which will most likely be a mixture of either threshold, which could be over unders, for example, or might be if we want to work on via 2 max, it could be 30 15s, for example. And then we're going to have a zone two ride and potentially a zone one recovery ride.

Yep, it's interesting. And just what you've said there, I mean, there's so many people out there that don't spend that much time on structured interval training. And, you know, they wonder why they struggle with recovering from, you know, doing a turn in the local bunch ride. You know, they can't go again, or, you know, they're struggling to, you know, get up a climb in their local bunch ride. And it's like, well, when you actually step away from that environment, and you target

you know, specific adaptations. So, you you're over-unders, that's gonna help you with your climbing. You've probably never done this before, because you're so focused on group rides and sporadic riding, all of a sudden you're targeting something that's gonna give you a specific outcome. The same as the, you know, VO2 max, you know, interval sessions, like 30, 15s, or whatever it is. That's gonna really help you with the ability to go really hard, come back into the bunch and recover. Go really hard, come back into the bunch and recover. And it's funny when people actually take, like what you've just described.

we're gonna take a step back, we're gonna just move away from that environment for a little bit, and we're gonna do some specific things that are gonna have specific outcomes, then when you get back into the group ride, you've done all these things you've never done before that are targeted for specific adaptations. it's amazing, you know, that the feedback you hear from recreationals and amateurs that actually embrace what you've just described there, Ben, and go back into that environment like, oh, okay, I get it now.

If I want to be good at this, I can't just do this all the time. Having said that, I do know there are the unique individuals out there that can just do bunch rides all the time and be good at them. We've got one locally here we call the robot. We call him the robot because he's like a robot. He's genetically a little bit different. So it can be, but more often than not, and I'm certainly one of these people, if I don't go do my...

Cam Nicholls (19:17.966) some targeted stuff surrounding the group rides, do my long rides in zone two, do some structured threshold, hill repeats, whatever it might be. I won't perform as well in the group ride. that's a brief overview of how you would sort of, I guess, target or improve group rides. You don't have direct research there, but you've got some indirect stuff.

What does that stuff say? Is there any enlightening things that have come out of that research?

Any

Ben Treble (19:56.64) Yeah, I mean, the research that comes to mind is on the topic of, we said it earlier in the podcast, training intensity distributions. Steven Seiler is probably one of the more prolific researchers out there on this topic. And he had a predominant focus on the 80-20 model. I think some would even say that he's sort of not necessarily come up with that model, but been a big driver in the, you know, the endurance sports space.

trying to get people to adopt this intensity distribution model and the benefits of it. So I think it's pretty quick. Like if we, when we look at new athletes that come in, that come from this bunch riding mentality, haven't done structured training, if you look at their training history and you look at, assuming their threshold is set right, when you look at how the intensity distribution works in their history.

It's very rarely is it ever 80 20. And even often it's not really a very good pyramidal structure either, which is often just, yeah, sorry. Pyramidal would be you spend the most amount of time in the lower zones. So the bottom of the pyramid is your like zone one, then you have zone two, which would be like your typical endurance zone. And then as you go up the pyramid, the higher intensities, they're the ones you spend the least amount of time.

Yeah, so the main difference between pyramidal and polarized for those who may not be aware is you're spending just a little bit more time in zone two in the pyramidal, which is in essentially if you're not, most people aren't using a three zone model, which is what pyramidal and polarized use, which is the scientific zone model, which only has three zones, but zone two is more sort of like that sort of upper end aerobic sort of sweet spot.

tempo area, which really isn't prescribed so much in polarised, but it is in a pyramidal format. I don't know about you, Ben, but I know a lot of the coaches at the RCA, depends on the athlete as well, probably using more of a pyramidal approach than a polarised. still, if you're doing bunch rides, it's neither of those two things. guess that's the point you're trying to make.

Ben Treble (22:21.9) Yeah, there's quite a few in the research world. have what's called systematic reviews, which they systematically go out into the journal databases, pull all the research on certain topics. They try and pull all the data from each paper together in a way that lets them analyze a larger data set to see if there's any outcomes or insights.

And there's quite a few, there's probably three, if not now, maybe even five. I think there was another one that just came out recently systematic reviews on training intensity distribution. People are often trying to compare pyramidal to polarized. And then they often have like threshold and some other, you know, categorizations of training intensity models.

And there are certain papers that show pyramidal is better and certain that show polarized is better. There's probably more papers that support polarized over pyramidal. My hypothesis on this is that if you have less hours and you're say less trained, like an amateur recreation, you're better off with pyramidal. And the more well-trained you are, the more you need to switch into a polarized model.

Hmm.

Typically because the more well-trained you are the more volume you're doing and the more volume you do at a certain point You're limited by your energy, but both

Cam Nicholls (23:46.798) Both these models are proven models and both of them don't align to the Buntride model, do they?

No. So that's my point. come back to my first thing I said, which was that the variability that you get out of these bunch rides is uncontrolled and it's not predictable. So it's very hard to plan and do structured training and have really good outcomes. If you just do these bunch rides. The key thing here is that there's a time and place for bunch rides. The science side says solo structured training is always better, but in the long run, we know that you need to be consistent and stay motivated. So

If you're in the off season or you're a bit further away from doing an event you're targeting, that's the time and place to fit in those bunch rides and get your fix. And then the closer you are to your goal, you probably need to make more space for the structured training and it's more valuable and important.

Good. All right. Well, thanks for your time, Ben. If you're out there listening and you're like, well, you know, I wouldn't mind incorporating some structured training into my bunch riding schedule. And I want some support. want some guided support. know Ben's got some capacity at the moment. So if you want to work with Ben directly, you can head to the RCA website. You'll see monthly coaching there. That's our most popular option. There's also a weekly option if you want something a little bit more intimate.

And there you can work one-on-one with Ben or any of our coaches to, I guess, put a plan together that works around your schedule, looks at the bunch rides that you wanna target, you wanna improve. And we can ensure that you're getting the right training to get you off the plateau because that's really a hidden motivator for a lot of road cyclists that come to us is, they wanna be better in the group rides, they wanna be better in the bunch rides.

Cam Nicholls (25:36.706) but they've hit a plateau and they're not sure what to do about it. Well, that's where obviously we can support you. So head to the Road Cycling Academy website, www.roadcyclingacademy.com and you'll see a link in the menu description called hire a coach and that's where you can get started. We'll catch you in the next podcast.

In this RCA Podcast episode, Cam Nicholls is joined by RCA coach and science expert Ben Treble, who dials in from the middle of outback Australia to unpack a brutal but fascinating VO2 max session: high-intensity decreasing interval training.

This workout comes from a 2020 research paper and flips the classic VO2 script — starting with longer efforts and progressively shortening the work intervals while also reducing the "recovery" time. The goal?

👉 Spend more time above 90% VO2 max for better aerobic adaptations, without endlessly grinding through 4–5 minute repeats. Research paper here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32780251/

Cam shares his first-hand experience trying the session (including why the 2-minute rep hurt the most), and Ben breaks down:

• How the workout is structured and what intensities to target

• Why some athletes respond really well — and others… not so much

• Where this fits into a VO2 max "toolkit" alongside 30/15s and classic intervals

• How to think about specificity, timing in the season, and variety in your training

• Whether using ERG mode on the trainer is "cheating" (hint: it isn't)

If you'd like this workout built properly into your own training, check out the RCA 12-Week Custom Plan, where you work 1:1 with an RCA coach to tailor sessions to your goals, schedule, and current fitness.

Takeaways

A really important part of all training is variation. People do respond differently to different workouts. You can easily keep it interesting. I call it like a VO2 max toolkit. You've got the classic four or five minute intervals. You could use these decreasing working time intervals. Variation is key for effective training. Different workouts yield different responses. VO2 max workouts can be diverse and engaging. Incorporating variety enhances performance.

RCA 12 Week Plan: https://roadcyclingacademy.com/cycling-plan-custom/

Transcript:

Cam Nicholls (00:00.302) So welcome back to the RCA podcast where today I'm joined by one of the RCA coaches, Ben Treble, a science expert who's been with us many times before and is currently out on the road somewhere in the middle of Australia on some huge trip. Where are you Ben right now? It looks like you're in the middle of the country somewhere.

Yeah, thanks Cam. I'm currently in the Northern Territory on one of the bigger cattle stations called Newcastle Waters. I'm just here overnight at the moment and then we'll keep heading north this afternoon towards Catherine.

Yeah, nice. That room you're in looks like there might have been a few backpack backers murdered in that in the past. Looks nice and dodgy.

Yeah, I won't go into it, but we're going to go through a town called Laramma that has an ongoing murder investigation.

Oh, there you go. Yeah, it's a bit dodgy out that way, but it looks like you're having a good time watching your social media. So yeah, keep it up. Enjoy it. Today I wanted to talk about a science-based workout that's been going through the RCA coaching, you know, discussions recently. It was put up in our WhatsApp chat and we've created our own workout within Training Peaks that we've started to prescribe members to give a go. And I gave it a go myself this week.

Cam Nicholls (01:22.234) And I've sent you the paper. I actually haven't read the paper yet. So I'm hoping you can give us a bit of background on this science-backed workout that's, guess, relatively new and there's a bit more work that needs to be done in the space. But I'll give you my thoughts on the workout. But before I do that, can you tell us, you know, what is this workout and what exactly are we looking at in terms of, you know,

outcomes from a fitness adaptation perspective.

There was a paper by S. Lazar and Co. It was actually published in 2020. So I wouldn't say it's that new, but possibly the adoption of it is new. So they call it high intensity decreasing interval training, which is fancy word for doing high intensity intervals. And as you progress through the intervals in the workout, they're decreasing the work duration of each interval. So the quick example.

Say the first interval, you do it around three minutes. Then you have two minutes rest. Then you do a two minute interval, where that's the work duration. And then you have, say, around 80 seconds or 1 and 1.5 minutes rest. Then you do a one minute work interval, 40 seconds rest, 40 seconds down to 30 rest. And then it's 30 second work intervals until fatigue.

What range are we working at? we working at VO2 max? Are we working threshold? What are we doing?

Ben Treble (02:54.38) It's via to max. So the primary goal of this paper, and I guess this workout, it was to compare different interval workout types. So they had short, like classic fear to workouts. And then they had longer intervals, a reminder for the audience that anything above your threshold essentially just requires duration, but you can reach your fear to max at any intensity above threshold.

it just takes longer. So if you're say, if you're 105 % above threshold, you can still reach via two max, but it might take you 25 minutes to get there. Right. And so the crux of the paper and a lot of these via two max workouts around what's the best workout to improve via two max, that's really where they come from is how do we make these interval workouts more effective? And it's based on

That's a big assumption, but it's pretty validated that the more time you spend above 90 % VO2 max, the better the increase in VO2 max. So the better the adaptation outcome. And so they're trying to design and get creative around these interval workouts. What is the best interval workout structure that lets you spend more time above that 90 % VO2 max for less effort.

Okay. And looking at the paper and the participants and the results, was there anything worthy to note?

Yeah, yeah, it's keep in mind, it's a single paper is a pretty small sample size. So they had 12 cyclists, middle age, so around their 40s, they're moderately to well trained. So they had around a via two maxes of around 55 give or take. So that's just the population group of this study. So it's important to keep that in mind. And what they found was

Ben Treble (05:01.358) that you spent significantly more time in this high intensity decreasing interval type of workout compared to small or long intervals for VO2 max. What's important though, I think in this paper is that there's a high amount of standard deviation. So for example, one of the measurements was they spent around 312 seconds.

above that 90 % VO2 max, but your standard deviation was 207 seconds. So you had some responders in this sample group who might only have spent essentially what is an insignificant from a scientific standpoint, amount of time different to the other workout types. So some people had no more benefit that was measurable by doing this versus short intervals. But some people had very large

responses to it compared to the short and long intervals. And this is a trend in most of these, you you and I have talked about 3015 as a really good VO2 workout before from Ben Ronestadt. And even with within that, and he's done multiple papers on it, so then the research is a bit more conclusive, I would say that it's a very good recommendation. This paper is good. And I think it's a really nice indicator to say potentially, this has a lot of good potential.

But it's not a guarantee that it would work for you.

Okay, so going to the workout structure and how to do it because the thing I liked about it is I'd actually never done it before. I've done a lot of VO2 max training sessions, know, 30-15s, which we talked about, I started to incorporate that a fair bit after we sort of made some content on it. And, you know, I found that to be quite effective. I hadn't done a lot of

Cam Nicholls (07:00.622) 30, 15s in the past, so it was new. You get a bit of a dopamine kick out of it when you've been riding for a long period of time and it's a new workout to try. And you see a result as well, so that was good. In the past, I've done a lot of more sustained VO2 style sessions, like sustained three to four minute efforts, maybe if I'm out on the road, five minutes. But never this decreasing style session where

you you start off and this is what I want to validate with you because I think maybe what I've done was, you know, Ryan, our head coach dropped it in my training peaks and he said, look, this is where you start. Because obviously there's a starting point for these workouts and you can progress from there. But it sounds like what this paper is indicating is a little bit different to what I did, which was, I guess, dipping my toe in the water with this workout where I did a warmup. I then did some activation efforts.

I then got into the first set. and the first set was three minutes on, and this was, know, at, you know, VO two high VO two, two minutes, I wouldn't say recovery. It was probably, top end zone too. so for me, that was about my, was, try and operate just over 400 Watts for the three minutes. And then I came back down to two 50 ish.

for two minutes. And then I did two minutes back around 400 or just over 400. And then I came back to 80 seconds at 250-ish. And then I did a minute at around, you know, just over 400. And then I think it was 40 seconds maybe, or 45 seconds, I can't recall exactly, back at 250. And then I did the 30 seconds.

And then I went back down to 250 and then I did a recovery at like 150 Watts or something like that for seven minutes. And then I did a second set of that. But it sounds like in this paper, you continue on with the 30 seconds is what you said until you reach a fatigue state. Whereas I didn't do that. And I'm assuming, you know, the reason behind that is Ryan's like, well, you've never done this before.

Cam Nicholls (09:26.114) And I also indicated that I've been training for a triathlon and I hadn't done much VO2 work recently. So was a little bit, know, unconditioned for VO2. So he was aware of that. So what he's prescribed to me as a starting point sounds like it's not exactly what's put in the paper. Is that correct?

Yeah, you're on the money. It's probably important when we talk about the intensity in the paper, essentially they talk about the on and the off phase of the work and the rest components of those intervals. And they primarily did this using their VIA2max measurements, but they made some correlations to critical power, which they measured in the paper as well.

And so the relationship that they made was that the on phase was around 117 % of critical power and the off was around 83 % of critical power. So you're pretty spot on with what Ryan had you at. So, you know, that hundred and around the 115, 120 % of threshold was the hard. So like a via two max effort, it's pretty common. And then the off phase, a high zone too, I would say it's even maybe like

get reaching into zone three at 83 % of critical power for the off. So it's not an easy off. No, it's quite, it's quite key because when I first saw this and you sent it to me, my immediate thought was the recovery periods are way too long. Your heart rate will drop too much and the VO2 response will drop in those large rest periods too much. But then when I saw that the off phase was actually quite hard still at 83 % of threshold,

That's what helps keep the heart rate high and it's keeping that VO2 response high through the rest period. And then obviously, as you progress through those, you know, decreasing intervals, the work period and the rest period is decreasing at the same time. And when the work and rest is both decreasing, it's just maintaining that high VO2 max percentage towards the end of the workout. Exactly as you said, yeah, the goal is, and what they did in the study is that once you got to the 30 second

Ben Treble (11:41.824) interval mark, you had to repeat those until failure. So that's probably the key difference between what you did and what the paper did. But I think for our listeners, you know, you're still going to get a really good workout. If you just get to the first 30 second interval without continuing to failure, right? At the end of the day with all hit workouts,

time is, know, and availability is one of the challenges for all athletes. So if you only have an hour to train and that's what you can fit in, I think it's a really good idea to give it a crack.

So in the paper then, once they went to failure on the 30 seconds, did they then have a recovery period and do another set? Or is just one sequence?

Ben Treble (12:33.568) No, no. So they would do, for example, they would do this when they once they got to the decreased 30 seconds, there was 20 seconds rest. And then they would do another 30 seconds. And if they can't hold the power, that's when they would kill the session.

But what I'm saying is that, so once they got to that sort of failure point in those 30 second intervals, would they have a recovery period? Like I did, I had a seven minute recovery period and then I did another set. in the paper it sounds like that wasn't the case. Single set, it's interesting. So what Ryan has had prescribed me is, I guess iteration of the paper.

single sets.

Cam Nicholls (13:18.862) without the 30 second to failure and doing another set. And what he said he's done for a form of progression is at another set, like a third set. And he finds that that's actually really difficult. And for me, even though I haven't done a of VO2 max work, I'm relatively conditioned to interval training and I've done it for 15 years and VO2 max.

And I just found those two sets really actually quite a lot of hard work to do two of those sets, know, stopping at the 30 seconds and the the hardest repetition was actually the two minute repetition, not the three minute at the start or not the 30 second at the end, because I feel like that two minute recovery that you get after the three minutes at VO2 or just a bit over.

You know, at what did you say, 83 % of critical power. Yeah, which for me, 250 watts is borderline zone three in our seven zone, you power model. I did feel like I didn't get enough recovery. So when you start the, you know, the two minutes back at over 400 watts and you're not fully recovered, that two minutes goes for a very long time.

Yeah, it's a it's a pretty brutal session. I mean, I'm not surprised that the first one felt okay, especially if you've done a good warm up because your via to max is still going to be ramping up. And as it's ramping up, you're going to lean on and your respiratory rate hasn't fully increased yet. Right. So it's, you can even see it in the paper as you look at the the oxygen consumption line through this decreasing intervals that in the first one, it's increasing and it

it peaks at the end of that three minutes, right? And then you get the recovery. And when you start that two minute effort, you're already at like peak respiratory rate and your oxygen consumption is already very high. to me, that kind of makes a bit of sense that it feels pretty hard. All the first interval felt easier than the next one.

Cam Nicholls (15:28.91) in next one. Yeah, it was actually the second repetition in the second interval. So that two minute in the second set, that was by far the most challenging because I feel like, you know, one minutes, you you can get through one minute mentally pretty easily. 30 seconds you can get through, even though it's still hurting. But yeah, two minutes can be a long time on an indoor trainer at VO2 max when you're not fully recovered. So yeah, it was.

It was an interesting workout. I think it's, you know, going back to, you know, what you're saying about the paper is it didn't, you know, even though it's a small sample size and it's, you know, one paper, you know, it's, it's, you know, probably suggesting that it's not going to work for everyone, but it is going to work for, for certain people. And, you know, if you're doing VO2 max training and you're a bit

sick and tired of doing your standard go-to if you've done 30-15s for a long period of time or if you've done sustained efforts. From a variability perspective, there's probably a lot of value in it just in that. What would you say to that,

Yeah, I think there's a lot of value in it. You know, I had a couple key takeaways around when I read this one was that, you know, a really important part of all training is variation. And I think it's important even when we read papers, it's to remember, okay, people do respond differently to different workouts. But when we need variation, you know, you can do the 30-15s. And if you're doing a VO2 max block,

You can easily keep it interesting. You can have this, I call it like a VO2 max toolkit of different VO2 max workouts where you've got, for example, the 30-15s, you've got the classic four or five minute intervals. You could use these decreasing working time intervals. And you can use one that we've done before or talked about a little bit where you have like a classic, say, four or five minute interval where the first two minutes is.

Ben Treble (17:28.27) you know, around 130 % of threshold and then you go into the 120 % threshold. So you start hard and then finish not quite so hard. So I think it's nice in this sense. Like I saw it, I read about it. I think it has a lot of good potential. And based on the paper, like I will be adding it to my Fiat 2 Max toolkit. And I think everybody should consider giving it a crack. The other bit that I think is important to remember is

specificity in training. So, you know, and the timing of it. So depending on the time in the season, if it's just like a capacity block and you want to build via two maxes capacity, you could throw it into the mix along with some other workouts. But as you get more specific, if you're someone who does a road race that has lots of mixed intensities, I would say there's probably some benefits of doing this decreasing interval version because you're teaching the body to work at via two max at different

interval durations, right? Like two minutes, 30 seconds, two minutes, like different versions. Whereas if you're to do, something where you know you're going to do five minute efforts a lot or 10 minute efforts, then you probably want to grow yourself into those via 2Max efforts more than these.

Yep. No, good point. One, one final thing that I'll add from my experiences with the workout and I'm keen to get your perspectives as a coach. Uh, so the first set, I just struggled a little bit, uh, from a mental perspective. Like I was just couldn't get the power consistent. was kind of, I was a little bit above 400, but then I'll drop down to like 380 and 370 and then I'll get back to 420. And I was all over the place and I just,

I was losing a bit of concentration. think my motivation levels are a bit low as well after training for a triathlon, doing something that I didn't actually want to do. But, you know, what I did after that first set is I just locked it in erg mode. going, you know what? Like I'm not having a good time on the trainer, you know, managing this with my own, you know, my own mental capabilities right now. And I just...

Cam Nicholls (19:45.646) gave control of the trainer and said, you know, I'm just going to do the rest of the new, but I did the second set where it was just like bang on 400 Watts and then bang on 250 Watts and bang on 400 Watts bang on 250 Watts and I didn't have to worry about it. So is that kind of mid workout strategy based off of my headspace at the time? Like what do you say to that?

I think he did well to adapt to, you know, you had the self awareness to know, okay, this isn't going to work today, right? To do the workout off erg mode. And I think it's a exactly why we have erg mode in my view. I'm not anti erg mode. I think if you can do workouts without it, that's really good. The scientific side of me says I always like to do erg mode because then I know the workouts exactly the same. And when I compare week one to week two,

I can really look at acute heart rate response and know that it's a pretty good response. The only thing I would add to that was, yeah, I mean, it's a really good idea if you're struggling for motivation when you get on the bike, because it's pretty common, especially with an indoor session. And it's winter for our Europeans and North Americans. And I know a few of my athletes have gone through this in the last couple of weeks.

I find that music as well is a mood lifter. And for me, I remember when I had to do some really hard sessions on the trainer, like flicking it to erg mode and putting on those, whatever the tunes are that get you going. And then you just have to push the power. Like if that gets you through the session, I'm all for it.

Good. All right. I'm glad I didn't do the wrong thing because I'm going to be making a YouTube video about this workout and I can already see the people in the comments having a crack at me for, doing it in, in erg mode. But yeah, I certainly feel there's a time and a place for it. And, and to, be, to be brutally honest, like I I'm probably more of an erg mode fan when it comes to the trainer than anything else, because it's just, it's convenience of being able to just sort of switch off a little bit from that.

Cam Nicholls (21:48.59) concentrating and just letting the trainer do the work. I'm glad in this instance I get a coach's tick of approval. Thanks, Ben. I feel better about it now.

No worries, Cam.

Cool, well, if you're interested in learning more about this workout, we'll drop the research paper in the description. We don't currently have this workout in our off-the-shelf plans, but if you're keen to incorporate it and place it into an overall plan, check out the RCA's 12-week custom plan. You go to our website, go to the drop-down menu, you'll see the 12-week custom plan in there. You can work one-on-one with the coach. How that works is you have an upfront call.

with an RCA coach to get an understanding of who you are, what your logistics are, what your riding preferences are, what you're trying to achieve. And then after that call, the coach basically puts together a 12 week custom plan and they can incorporate this workout if you wanna give it a try. In Training Peaks, so it's all loaded in there and Training Peaks connects through to all the commonly used head units such as Wahoos, WIFT.

and of course training apps such as Training Peaks Virtual and Swift. So if you can give that a go, check out the RCA website. And Ben, thanks for your time. Good luck in the middle of Australia and we'll catch you in the next podcast.

Summary

The conversation delves into the intricate logistics involved in organising a cycling race, particularly a Grand Tour, highlighting the challenges of managing teams and maintaining motivation in a high-performance environment. Through the lense of a Sports Director / Directeur Sportif. In this case, Matt Wilson, who was the Directeur Sportif for Orica Green Edge from 2013/14 - 2020.

Takeaways

Cycling races involve complex logistics with multiple vehicles and staff. Managing a cycling team requires keeping everyone motivated and happy. Creating a cohesive vision among diverse teams is crucial for success. The environment in cycling is high-pressure and requires effective management. Logistics in cycling are more complicated than in many other sports. Team dynamics play a significant role in achieving performance goals. Each race involves staying in different hotels every night. The number of people involved in a cycling race is substantial. Maintaining a positive atmosphere is essential for team performance. The challenges of cycling logistics are often underestimated.

Transcript:

Cam Nicholls (00:00.056) Welcome back to the RCA podcast where today I am joined by Matt Wilson and Matt's a neighbour of mine and he's also co-founded the Pro Velo Super League which we just talked about in the previous podcast. If you want to hear about that, go back and listen to the last podcast. But Matt, which we didn't talk about in the last podcast, also has quite an illustrious, is that the word, cycling career and spent a lot of time as a pro and also as a DS, a director sportif. And as I'm...

just starting to get a flavor for what's involved. Not that I'm doing the DS role myself, that's Ryan Thomas, the head coach at the RCA, but I'm hearing about all the things he's doing. I'm like, wow, there's a lot of work here. And Matt, you spent eight years as one. thought, why don't we just spend half an hour here or 20 minutes or half an hour. I'm just gonna take chatting about what does a DS actually do? Because you kind of watch unchained documentary, which a lot of people would have watched, and you see this guy in the car yelling at the riders. it's like, is...

Is that all they do? Just tell them to ride faster. Which is clearly not the case, but I think a lot of people obviously don't have an idea and I'm curious myself to learn. But before we go into that, I do need to ask you a pretty hard hitting question here. And that is, you rode pro for a number of years. You won the Sun Tour, Australian road champion, you rode tour to France, know, top 10 at the TDU. Why do you never come to the famous Noosa Tuesday World Champs? Never seen you there. What's going on?

I have done it just before your time. really? Sprint for the blue letterbox?

Okay. Exactly. Yeah. Now it's the red letter box. Someone painted it a different color and you can't, it can't be changed on Strava. It's still the blue letter box.

Matt Wilson (01:40.194) Yeah, right. No, no, I did it back in the day. But yeah, no, not in recent history.

You just don't ride anymore, is you?

I do but I'm just so busy and I sort of you know if I do ride it's 45 minutes down to Parisian and I turn around and I come back and that's it that's that that's my riding couple days a week. Not even. Two hours a week would be a really good week.

So you're doing two, three hours a week? Oh. Not even?

Cam Nicholls (02:08.032) Right. Do you miss it?

Yeah, I do. I don't miss the professional hours and training as a job, but I miss being fit. I miss going out with the guys. I guess that single-minded focus of just all I have to worry about today is just a six hour ride and getting home smashed and just sitting in the couch and recovering and that kind of simple life.

is still attractive now and you're working sort of 10, 12 hours a day and got three kids and juggling, you know, regular life stuff that people have to have to deal with. But, know, as an athlete, you don't.

Yeah, okay. So you don't have any appetite to get fit enough to come do the World Champs on a Tuesday. It'd be great to see you there. Anyway, sorry. This podcast isn't about the World Champs, but it's become quite a well-known ride because I've made a lot of content on it and there's another content creator who's done a bit of content on it and yeah, gets quite a few people there now. They broke the record the other day actually. Really? Well, there was...

How many guys to get?

Cam Nicholls (03:14.254) There was one guy that rocked up on a TT bike with his sperm helmet and his disc wheel and he was the one that basically did it. But it's funny, like the day that happened, the whole bunch was with him. About 30 minutes prior, a whole bunch of professional triathletes went out and did the same course with six TT bikes and they went and smashed it as well. So it got smashed twice. It had been a record for like seven years and it got beaten twice in one day. yeah.

Alright.

Cam Nicholls (03:43.182) Your role as a DS, you were with Orica and you're a DS there from 2014 was it? To 2020-ish?

Yes. Yeah. If my numbers are right. Yeah. I signed a contract when Green Edge Cycling started, Orica Green Edge, was one year sports director, sorry, one year rider, two years sports director. So I did the first year of the team, which I think was 2013, And stepped into the car. Actually at the end of 2013, I switched. So my last race was Hamburg Classic. And then the next race was the Vuelta and I was a director at the Vuelta.

Yeah, okay. So as a pro rider, how long were you a pro rider for exactly?

10 or 11 years.

10 or 11 years. So you obviously exposed to the direct to sportive role during that time, you know, quite intimately. What was it about being a rider and seeing that role that made it appealing for you when you retired from being a professional cyclist?

Matt Wilson (04:46.54) It was never appealing for the vast majority of my career. The vast majority of my career. Yeah. Look, last, probably the last three or four years of my career, I started to take on a more leadership role on the road and started to become that road captain. And as that started to form, I started to feel like that might be somewhere that I'm going to move into. I didn't have a clear idea of what I wanted to do when I retired around that time.

Ruh!

Something changed though along the way, obviously.

Matt Wilson (05:15.446) So as that started to become more obvious that that was where I was going to go. And I actually, the year I signed with Orica Green Edge, I had offers from other teams as sports director as well. So that was clearly where people saw me going. And that was where I saw myself going and just sort of grew into it. at that time, believed that sitting in the car, like you said, yelling on the radio and doing the team meetings in the bus was all you saw.

You you thought that was the whole job, but essentially that's the tip of the iceberg sticking out the water, you know, and when you go underneath the water, the mountain of ice is really below and that's what all the work is. What you see at the top there, that's the fun part. Right. Getting in the car.

So even like the layman sitting over here watching Unchained and seeing the DS in the bus talking about the race before the race happens and then yelling in the team car, that's almost what you only saw as well as or thought as a rider as well. Sure.

Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, especially as an athlete, you've got tunnel vision. You see what you see in the world that you have and you think that's the world. And then when you get, when you retire, the blink has come off and you see what the real world really is.

It makes a lot of sense. So maybe you could tell me, I don't know, you know, we could probably talk for hours, but is there like five, 10, know, even 15, whatever it is, like critical things you do as a DS? If you had to break down, like what are the top things you have to do in a list of five to 10? Perhaps things that people, you know, outside of yelling on the team radio and talking in the bus before the riders race, like what are you actually doing?

Matt Wilson (06:59.982) Look, a good DS is a logistics guru. Right, okay. So you need to be able to work with multiple teams, 20, 30 staff, eight riders and bring that whole group together in an efficient way.

When you say teams, mean like teams within your team.

Teams within the team. You've got your sporting department. You've got your high performance department. You've got your mechanics. You've got your soigneurs. You've got your management group and trying to bring all that together. And, and, know, on a cycling race, especially a grand tour, you're talking about the three week map of, you know, insanity. You've got, you've got two buses, you've got two trucks. You've got, you know, maybe a dozen cars, a couple of vans, a food truck.

And you're staying in a different hotel every night. Like I said, with a staff of 38 riders, it's complicated, very, very complicated logistics, more than most events. that's one part of the puzzle, which is really difficult. Keeping those teams happy, keeping those teams motivated, keeping those teams on point, those teams within the teams that I just mentioned, and bringing them all together to one vision, one cohesive vision, which is trying to get

whatever result it is you're trying to get and achieve and bring that through in a happy environment, high performance environment is incredibly difficult because you're talking about a lot of different personalities, a lot of different personalities. So, and as a sports director, you're the leader of that group, of that team going to those races. So that's very difficult. Then you've got the tactical, the race tactical side.

Matt Wilson (08:46.7) So understanding what's going on in the race, where are the opportunities? What are the other teams going to do today? How can we capitalize on those? What's going to help our position? What's going to help our result? Working with those riders and understanding that you've got eight individuals who've probably got individual capacity to win or desires to win motivations, what motivates those riders and trying to bring them together in a team to for one.

in most cases for one or two riders to get a result. So balancing all of their ambitions and balancing it in a way that it creates a high performance environment is incredibly difficult. So they're kind of the main things that you're juggling at all times.

So, and just if we can double down on that one because I find that one really interesting. Do you like going into a grand tour, you obviously have a strategy, but then I'm assuming things change very dramatically and can change very quickly. How do you, what are your tactics to deal with?

you know those situations do you have before you go into a grant or do you have a plan B and a plan C and a plan D if someone has a crash or somebody does something wrong like how does how does that look

Yeah, look, mean, every director's different. You know, I've come through and seen directors that I've worked with as a writer and directors that I've worked with as a director. And everyone's got different style. And you can have very authoritarian directors, which is I've got one plan. Everyone does what I want. If they don't do what I want, you're out. It's a very hard lined, immobile...

Matt Wilson (10:36.974) and direct. So, you know, what me, myself, I was probably the complete opposite. So I was very open to, to feedback from riders, very open to ideas from riders. At the end of the day, the ride is the one that's on the road that sees everything. you know, when I was a captain at a bike race, I know the level of what was going on in the bunch because I was there and I remember what it was like and I knew what to do.

at all times because you had all the information. You knew which way the wind was coming from. You know who'd been on the front. You know who was going well, who wasn't going well. You knew if you were going to get that break back or not. You knew everything because you had all the information in the race. As a sports director, you're 20, 30 cars back, maybe with some sketchy vision if you're lucky. And you've got riders that you can barely hear on the radio. And you've got a radio tour coming back to you with time gaps.

like a little detective back there trying to figure it all out. And it's gotten better since I've retired because I speak to a lot of sports directors now with the technology they use to gather that information. essentially, you're trying to make decisions as best you can. if the plan changes, or from my side anyway, if the plan changes, I speak to the riders in the race, what are they doing? What are they going on? What do you think?

And then you sit down and you work through, you know, is that right? Are trying to tell you something for their own benefit? Cause you get a lot of personalities like that. So you got to wade through the information a little bit. but I try and make the best information I could and, and, and make a plan, but you need to be able to pivot. need to be able to change. nowadays the racing seems a lot less structured than it used to be. It seems like they can attack at any point.

pit they happy just to throw a carton of eggs against the wall and just see what happens. Where back in my day it was much more, know, if you had tact you had a plan why you were attacking. I don't know.

Cam Nicholls (12:44.078) Oh, so now it's way more unpredictable. Way more unpredictable. Really interesting. And you can't put your finger on as to why?

I don't know why, but it's a, this no plan is now plan kind of plan seems to be, it seems to be the norm, which is, which should be terribly hard as a sports director nowadays to navigate.

Yeah, interesting. I interviewed a Swiss rider, his name's eluding me at the moment. He raced for 17 year pro, Mickey Shaw. Mickey Shaw, there we go. In 2022, I think I interviewed him, the year before he retired. he was, because he'd been racing for 17 years. And he was saying to me that in his time, what he'd noticed with racing is, you you'd have races where it was kind of like, you know,

like Tour Down Under was just more of a warm-up race for the year. And these were more warm-up races and these were more serious races. And over the years, particularly in the last few years, he said at the time that he felt like every race had become full gas and full on, like there was no more easier races. So I don't know if that plays into what you're saying, but that was an interesting anecdote from him, I thought.

No, mean, like the money's gone up incredibly. The coverage with it, the sports science has gone up. think the experience of the bunch as a whole has gone down. So if you think about it, back in my day, you'd be amateur for three or four years minimum. And in that time, you'd do 80 to 100 days of racing a year as an amateur.

Matt Wilson (14:28.108) And then you would turn professional and you turn professional and you'd have two years on minimum wage and you wouldn't get a chance to win anything. You did, you did a job every day and then you slowly started to develop and you got leadership opportunities and your career sort of went on from there. So by the time you were professional, especially by the time you're professional in racing at the front of the bunch, you had done four or 500 days of racing at a high level. So you were experienced.

And what age would you typically be? Like after 25?

Yeah. You're probably turning pro at 22, 23 was early. Yeah. Okay. So a lot of guys, I was 24 when I turned professional. So you could, you could sign a lot later. So the average experience in the bunch was a lot higher where now there's kids turning professional at 18 years of age, 17 years of age. They've done 20 races as an amateur, as a junior. training has gone to another level.

So they are physically strong. can put out as much power, know, more power than we ever could. At that age. The high performance side has gone up hugely. So you've got these huge engines with no experience thrown into a situation where they're racing, racing for sheep stations at every race. so there are no, so bunches become a lot sketchier.

That's interesting. I'd never thought of that.

Matt Wilson (15:57.698) Yeah, and the racing style has just become a lot more out of control.

Yeah, there you go. So going back to the DS, so obviously there's a lot to manage. There's a lot of moving parts, a lot of logistics, as you said. If we break down a year, like what would a typical year look like? Because I look at professional riders and they seem to target specific races and then they may not race at certain races, they might go into training and they may come home or whatever. But I look at the...

the team infrastructure that sits behind the riders, including the DS, are you just away all year? Do you ever come home? Are you just on from the time the TDU hits till whenever the last race of the year is late October or whatever? Is it just constant mayhem? What does the year look like for a DS?

Yeah, look, I mean, it depends what your specific DS role is. you know, traditionally there'd be a head DS, which would be in charge of signing riders and, you know, building the team for the next season, planning out the races, planning out which riders will do which races, individual performance plans for each rider. And so that sort of role.

Which was your role?

Matt Wilson (17:15.018) No, I've never had DS. Okay. No. So if I talk about what my role would have been, and it's hard to sort of say when the season starts, but let's just say it starts in December of the year before. Normally you'd run a training camp sometime in that early season with the whole new team, get them in. And at that stage it's probably less about the training and more about team building and getting together. Obviously it's the training as well.

But sitting down with each rider and mapping out the year. Saying, you know, what went wrong last year? What are we going to focus on for next year? What's your personal goals? What's the team goals? This is what your program is going to look like, roughly. You normally map out at least until the Giro. So you knew for sure what that early season looks like and then sort of have an idea with the middle season what it's probably going to look like and then the back end just wait.

injuries, illnesses, everything changes sort of in that back end of the year. having a sit down with each one of those riders and just mapping out that whole thing, giving them the time to unload on what they really want. And you'd sit down and be all the directors, you'd have the head coach, you'd have different people from the high performance team all there sort of chiming in. So they'll get a really good idea of where that rider's at.

Do those conversations always go well? I can imagine there might be bit of pushback. Yeah, but obviously you're dealing with a of personality. So do you often get pushback? Like people leave those meetings and they're frustrated because they want more out of their year versus what's been articulated from say you and the wider team? Yeah. So how do you deal with

It really depends on the writer.

Matt Wilson (18:56.13) Yeah, sometimes. Yeah. It really, it depends. Some writers can be, can walk in there, you know, full of, full of themselves. They're going to do this. They want to do that. they, they've surrounded themselves with people that have been telling them that. And they, and they believe they're at a different level to what, you know, we believe they're at. And that's difficult. Of course. Yeah. That's a really difficult conversation.

Been telling him that.

Matt Wilson (19:21.922) And there's some writers that come in and I can remember Simon Gerens as an example of this. And, you know, we had done 20 writers over the past three or four days and a lot of them come in and they're very timid because they're a bit afraid of where they're going to be sitting and what we're going to say. you know, because they're not confident in what they've done over the last couple of years. So we're kind of used to that going through. And then we got Simon Gerens and he came in and

We sort of started the meeting and we're talking about how we can improve and what's happened in this season, blah, blah, blah, all that sort of stuff. And then he's basically said, you know, are you finished? And we're like, yep. And he goes, all right, well, this is where you guys can improve. And he went down and he spent half an hour going through all these things from a team side that's bad, that needs to improve. And because at the time he had such a standing, like he was still, he was 30 years old, I think at that point, but still getting better.

Take

and winning more races and he'd been the linchpin of the team, you know, for those first three years, especially. Right. And he had, and he, and he, I remember a few jaws hit the floor and you've walked out and we all looked at each other and went, wow, that was pretty cool.

So he had a rot to be out here.

Cam Nicholls (20:37.536) So it was a good constructive conversation then? Yeah!

Yeah, just to see a rider coming in prepared with the intelligence and the right to go, this is how you can help me. This is how we can get results together. This how you guys need to improve. It really called out a lot of things in the team. So that was a pretty cool moment.

The level head.

Cam Nicholls (21:01.89) Yeah, okay. And the things that were brought to the table, were they implemented and did it cease? Absolutely. Yeah, and was it success from that? Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, yeah. No, made everyone sort of check yourself and go, well, let's just be patting ourselves on the back about how well everything's going and yeah, let's try and improve. So it was good.

So you have this meeting at the start of the year and then what flows on from there?

Yeah, so then there'll be, during that training camp, do biomechanical stuff and measuring up on clothes. be lots of media stuff that you're doing around that. And then we'll move into a planning phase. So basically planning out logistically how everything's going to work through that early part of the season. Speaking to staff, speaking to the mechanics, and then you hit the ground with the first events. For me, was always the summer of cycling in Australia.

You had national championships, Tour de Nanda, all of those races. Generally, part of the team would split then off to the Middle East, part would go back to Europe. So for me, I'd be in Australia from basically November, December through January, and then head back to Europe early February. And the season would basically run like you would as a rider. So you'd be going home, going back to races.

Matt Wilson (22:26.67) But the difference was rather than going home and training and resting and preparing for the next race, you go back and you'd be planning. So creating race reports, individual rider reports, sending feedback to all the riders on their past race, then planning out the next race, what are the stages like, what's our opportunities going to be, build out a race plan, build out individual race plans as well.

talk to the staff about logistics, how that was going to work and then yeah just move into that next race.

Are you on all the time? do have like when you come back and you have a weekend to just to, you know, chill out and you don't look like the kind of guy that's going to chill out on a weekend. You look like you're always on like me, but you know, can you do that as a DS or you just always, because obviously riders are going to communicate with you probably on the weekend. And you know, this is probably always, I could just envisage there would always be stuff happening.

Yeah, no, the whole weekend thing, didn't really get until I sort of shifted to Australia based businesses. Okay. Where there's this focus on weekends, but you know, when you're cycling, is no weekend. And look, it was busy as a director. I would never say there was complete days off. You're always on call. You're always picking up a phone. You're always on email doing something.

Yeah

Matt Wilson (23:50.35) But there was still plenty of downtime in between races. So, and the difference between as a writer and as a director, as a writer, you couldn't really relax at all because you had to be focused on your diet. You obviously so focused on your performance. So that was always sort of hanging over your head where as a sports director, you've got a few hours a day of solid work that you can put into planning.

But you know you're going to have the afternoon free and you can go and have a few drinks and you might have to pick up the phone or something. there's a life balance in between as a sports director.

Yeah, okay. Calendar year, how long, how many days would you typically be away from Australia when you were a TS?

I probably do three, four to six week blocks a year in Europe. But then obviously doing time away in Australia and Asia as well. It wouldn't just be Europe. mean, generally you'd probably do away from home 120, 140 days a year.

Okay. Does that, do you miss that? Or?

Matt Wilson (24:56.274) Sometimes. Interesting. Yeah. I miss the travel. I don't mind traveling. I don't mind living out of a suitcase. I've got three kids and life's pretty hectic at home. So now it pretty exciting to go away for a week now. But I'd never go back. I'd never go back and do it. When COVID hit, became too impossible for me to just go head overseas anymore.

Bye.

Matt Wilson (25:24.11) I was living in Australia for the last sort of three, four years I was a director and just doing trips back and forth. And that was manageable. But you know, when COVID hit, I couldn't do three months in Europe without seeing the family. It's just too long.

Makes sense. eight years doing this role, like what's your fondest memory? The time Simon Gerrans came in and told you how it is.

Look, I've got a lot of great ones. guess the year Matt Heyman won Paris Roubaix. Yep. That sticks out in my mind. Why is that? He's a guy, you know, we're similar age. I think we're a year apart. So we had a whole cycling career together as riders. And then he came onto Green Edge when I was a sports director and we both loved the classics and I knew how much he loved Paris Roubaix. And I knew him well enough to know

what the problems were with him not winning it. He always put a lot of pressure on himself. He always overthought everything. He knew every cobblestone, every corner of that race. It was unbelievable, the recall that he had of everything that had ever gone wrong and every paribas he'd ever seen, everyone that he'd ever done. I guess he saw all the problems all the time rather than just letting it go and racing. That year that he won, he

broke his arm or his collarbone. Yeah. So I was sports director at the classics there and he broke his arm at, think it was Het Falk. Was it Het Falk? Yeah. can't remember. But he basically had six weeks off the bike through the whole classics period. he didn't have six weeks off the road, I should say. Yeah. He was on the bike. He's in the home training and doing Zwift and had a pretty

Cam Nicholls (26:50.67) So what were you doing in the urea blimey in the car? yeah, okay

Cam Nicholls (27:08.066) He was on the trino, wasn't he?

Matt Wilson (27:17.132) comprehensive program. And we knew it was happening. He was telling us the whole time that he hadn't really had any time off and he was on the home trainer. But everything we knew about cycling was you had to do the classics and you had to do all the classics. These are 250 to 300 kilometer long races. You have to condition yourself. You have to do this length. And you build up through Milan-San Remo and then you do Tour of Flanders and get Wavilgem and then eventually you do Paris-Roubaix. And that's the program.

condition you

Matt Wilson (27:46.392) So he didn't get back on the road until a week before Paris-Roubaix. Went and did a little Spanish race and went okay. Anyway, he wanted to do Paris-Roubaix, he put his hand up for selection and we almost didn't select him. It was down to the last spot and we're like, it was him or Chris Jorgensen. And Chris Jorgensen had done every classic and finished all of them. So we knew he was going to be good for Paris-Roubaix. But Hayman had the experience. So...

We kind of thought, well, Durbo's going really well. At least Heyman can help him for the first half of the race. So that was the plan. So he only just got in and we thought he'd do half a race. And he turned up and he had, normally he rides different bike, different wheels, different everything, overthinks everything. And he just said, I'm riding my standard bike with standard pressure. I don't want to talk about it. That was it. The mechanics couldn't convince him. said, no, don't talk to me.

Why do you think he had that mindset?

He just went into the whole thing differently for the first time. This is probably his last pair of Rebets. So you've to imagine this guy's done 18 of them.

You thought the pressure was finally off his, he finally took the pressure off his shoulders.

Matt Wilson (28:57.558) Took the pressure off his shoulders and he must've had a realisation that he'd just been overthinking everything. This could be his last rubay and he's just going to do it and have fun. So he just let go of everything. Didn't want to ride any different bikes. Before the race, I saw him sitting there with his feet up on the back of a stool and he was on the phone to his wife and he was just a different person. He was just laughing and having a good time. And we chatted about the race and I sort of said, well, you know,

If the brake hasn't gone after 70 or 80 K, just sit on the wheel. It might be worth just going once with the brake and just seeing if you can slip into it. Because if you get up the road, you can get a good buffer and you might be there for turbo, you know, a little bit later than halfway. Who knows? So lo and behold, 80 K in, the brake hadn't gone. He came back to the car. He just chucked his jumper in. He said, I'm going to go with the brake, threw his jumper in and then just went straight up to the front.

and just dove in the break and that was the break that went away. And he just, I get goosebumps every time I talk about it, but he just rode the whole race ridiculously. Like everything you shouldn't do, he did. He rode on the front sections. He attacked with 90 K to go. He was riding like a man who was, I don't know, he was so overconfident. It was, it was crazy. And I was

constantly yelling it in the radio, you know, just take it easy, take it easy. You might run top 10 here, you might run top five. And then in the finish, even when he's attacking Boonin with 2k to go, I'm like, what are you attacking? You could run top three here. Like I never gave him the credit of ever winning it. And it wasn't until he hit out with 200 to go. I knew the second he hit out, went, he was always winning this. Like he was the best rider in the race from the start. So.

it.

Matt Wilson (30:50.926) It's just an amazing sporting story at that age to be assessed with one race and to have that moment. And it's all about athletes in the zone. And that's when you have all the experience, you have the fitness and condition and your mind doesn't think anymore. It just acts. When that mind is just taken out of it and you're just acting on instinct and that instinct is at a high level. That's when you're in the zone, when athletes are in the zone. And that one day he was in the zone.

it's pretty cool

Is that like, obviously you would have learned something as a DS from seeing that and witnessing that? that part of the learning for you? when you see a rider in the zone like that in the future, maybe let him off the leash a little bit more or was it something else?

Absolutely. You can't control athletes too much. You you clip their wings. And I learnt that too with young riders. I remember the Yates brothers when they first came on to Green Edge. Yeah, I saw Adam riding through the junction yesterday.

One of them's here at the moment, isn't he?

Cam Nicholls (31:51.95) I saw in the corner of my eye, I'm like, yes, you know, some, some lame I was wearing a pro kit. And then I looked across and I'm like, no, that's actually a pro. And then I found out he was in town.

Yeah. Yeah. But they turned up to that team meeting in December and basically sat down and said, so you're going to put us in a tour de France in the first year? we're going to win stages. Neo-pros from England. But they came out and they were so confident and they achieved, you know, and we didn't clip their wings. We gave them leadership roles. They deserved it and they delivered. know, yeah.

learning that controlling riders and forcing them into what you think they should be and what you think they should be doing can be counterproductive a lot of times and sprinters are the best example of that. Working with sprinters is probably the most challenging area of being a sports director. It's incredibly dynamic, incredibly complicated. There's always a lot of people that can be at fault in a sprint, why the sprinter didn't win and you've got a very delicate

mentality around a sprinter in terms of their confidence and ego, the aggression. They need to be able to respect the team and commit to the team and have trust in the team, but they also need to be able to decide when the team's not going to deliver for them and act on their own. So it's a very, very difficult thing and you need to make sure that you don't try and control that situation too much, I found.

That's interesting. Well, that's a great note to finish on. Thanks for sharing that story. That's yeah, I mean, I knew the Matt Hayman story. I've seen it, but I didn't know some of those intricacies. So that's pretty cool.

Matt Wilson (33:39.288) Yep. Also a local. Buddrum Log...

Yeah, Budram. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Budram Nye, I think he's an ambassador for, I'll be doing in a week's time. So thanks for your time, Matt. Much appreciated. Hope you enjoyed that conversation with Matt Wilson. We'll catch you in the next podcast.

No worries, thanks.

Summary

In this episode, Matt Wilson, co-founder of the Pro Velo Cycling League, discusses the inception and purpose of the league, the challenges faced by Australian cycling, and the cultural shifts affecting competitive cycling. He shares insights from the league's first season, innovations planned for the future, and strategies for funding and sponsorship. The conversation also touches on the importance of engaging viewers through content creation and the league's commitment to fostering international participation in cycling events.

Provelo webite: https://provelosuperleague.com/ Takeaways

The Pro Velo Cycling League aims to revitalize Australian cycling. A healthy elite domestic cycling scene is vital for youth development. Rising costs and lack of volunteers are major challenges for cycling events. Cultural shifts have led to decreased participation in competitive cycling. Innovative technology is being integrated into cycling broadcasts. Funding and sponsorship are crucial for the league's sustainability. Engaging content creation is key to attracting viewers and sponsors. The league is open to international teams and riders. Prize money is currently low but aims to improve with funding. The league's long-term vision includes a crowdfunding campaign for support.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Pro Velo Cycling League 03:44 The Purpose and Vision Behind Pro Velo 10:27 Challenges Facing Domestic Cycling in Australia 17:49 Lessons Learned from the First Season 24:02 Prize Money and Future Plans 30:31 Sponsorship and Team Dynamics

Cam Nicholls (00:00.13) Welcome back to the RCA podcast where today I'm joined by Matt Wilson who is the co-founder of the Pro Velo Cycling League. Also as a neighbour of mine, so I wanted to bring him in today to talk about the Pro Velo team. Our reason being the RCA is actually putting together a team for next year and we'll go through why and who the riders are and who our sponsors are towards the back end of this discussion. But Matt, I wanted to pose this question to you because a lot of people that listen to our podcast, they're...

American, they're UK European, Canadian, they might be wondering what the hell is the Pro Velo League, what is this all about? in its simplest form, can you explain to us what it is?

So the genesis of it, I guess, came about two years ago, two and a half, three years ago actually, probably when it started. I used to run an NRS race and the NRS series was the National Road Series in Australia, was the top domestic road cycling series. And that had been going for about 20 years. And I'd seen it when I was a rider, as a young rider, and then obviously transitioned into a different role as I went along.

And eventually started the Australian Cycling Academy. And this part of that, we started a race, an NRS race up on the Sunshine Coast, which was called Cycle Sunshine Coast. in that 20 year period, we saw it go from strength to strength down to what was basically running at six o'clock in the morning with a chalk line on the road, getting the riders out there and just creating some sort of race for people to race. was no commercial value. Sponsors coming into the sport were getting nothing. Events were struggling to break even.

teams were struggling. So there was no commercial model there anymore and the whole thing was about to fall over. There's only a few races left on the calendar that had any sort of security. So I had in my mind from a team point of view, from a rider point of view, from a race organizer point of view, what was needed to turn it around. And essentially we needed a bucket of money to come into the sport and we needed to create a commercial model that made sense.

Matt Wilson (02:08.248) that meant it was more cost effective for teams to come to races. It made sense for young riders to be able to come and race in the season. And it made sense for events because they could get eyeballs on it again. People would come and watch the race. Sponsors could get involved. There would be TV broadcast for to get some return on their investment for the sponsors. So everything needed to get switched. And we tried to create a model that encapsulated all of that. So compact season.

three months, a narrative that the public could understand, bringing the racing back to the people. So running it at times of day where people will go and watch in areas that they can come and see it to create a good live broadcast that was cost effective, but gave return on investment for riders and teams and event sponsors. And create an exciting racing platform that is dynamic, that is more accessible to all.

which is more open to results, not dominated by one team, basically. So it made the racing more competitive. And that's what the Pro Velo Super League is. So we started, we had to create three new events in our first season. was last year? Which was last year.

this year. I'm forgetting what year we're in now.

So we created three new events as part of the league and then we took the three oldest and most established national series races which is Tour of Tasmania, the Melbourne to Warrnambool and the Grafton to Inverrell and we encapsulated those into those three new events that we started and launched the league.

Cam Nicholls (03:46.35) Yeah, well, okay. And so what's the purpose of it? Like, why do it at all?

So, like I said, the sport was dying in Australia.

was going to say the sport, talking about like the amateur top level road scene, which is like your segue to your next step into Asia or your next step overseas. Yes.

Okay. Yeah. So the world tour level stuff is going great. Is it? That exists overseas. Yep. Got the tour down under in Australia, Cuddell Evans Great Ocean Road Race. That's great. But other than that, it exists overseas. It doesn't exist in Australia. And everything else from club level through to the top domestic level is struggling and dying. And the pathway is especially important. So if club level cycling exists,

and a good young rider comes through, starts to win some club level races and then wants to go to the next level. If there's no pathway, there's no stepping stone with a top elite domestic cycling series, where does that rider go? They're going to have to go straight to Europe. And that's a big, big jump for any rider to take from club level.

Cam Nicholls (04:58.008) seen it. To Europe. You're no better than me but I've just seen it just knowing a few guys.

From top level domestic competition to Europe is a massive step. A massive step that most riders can't get over. But from club level to there, it's almost an impossible task. So we need to have a healthy, elite domestic cycling scene. It's vital to Australian road cycling and without it, yeah, the sport will go backwards in this country. There's just no doubt about it. And it's become so expensive to run races in Australia that

we need to have a healthy commercial model around it to support that cycling scene.

Why has it become so expensive?

Police costs have, since I started running races, which was six years ago now, have probably gone up four times. Four years. It's probably our most expensive item line now is just police costs. So you're seeing more and more closed circuit races. So fixed criteria and courses that are purpose made criteria and courses, motorsport park courses, because these don't require police or traffic management. So between the police, the traffic management and the insurance, that's half your event costs gone already.

Cam Nicholls (05:47.372) times in six years.

Matt Wilson (06:08.898) And you haven't even stuck a barrier up or, you know, put any infrastructure in or anything. it's just become incredibly expensive and, and difficult to run events out on roads. People don't want events out on roads. The public don't like it. There's crashes and people who crash sue, sue their event organizers or sue the police for having a crash. And, you know, all these things increase the insurance, increase the costs, increase the liability and event organizers become less excited about running cycling races.

Okay. Well, that's frustrating and disappointing to hear, but understandable. You mentioned as well about, you know, cycling struggling at a club level. I've certainly seen that. I remember like going back to even 2018 when I was leaving Melbourne and moving to the Sunshine Coast and there was the Tuesday nights at Sandown in Melbourne hosted by Caulfield Carnegie. I remember for years

A grade, B grade, C grade, you know, they had 60 to 80 riders. It was jam packed every Tuesday. And then once, I don't know what it was, but it was around 2018. Those numbers just started to dwindle down to 30 to 40, 20 to 30. And it's like, what's going on? And I remember it's like, seeing it with my own eyes. And it just seems to have dwindled ever since. And obviously COVID hit, which probably didn't help. But what do you think it is? Obviously you've got your hand on the pulse here at that kind of

club level and even at a race level, know, like domestic racing external to like national road series going back that long. So like tour of bright numbers were diminishing as well. do you have any, I know you're probably speculating, but any thoughts as to what it is?

Yeah, I've got theories. Shoot. Look, I think we're seeing now a generation of riders that came through the, everyone gets a ribbon generation, you know? So competition was looked at a bit differently when these kids were growing up than when I was growing up. And I feel like they battle a lot with turning up to a race and not winning and what that psychological effect on them.

Matt Wilson (08:21.838) I don't know, but there's definitely not an appetite to put themselves out there and just race and just race for racers sake. I mean, the Nusa Criterium was on two weeks ago. It's still probably the richest race in Australia. was $5,000 first prize for a 30 minute criteria. And they struggled to get over 30 entries. Now in my day, if someone had put up a thousand dollars for a criteria, you would have 200 people turn up. even though, you know,

more than half that field had no chance of winning it. The fact that it was good prize money, that there was something to race there for, people would get out there and they would race and they'd race hard and they'd get together in groups and try and form little teams and do whatever they can to get a chop of the prize money. there was a different culture back then to racing and that culture I don't feel like is there anymore and people are scared and protective. So there's a cultural change there in terms of club level racing.

Clubs are finding it impossible now. Okay, the costs are going up for them just like everybody else, but they can't find volunteers anymore. So the demand on people's time is greater now than it ever has been. And people's willingness to do something as a volunteer is disappearing, that community aspect of helping someone else. And that's making it harder and harder to run races. So you're getting less and less races, you're getting less clubs, less membership, and everything sort of starts to go down.

I think it's a cultural problem more than anything else. And I hope it turns around. I have spoken to people in other sports who said that this next generation coming through, these 16 to 18 year olds now are kind of a little bit different to the ones that have been, you know, the 25 and 26 year olds that have come through recently that they're a little bit edgier. They're a little bit willing to put themselves out there. So interesting. Maybe social media has a bit to do with it as well. Now you can get your ass kicked and

Everyone sees it now. Back in my day, was a byline on the bottom of the newspaper, the results. Everyone was bit more hidden, so maybe that's got something to do with it as well.

Cam Nicholls (10:28.716) Yeah, interesting. Yeah, there was a bit of banter around the Caulfield-Cunnigy cycling club around that era, you know, 17, 18, that, you know, I remember actually riding in the local group rides in Melbourne, you know, the North Road ride and Hell Ride, you know, you'd be like, that guy, you know, he came third in B grade at St Kilda on the weekend and people would talk about it. It was kind of like prestigious to, he made it to B grade or that guy's just made it to A grade.

won the hell ride last week.

Yeah. then it was like, so that was talked about, but then it was like this emergence of social media and, you know, people could go buy the 20 grand bike or maybe it wasn't 20 grand back then. was more like 12 and, you know, put on the map kit and look really cool and get some, you know, sleeve tats. And that was kind of them being, oh, that's a good, cool looking cyclist. You know, that guy's got respect versus, you know, maybe like five years prior, was actually, you you had to go down to the crits and you had to go earn your stripes and make it through the grades to get a bit of, you know, credit in the bunch.

So that was speculated back then, who knows what at all. Maybe it's a blend of everything, yeah. So going back to the Pro Velo, like when you look at this year, what did you learn from this year? This is your first go at it. Like what were the big lessons from this year and what does next year and the following years look like? And I know you obviously got some considerations as well surrounding funding for the league as well in the future.

Yeah, look, it was, we got the green light. So we sat down with Jerry Ryan with our concept. And this was in a two and under in 2000 and two years ago now. And we sat down, it was a 15 minute conversation and it was a handshake and said, yeah, I'm on board. And, you know, we had a three to five year plan to make this sustainable, financially sustainable. But that was in January and we had to launch the league in

Matt Wilson (12:22.126) the following January. So we had 12 months and we had nothing. We didn't have a website. We had a logo. And we had a concept. That was it. So we had to create three new events, a digital platform, a following, you know, convinced the community that we were real and we were happening and get teams and riders on board. it was a, it was a incredibly difficult year.

That's good, that'll get you far.

Cam Nicholls (12:45.314) how many people are involved in that organization or that you just described.

essentially myself and my co-founder Aaron Flanagan with the main parts and Aaron has a team around him, a digital marketing group, two people, graphic designer and that's basically it. So it was an incredible amount of work and this year it's been all about trying to refine that. How do we make that better? How do we make those events better? How do we make it more efficient? We spent a lot of money.

learning, trying to deliver all these events one after the other after the other. What worked in the broadcasting? What didn't work? How can we improve that side? So our broadcaster, SBS, getting together with them, thinking, throwing around a few new ideas. We really tried to bring as much technology to the league as possible last year. So innovative, what's going to bring viewers in? We had a concept called the ValoPhone, which was

a direct line from the commentator to a rider in the race where the commentator can ask the rider questions who's actually in the race. And that was fantastic. mean, insights that's a world first, you know, for a commentator to be able to do that inside a race. So that was, that was a great innovation.

Did that idea come from out of curiosity?

Matt Wilson (14:06.418) just throwing it around. had, I had myself and Dan Jones, working a bit creatively on the, on the broadcast and what could we bring to it? now as good as that was, we're using pretty raw tech, basically using an iPhone and a, and a, and a cable to speak to the rider and connecting through, through WhatsApp. so we're trying to refine that for next year. How can we make that better? we're trying to link those through GoPros now. So you can not only have.

speaking to the rider from the commentator, but you can see what that rider is seeing as you're talking to him. So being able to connect directly to that GoPro and see it live. So insights like that, think, and we're doing this on a shoestring, mind you. So if we can get more funding in, if we can work on that tech and get it better, I'd love to see a technology where, you know, one rider from every team has a live GoPro in the race, and you can watch through a website and...

connect to different writers, watch what different writers see, follow different teams. You know, there's a lot of things that the technology is out there to do. We've just got to bring it into the Peloton and get it working.

Okay. Interesting. And in terms of lessons, maybe if we look, was there a big mistake that you made or a couple of mistakes where you're like, hmm, probably shouldn't have done that, could do that a lot better next time.

Not really. Like I said, it's fine tuning across the board. It's making the races more cost efficient, bringing a better technology and better broadcast to the viewers. Social media, I think we can step up a lot and we've got a plan to have a full social media team at every event and really pump out the value there for not only teams, but viewers. Sponsorship was one area where we really didn't land the plane last year. again, we're

Matt Wilson (15:56.878) brand new. We didn't exist. So it took a real leap of faith for any sponsors to come on board. So we need to do better at that next year and we're starting to get some traction with a few good sponsors. So yeah, all those little things need to step up and we need more teams. And it looks like next year we will have probably 20 to 30 % more teams on board. Oh, wow.

So how many more teams will that be? What's 20 to 30 %?

Probably two new men's, probably three new men's teams and two new women's I'd say. great.

Yeah. so what is the plan? I mean, is there like a five year plan? I kind of hate that question, but I've been, it was one of the questions from one of the RCA's writers for next year. What's the five year plan, but is there a three year plan or a two year plan? Obviously it's going to depend on funding.

Yeah. So, yeah, we had a five year plan originally, which, which showed, financial turnaround. So three to five years, somewhere around that we start to break even and then, and then start to make a little money on it. but you know, that's contingent on, on getting funding in, the beginning, because these things take time. It takes time to build a following, takes time to build a product that sponsors want to come on board. And that's critical to everything that we do from the event side.

Matt Wilson (17:15.054) through to the league. So yeah, we definitely need more supporters. We're going to launch a crowdfunding campaign during the season next year, which allows anybody for any amount to come on board and support it and be an investor in the league. We have launched a membership program called the PSL Patrons, which is a high-end membership program, which has a tax deductible donation to the league as well.

All these things will help support what we do and help get to that three year, five year plan where it can turn around and start to be self sustainable.

Where can people find links to these things? Are they on the Provelo website?

Yeah, the Patrons Program is on the Probello website and the crowdfunding campaign will launch next year during the season. So just keep an eye out for that one.

Lame question. So when you talk about breaking even and eventually making some money, which would be nice because obviously people are putting in a lot of effort. Is the money mainly coming? It's obviously not because the teams pay us, I guess, a small fee at the end of the day to participate, but that's probably not covering much and that's not really where you're going to be making your revenue. So does it come down to sponsors? Is that where the money is really coming from?

Matt Wilson (18:23.458) Yeah, I mean, originally it's coming from Jerry Ryan. So it's through Jerry Ryan's investment that this was able to happen. So like I said, in the beginning of the podcast, it's, it's, knew at the beginning that we needed a big bucket of money to turn this thing around, to bring events back where people can see it, to bring a broadcast there, to give teams and sponsors some return on their investment. So once you start to put that investment in, everything starts to return for partners, then the sponsorship values go up, then the fees go up.

then the events become more sustainable, the events start to make money and all ships rise with the tide, I think they say. So that's the modelling that we've done. And we believe over that three to five year period, we start to generate enough diversified revenue to be able to break even. And at that point, the Lee becomes sustainable for the future.

Yeah, okay, interesting. With the sponsors, like where do they, like if you're having a conversation with them, like this is down the track as well, like consider, you know, the Pro Velo has now been running for a few years, you've got some runs on the board, you've got some tangible things that you can point to. What are you pointing to to bring sponsors on board? Are you pointing to like how many people are watching it on SBS or are you pointing to how big your social media is and how much engagement you're getting there? Like what are the key assets?

All those metrics come into one big pot, don't they? And we provide to every team that's registered as part of the league, we provide a report once a month with where our viewers are at. So how much social media views we're generating, how much broadcast views we're generating, other media as well. So we pull all that together, we give out a report and all the events and all the teams get those reports. So you can go back to your sponsor and say, this is who's watching.

As long as those numbers are growing, we know we're on the right track because that means viewers are coming back. That means they're their friends about it and their friends are tuning in. So as those numbers start to grow, the sponsorship value grows. And with it, the lead becomes more sustainable. you know, that's the theory. As long as people watch, we will get there. It's just a matter of time. But that's the million dollar question. Will people watch and what can you, how can you create a

Cam Nicholls (20:30.04) Yeah

Matt Wilson (20:38.478) a broadcast that's going to bring viewers in. And I mean, all sports are struggling. There's so much content out there nowadays. How do you cut through? People are consuming their content differently. They're not sitting down for three, four hours, just watching something. They're on their phone at the same time. They're switching, you know, so everyone's competing now for eyeballs and it's, and it's it's hard. So we've got to be clever and innovative and, and, and move with the times and yeah, hopefully people watch. Yeah.

Yeah, it's interesting. was listening to, I think it was a Joe Rogan podcast, somebody talking about the NBA and talking about how NBA is exploding in terms of popularity around the world. But people watching the game on TV is down. People going to the games is down compared to previous years. So where is it exploding? It's exploding on social media. It's exploding in highlights packages. People from all over the world want to see the three minute clip of the team that they now follow because they're watching it on social media.

And some players doing some incredible 360 dunk or something like that. So that's what we're kind of hoping to do with it, because obviously we're submitting a team, is get some good footage with the riders. I've even told Wigo if he can win a sprint and punch out 2000 watts at the same time, I'll give him a little bonus myself because I know that would be amazing footage and like it.

you know, really good views on YouTube and Instagram when we create this stuff and turn it into reels and turn it into YouTube videos and basically turn it into content. So I think that's one thing that's unique about the league and what drew me in because I'm still feel like I'm a bit of a layman when it comes to like what we're talking about today. Like I've always just been like a cycling content creator and I do lean into what's happening in the Australian scene and the professional scene, but nowhere near, you know,

your level, but I do see a gap in terms of people really love to see elite riders racing at high speeds, big power numbers in sketchy situations. And it's not always possible to see because I know a lot of the UCI rules, professional riders can't have cameras on their bikes. And that's also, it also depends on the commissary as well. But like I've seen

Cam Nicholls (23:00.79) There's a channel on YouTube called NorCal Cycling who really brought elite crit racing to the forefront by just basically putting a GoPro on the front of his bike, on the back of his bike, and just showing his power numbers and showing some sketchy situations. And some of his, the visibility of his content is huge. So that's the reason why, and I, going back to your question about, you know, what are the tangible assets that sponsors see in terms of wanting to contribute.

That's how we've been able to bring on our sponsors by saying, yeah, we're going to make content out of it. This is what it's going to look like. It's a bit of pipe green now, but hopefully it can come to fruition.

No, good on you. In short, well, yeah.

Hopefully we can contribute to a bit more visibility in the league as well. So I got some questions from the RCA Bikes Online is the name of the team, RCA Bikes Online riders. They wanted to know about prize money. What's the deal with prize money this year? Or next year I should say.

Absolutely.

Matt Wilson (24:05.75) Yeah, look, prize money is low. I'll be honest. And it's not because we're being tight asses. It's because we need to create funding to run these events. for these first few years, we're running at a loss. So we need to stage things accordingly. So the prize money is low. It's on the website. It's not a lot. But the first prize is a Factor Ostro, complete with black ink wheels, SRAM Red groupset.

It's almost $20,000 bike, think, and that's for the winner of the men's league and the winner of the women's league. So first prize is dynamite. But then yet the money comes off pretty quickly. But we've all got to commit to a sustainable future. And when we get this thing financial enough, we will certainly be giving out decent prize money.

That makes a lot of sense. Team time trials, will that ever form part of the racing schedule?

Look, wouldn't, I'd never say no, but you know, back to try and create that competitive landscape. Team time trials generally benefit the strongest team. So we're trying to keep the racing close, keep the racing as open as possible and keep every team as competitive as possible. So putting in a team time trial would go against that to a certain degree. I agree. It's a great training platform for development for young riders having that.

opportunity to race in a team time trial environment is pretty special, yeah, certainly not next year, potentially down the road sometime.

Cam Nicholls (25:41.462) Okay. Can international riders compete in international teams? Notably, I've been asked here, Asian and New Zealand teams.

Yes, absolutely. Open to all nationalities. We've got a couple of New Zealand teams that have signed on for next year, which is exciting. For the whole of Just for certain blocks. It's expensive to come out for the whole time. But we provide free entry to international teams to come. So if there's any listening, definitely reach out. We'll try and support you wherever we can. We're actually broadcasting internationally.

league or just for a certain few races.

Matt Wilson (26:20.042) next year for the first time. We've got a media rights deal with Sky Sports New Zealand. So that'll be live on Sky Sports in New Zealand and we'll

races all of them awesome wow okay

all of them and then we are looking into internationally doing either YouTube or Facebook and doing a streaming product that's geo block. So you can't watch that in Australia. You've to watch on SBS in Australia, but overseas you'll be able to see it on Facebook or YouTube. In terms of individual international writers, we're also open to individual writers if they want to come out and do it and we can provide free entry for writers who are coming overseas.

Not if you happen to be British sitting in Australia with a job, getting a free entry, but we're trying to support riders that want to come out and be a part of this. So we can provide free entry as well for international riders that want to come out. And look, we proved last, this year, sorry, I think probably almost a dozen riders that came through the league are now in World Tour connected programs.

Okay

Matt Wilson (27:27.468) So a road to the world tour has been our tagline through the season just gone. And I think we've really proven that, that time of the year, the high level competition, the eyeballs that were on it, the pressure situation really shone the riders, the riders shone that had the potential and all these big overseas teams saw that and they picked up those riders. it's a great opportunity for riders to come out and race.

in a pressure cooker situation like that over a 10 week period, hit the ground running in Europe and hopefully get a couple of results and get their name on the scoreboard.

Is that why you do all this?

Essentially, yeah, I've been involved in cycling my whole life, 30 years now. So in one way or another as a rider, as a director, as an event owner, or as even in management for a little while with riders as well. And yeah, I'm passionate about Australian cycling and young riders and development. So this is a critical piece of that.

Good on you. Yeah, so quickly on our team. I'm getting a little bit excited now because I've been so focused on trying to bring in money, but I mentioned to you offline that I was riding with a Cobra 9 rider the other day who lives locally. Side by side, Liam's his name and he said, oh, who's in your team? And I started to rattle off some names and he was like, oh, you're going to have a really strong team next year. I'm like, are we? Oh, that's really cool. So we've got Ryan Thomas, who's the head coach of the RCA and he's going to be our director sportiff, but he's also going to race.

Cam Nicholls (29:02.286) I know you know Ryan Welbs, was the road captain for your team for many years.

Yeah, he's with the Australian Cycling Academy, I don't know, three or four years and even directed a couple of races, I think, as he was retiring there. Yeah, very experienced guy. You've got a good one there in Rhino.

Yeah, um, well he goes 26 this year, next year actually, so he's peak sprinting age. he won Turulankawi as well with you guys.

Yeah. Yeah. Super talented sprinter. Um, I think he's again with us about three or four years. Yeah. We go. Um, so yeah, super talent. can, you can win every bunch of kicky he starts. Um, if you can get to the front and get a clear run at it. Um, so yeah, I'm sure you'll get, get, get you a win or two.

Yeah, Dylan Proctor Parker, he was one of yours as well.

Matt Wilson (29:51.182) Yeah, did two years with us Dylan overseas. Yeah, very talented young rider from Victoria

Yeah, and the ones that haven't come through your team is Alex Baker, Josh Bekoff, I hope I've said his surname correctly there, Brent Reese, who's more on the mountain biker side, and Matthew Lamberts, our old boy, he's late 30s, got a couple of kids, got a full-time job, and people are telling him he's a smokey, maybe to win a few stages and do quite well in his late 30s. So that's kind of a cool one for us, because a lot of our members are

between the ages of 35 and 65 and have that kind of busy lifestyle. So to see a guy like him competing at that level, I think is gonna be pretty cool, although he's obviously a genetic freak. So that comes into it.

See up there at, was it Q2? Yeah.

Yeah, he came fourth overall, So he's a strong guy. And in terms of sponsors, we've got bikes online who provide Polygon bikes. So the boys will be riding the Polygon Helios. Pimped up with Creative Carbons, another one of our partners. So they offer carbon wheels, integrated bars, Asioma. So all the boys are going to be running Asioma power pedals.

Cam Nicholls (31:02.41) Insta360, so you know we're hoping based off of the commissaire that we can run the the 360s they'll be attached to the bikes and All the riders will be instructed to turn them on with an hour to go in each race So hopefully we'll have six guys, know getting six different perspectives and we should get some pretty good footage out of that we feel Then we've got some minor sponsors. So one cloud X They're a net suite partner based in the Gold Coast that they provide

ER enterprise resource planning, software solutions to small to medium businesses. Stanard's accounting, so they're an accounting firm based in Melbourne. Used to sponsor actually Inform. Pete's a mate of mine, he's a partner at Stanard, so great to have them on board. Prungo, they're a red light therapy device, so they've just come on board actually just overnight. And Fix Nutrition is another one, so they're all getting behind us. The one that kind of blows me away a little bit when I read the list,

I think because my world, I've been in YouTube for a long time and I did a lot of content on Chinese branded bikes for quite a while when it was emerging. And I got a lot of criticism from Australians about talking about Chinese owned and branded bikes. So it's kind of ironic to see Insta360 like they're a Chinese company, head HQ in China, sponsoring an Australian cycling team, giving us product and cash, which is pretty cool.

Fantastic. Look, the sponsorship world is, it's a tough world and it's getting tougher. So yeah, good on you for pulling together those partners in a short space of time. It's a good list.

Yeah. Hopefully we can deliver. All right, Matt. Well, thank you very much for your time. Much appreciated. I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Matt Wilson. If you're after more details on the Pro Velo Super League, you can head to their website. It's ProVeloSuperLeague.com and Pro Velo is P-R-O-V-E-L-O. And of course, if you're interested in following the RCA Bikes Online

Matt Wilson (32:44.118) No worries, thank you.

Cam Nicholls (33:06.93) cycling team that will be participating in the Pro Velo in 2026. Just stay tuned on our main channels. We'll soon be pointing you in the direction of how you can follow along and what you can do to just support the team from afar just with your eyeballs. That would be greatly appreciated. We'll catch you in the next podcast.

In this episode of the RCA Podcast, Cam Nicholls sits down with Head Coach Ryan Thomas to break down how to pace a Gran Fondo—from the night-before plan to the final sprint. Fresh off a grass-podium at the World Fondo Championships, Ryan shares the exact playbook he used on a course that opened with a 10 km climb, featured brutal crosswinds, and finished fast along the coast.

You'll learn how to organise your race day (start-time math, breakfast timing, warm-up activations, clothing), how to read the course and wind to conserve energy, and how to choose the right effort on long climbs so you don't detonate before the finish.

What we cover:

• Race-day setup: When to eat, what a practical warm-up looks like (incl. 30s high-cadence activations), and why start-line position matters.

• Climb pacing 101: Use lap-average power vs. your recent bests; ride ~90–100% of threshold on long openers; when to hold wheels vs. let them go.

• Wind & terrain tactics: Headwind climbs = sit in; tailwind climbs = expect selections; how to handle spiky "over/under" climbs and when to save bullets.

• Group dynamics: Solo chase or wait? Simple rules to avoid burning matches you'll need later.

• Heart rate in context: When HR helps (and when it messes with your head).

• Downhill & crosswind safety: Line choice, spacing, and staying within your limits on sketchy descents.

• Fuel & hydration: Real-world targets Ryan used (~100–120 g carb/hr), bottle strategy for 3+ hours, caffeine timing, and what to carry (and what he didn't).

• Gear notes: Gearing, tyre choice/pressures, and wheel depth for windy days.

If you've got a Fondo on the calendar and want to turn fitness into a result, this episode gives you the pacing blueprint to ride smarter, conserve energy, and finish stronger.

— Work with RCA: Want a coach to map your course, pacing, and nutrition for your next Fondo? Visit roadcyclingacademy.com → Hire a Coach (monthly or weekly options). Prefer structure without full coaching? Check out our 12-Week Custom Plan.

Cam Nicholls (00:00.088) Welcome back to the RCA podcast where today I'm joined by the RCA's head coach, Ryan Thomas. And we've got a bit of a series running here. The World Fondo Championships were recently in Australia. Ryan participated. He had a great result, grass podium fourth on eight hours training per week. If you didn't hear that podcast, check out the previous podcast where we talked about Ryan's training. But in this podcast, I wanted to specifically talk about

your pacing and generally how you would pace or organize, prepare for a Fondo event. And for this one, Ryan, we had a few questions come through on, we've got a community forum, if you're a member of the RCA, and some of our members posed some questions. They saw your amazing result and they're like, oh, hang on a sec, I've got some questions for Ryan. So we're gonna go through those today, The first one.

that I want to pose from one of our members. And it's kind of a big and broad question. So I'll let you answer it the way you want to answer it is like, how did you organize the race or the Fondo?

Yeah, yeah, thanks, Kim. Organization for the race is kind of thinking about start time, warm up, nutrition, clothing, all that sort of stuff in my mind. So the start time for me was around 7.15. So I worked backwards from that time in terms of organizing myself from the race and think about the day before, car bloating, eating, eating a lot of carbs, a lot of pasta and rice. But on the event day,

Usually you want to eat your main breakfast around two and a half hours, three hours before. So I was up at 4.50, had some breakfast. then I knew this event in particular was a very hard start. So preparing for the race and organizing myself for that was wanting to be warm and doing a good warmup before. So it was 17K in from our accommodation. So we rode in.

Ryan Thomas (02:09.614) Um, we wrote in, was a nice warm day. So didn't really have to worry too much about that. Um, unreal sunrise, just as a side note, it was probably one of the nicest sunrise I've ever seen. Um, on the ride in, which was nice start to the day, but can I nice.

can I just pull you back on one question? So you got up at 4.50 to eat. So you could eat roughly, you know, two hours before the event. And this can vary for people depending on the event. Like obviously, you know, if your event starts at six, you know, you know, do you want to get up at 3.30 or four? Probably not. But then what does your event look like if your events may be going to start with, you know, like

For example, I did the Grafton to Inverrell earlier this year and that was an early start, but I knew because it was such a long event and the first part of the ride was relatively flat, there wasn't gonna be a lot of hard riding. So I could eat closer to the start time. So that one's a bit of a tricky one. And according to the science, you wanna eat three to four hours beforehand, which is just not practical in many ways. You gotta do what's practical, but you gave it roughly two hours. How many?

And once again, you know, this is a really important one for a Fondo event to make sure you get enough fuel the day before you mentioned carb loading, but also the morning of. The science says one to four grams of carbs per kilogram of body weight for your main sort of breakfast before an event. And your 70 kilos, Ryan, roughly, do you know how many carbs you had for your brekkie?

not exactly. I'm not a big, big number carb counter for meals. I do go racing, but I had, knew roughly roughly what I needed. I just kind of my normal, my normal breakfast is like two pieces of white toast with a bit of peanut butter and honey or something simple like that. So I just added another piece. So I didn't want to throw my stomach out of whack too much. And there's a three hour events on you. didn't need to

Ryan Thomas (04:14.542) smash a lot of carbs. Yeah. Just from experience, but I had three pieces of toast with the butter and a lot of honey. I reckon I had around a hundred. That's probably around a hundred grams of carbs for that. And then I had 40 grams of carbs in my bottle on the writing. So got right pre pre event. had around 140. So two, two grams per kilogram. Okay.

Yeah. And so you're riding in beautiful sunset, 7K warm up. Are you doing any activations as part of that warm up? an activation is where if you're warming up, it's sort of like a zone one, zone two sort of spin. know, an activation is going sort of beyond that more up into your threshold territory and beyond to sort of prime you, prime the muscles in a polite way before it becomes very unpolite in the event.

Yeah, yeah, I did actually. I did two, two activations. I didn't time them. didn't lap them. I just kind of went off by feel, but usually the activations that work for me are like 30 seconds seated, build to a high cadence, hard effort. So probably like over 500 Watts for 500 Watts for me for 30 seconds. So I just stay seated, find a good spot on the, on the ride in and just pedal in the same gear as almost as hard as I can for 30 seconds.

end up doing like 130, 140 RPM by the end of it. So that really works for me as an activation effort that doesn't fatigue at all because it's just, it's 30 seconds twice. So I just did that on the way in pretty close to the, pretty close to the start. And it was an awkward one because a few guys I was writing in with didn't do anything because this is like organization for the race is that we had a hundred and closer to hundred starters in our event.

you want to get there early to line up. you're not sliding up 200s. Um, we got there around half an hour before start time and we were 150th on the line. So we're well, well, well back. Um, so I was kind of glad that I did the activations because you do your warmup for 30, 40 minutes and then you sit there for half an hour before you have to go again. Um, those activations, I think I felt fine at the start. Um, I don't know what everyone else felt like or what everyone else did, but

Ryan Thomas (06:32.566) In my mind and everyone else who I told for the event was get a good 20 to 30 minutes. If you're to line up half an hour before you need a good warmup and a couple of activations to make sure when you get into that climb, your heart rate doesn't go to a, go to a peak within the first kilometer. Cause that'll you'll feel pretty average doing that. So that was kind of the strategy that half an hour before was you can get, build those nerves up a lot and they could, could tell the people around me were like getting real nervous and

Everyone was getting anxious and like old bikes and going to the toilet and everyone was getting real anxious, but I was, I was quite relaxed and just, just trying to enjoy the moment and taking videos and texting and just like trying to calm myself before that half an hour, before the stock on went off. Cause it was going to be quite a spicy start.

Yeah, okay. So talk me through, you know, the strategy and what transpired for the first effort. Because like any Fondo, you've got to look at, how long is it going to be, you know, and then, you know, how many efforts are involved and what are the efforts look like? Are the efforts, you know, like a, is it a sharp climb that goes for three minutes? Well, that's going to be a VO2 max effort. Is it going to be a long climb?

for 30 minutes or an hour, whether that's going to be a tempo effort or a sweet spot effort or maybe a threshold effort. So can you just tell us before the gun went off, maybe talk us through what was required for this particular event?

Yeah, so it's quite interesting in terms of demand. So it's literally five to 800 meters, I can't remember exactly. From start to the base of a 10 kilometer climb. So flat for 800 meters and you straight up a 10 kilometer climb, which I had done the event before. So I kind of knew the demands really well. So in my head, I knew how long it was going to take and I knew what the rest of the course looked like. So

Ryan Thomas (08:35.63) 10 kilometer climb. So if we think step back a little bit, when you're preparing for something or a fair event like this, you need to think about, I'd probably say three things is what's the actual course like what's the hills, descents, flats, turns, all that sort of stuff. Second thing is wind. What's the wind doing and how's that gonna play into your strategy, whether you're in a group or whether you're.

in a group behind just trying to do the fastest time you possibly can, where are you going to make the efforts to count? And third is the temperature on the day. what sort of, what sort of clothing are you going to wear? The course kind of determines that a bit as well. So the, the temperature on the day was one of the warmest days we had down there was 15 degrees on the start 25 by the end of the day. So was quite a really nice day. So didn't have to worry about any warm gear at all. It was pretty straightforward wind. was really windy.

So the prediction was 30K an hour winds and 70 kilometer an hour gusts of wind. So really, really windy. So everyone that I sent out an email to all my members, all the people doing it before. And in my email was like, had a screenshot of the course and this is the wind direction for every part of the course. So be prepared that the first 20 kilometers is going to be a headwind. like that it's not going to make much difference to being a little tack or you're to get a big difference.

big slipstream in the draft, it's going to be much easier in the wheel than in the headwind. Then you turn left into a crosswind and then it's a big tail all the way down to the coast and the coast, it's going to be really windy up and down. So that was, that was one of the big factors in terms of strategy and how to, how to prepare for this event and how to pace it. so course 10 kilometer climb straight out of the gate. And then you had 40 K in between the base of the second

base of the first climb and the base of the second climb. So you had 40 Ks of rolling terrain in pretty windy conditions to prepare for the second. Well, I'd say the main decisive part of the race is that second climb because it's comes closer to the end. So the first climb for our race, and I think it sounded like for a few other races, kind of neutralized because of the headwind. So, you know, if you haven't done much racing or been around much wind before,

Ryan Thomas (10:54.634) in an event, if it's a headwind up a climb, it slows everybody down. So the pure climbers can't go as fast up that climb. If it's a tailwind up a climb, pure climbers or a lot of people can go fast with less effect of draft behind them. So it's much better for a climber to have a tailwind up a climb. It's much better for non climbers to have a headwind up a climb because they can get the draft. So first climb from from a strategy perspective, when I told everyone was stay in the wheel.

use the draft, conserve as much energy as possible and try to stay around threshold under threshold if possible because you've still got a long way to go and then try and try and recover once you get over the top of that try and recover for that 40 to an hour 40 minutes to an hour in between until the second climb which is going to be quite difficult.

Now you fought because you got there half an hour beforehand, but obviously there were people must've got there 45 to an hour beforehand and were waiting for a much longer period just to get that front in that frontal position. But you made up a lot of spaces in that first, what is it? 800 meters leading into the climb. And then by the time you worked your way up at the start of the climb, you were sitting on 20th wheel.

Maybe an obvious question to some, for others, they may not know the answer. So I'm going to ask the question, why would you, if you're going to sit in the draft and sit in the wheel, why would you not just sit in 150th wheel, which is where you were at the start line, why did you spend a little bit of energy trying to get up to 20th wheel?

I knew that our race was the discrepancy between the best and the rest were going to be, it was going to be quite large. So for example, my threshold was 350. There was probably some people there with a 250 watt threshold. So that first climb is going to be 10 minutes difference between the fastest and the slowest rider. So if I was starting at a hundredth wheel, then there was going to be a lot of people dropping wheels and I was going to have to spend a lot more energy to stay with the leaders than I needed to.

Ryan Thomas (13:01.614) So I needed to be in my head. needed to be in the top 50 by the start of that climb because I thought about 50 people would make it over the top, which made up around 80 to 100 spots in that first 800 meters. Luckily, got to around 50th and then started working my way up with try to conserve as much as possible using the draft, using some experience from a bunch riding perspective to work my way up in the draft.

So the top 20 wheels. Okay. But it's a, it's a hard one to, I would say it's, that's the strategy. If you're aiming to win or finishing the front group in a grand Fondo, it's a bit of a different strategy. If you're. Writing to your own personal power or your rock, you are, you're unsure of how, whether you could actually keep up with the front group. It's a little bit different strategy. It's you don't want to spend too much energy in that first 800 meters because you're going to

after I start riding a VO2 car in the first two kilometers to stay with the front group. the first strategy for most people was let that try and line up as far close to the front as you can, because you want to benefit from the draft if possible. Go get to the bottom of the climb and try to ride anywhere from threshold to sub threshold. So that 90

90 to 100 % of your threshold is probably a good range depending on how comfortable you are and how fast, how deep you want to go up that first climb.

What's a good rule of thumb then for somebody who's doing a Fondo event and whether it's, know, Amy's and the first climb comes in the first kilometer or whether it's another event and the climb comes at, you know, 50 kilometers and they're with a group and then all of sudden they're getting stretched on the climb and they're not sure, you know, like should I be trying to hold on to the wheel or should I be, you know, dropping off? Because I feel particularly with people that are

Cam Nicholls (15:00.438) inexperienced with their own physiology and these events, it's very easy to overindex on a climb trying to hold onto wheels. And if you go too deep, then you're just destroyed for the rest of the ride. Or it's very hard to get back if you dig yourself a hole too deep. what's a general rule of thumb for those people to follow?

Two things that I worked with a couple of members on who were trying to go really hard up the first climb was you look at your peak power for that sort of duration. for example, if you're aiming for 25 minutes up that climb, what's your best 20 minute power in the last six months? What physiologically can you do at your best? Let's say it's 300 watts. Your best ever 20 minutes, 300 watts. And up that first climb,

a good thing to do for any experienced people on any climb. If you're doing a long climb or a short climb, pick that duration and figure out what your best is in the last six months or three months in training. If you lap the power and you have lap average power on your screen, you can see, well, my best is 300 and the first five minutes I've averaged 320. I cannot sustain this pace. I need to slow down because my best is 300 and I do the best if I'm going to do 20 watts higher than my best ever.

then I'm going to be suffering by the end. So if it's a long duration event, that's the best strategy because you don't want to do your best ever power on a, on a 20 minute climb in a four hour race, because you're going to, that's going to hurt and you're going to pay for it in the last hour. So using your peak, your, your peak powers for that duration is a really good indicator and probably take 10, 20 Watts off that. And that's a good target.

The other thing to do is if it's a long climb is thinking about your threshold and your threshold power. Let's use 300 Watts, for example. If your threshold is 300 Watts and let's assume you use critical power to find it. That power is essentially the maximum power you can sustain for 30 to 45 minutes. So if you lap lap your power on the start of the climb and you're doing over that threshold power, you don't pretty close to that threshold power and you know, it's going to be long. Think.

Ryan Thomas (17:23.086) Well, I'm going to do this, a maximum effort or I'm going to sustain the best power I possibly can for 40 minutes. And then I'm going to have to do 110 K. That's not going to be possible. So that's the, that's my mindset when I'm going into an event like that is what's my, where's my absolute limit. I need to be under that at any moment in time. And what's my threshold where, where do those two sort of sit and what can I physiologically do while still being able to do the rest of the event? Well,

Mm.

Do you look at, I know heart rate's a bit of a tricky one because for an event, obviously, where there's a factor and nerves are a factor and everyone's different as well. But so this is a bit of an anecdote from my personal experiences in events. So I know once, you know, if I'm in a long climb and I start pushing towards 180 beats, my max is kind of 184 to 185. Once I'm 180 and I'm spending a bit of time over 180,

If I spend more than a minute or two over 180 for a prolonged period, I know it takes me a long time to come back from that. And that's just from learning over the years, right? So that's not necessarily the case for everybody, but it's the case for me. And I think that's why the beauty of training and doing A and B events and getting experience here goes a long way with helping you understand your own.

physiology and therefore your own pacing strategies for these events as well.

Ryan Thomas (18:53.71) Yeah, absolutely. Heart rate to heart rate's a really good one. If you if you want a secondary thing or something internal, an internal measure for how your body's feeling. As you said, race day can be really strange on heart rate because you're coming in quite fresh. Often you might see I don't wear heart rate on right. didn't wear my heart rate monitor because I didn't want to know. knew that it was going to be high. A lot of people. Yeah. And in so

We'll do that, yeah.

Ryan Thomas (19:23.022) The strategy that this just, this is my preference is that if I look down and I see a high heart rate number, that's going to play with my head. That's going to play mind games. If it's lower than what I think, I'm like, think, Oh, I'm really fatigued. Like my heart rate's not coming up. So I don't want to know heart rate to me with so much experience, a heart, whatever my heart rate is doesn't matter. I'm just, I'm going to do the heart. I'm going to do the hardest effort I can to stay with the front group. If you're doing it for a time, then I would say like,

if you think about the same sort of thing, what's your, what's your peak heart rate for 60 minutes ever. And think about that number. And if you're going pretty close to that and you're spending a lot of time around that number during the event, well, you're probably going to be, you can't do physiologically. You shouldn't be able to do much more than threshold heart rate for an hour. So use that as kind of your limit for internal effort, I would say. And you can go above it for short durations. It's not a

It's not like a rev limiter. can't, it's not going to stop you from going hard, but just be mindful that your heart rate goes higher and recover. So if it's going up to like, for your, your example, that 180, 185, if you're getting up to 180, think, well, if I, if I do this for another minute longer, I'll put a time limit on it. If it's another minute at 180, I'm going to have to back it off and I'm going to have to do zone two power, but my heart rate to come down or we've got 500 meters left of the climb. I'm just going to keep going and then I'll recover over the top.

So it's very different, heart rate's very different, and it's very contextual within the event.

It is good when, you know, I'm thinking of draft in Varell when I got dropped and I was kicking myself that I got dropped. I, but I went out back and looked at my heart rate numbers. I all time high 30 second heart rate. I'm like, Oh, okay. I was about to have a heart attack. I'm not going to be so hard on myself now because the data is there in front of me. that was the first climb. And then you briefly mentioned, you know, the undulating

Cam Nicholls (21:28.482) component with some crosswinds. Sounds like you're in a group there though and everyone's working together. So when you're in a group, when everyone's working together, which is ideally where you want to be, because that's going to help you increase your average speed in Fondo events significantly. So that was a big tick. It's not always going to happen. Let's just throw a hypothetical out there. You get to the top of the climb and you're by yourself.

Are you better off just keeping going or you're better off waiting? Obviously there's risk associated with that. Like what do you recommend to people?

have a look, have a good look around behind. And if you can see a group behind and definitely slow down, if the group's like 30 seconds ahead, or, know, when you haven't seen that group for a long time, then don't try and chase because you're not going to catch the five people, even if it's two or three, they're way stronger than you. And they've just dropped you on the climb. So they're stronger, more people together. You're not going to catch. So either you're riding easy or you're waiting for a group behind. So

riding to a power that you know you can sustain until the next key moment in the, in the event. the next climb or you're riding zone two to the finish, or if it's 30 K to go, then you just go as hard as you can to the finish. But in this situation, it's, I would say you better off just take it nice and easy and waiting for waiting for the group behind. Cause riding at zone three power for 30 minutes and then getting caught from the group behind. Cause there's 10 people behind you. That's kind of be way harder than

just waiting for five minutes, getting caught by the group and rolling smooth turns, you're probably saving 10 % of energy doing that than trying to do it all on your own.

Cam Nicholls (23:10.346) Okay, so the second main effort in this particular Fondo, was there a specific strategy for that one, which is any different to the one for the first climb? Obviously, there's less people, so you don't have to worry about positioning as much.

Yeah, it was a little bit of a different climb. So it went in three phases and a few members said to me after I don't remember the three phases, it was just a long climb. But it was 15 kilometers long. So it was quite long. And you had to really think about how you're going to pace it. So was like a 5k set 5k up, predominantly 5k up and then flatish downhill and then another 5k but it's kind of sawtooth.

It was a big fight.

Ryan Thomas (23:54.682) was up and down. was flutter sections in it. The first climb was just like three, 4 % the whole way. Whereas the second climb was quite spiky in nature. so it was kind of preparing and I tried to prepare my members for like that over under style effort where you might be hitting threshold or going just above threshold. And then you're coming back down the zone two or three, and then you're going over again. So it was kind of that style of climb. and having written it before I knew that that's what

It was like in the front of the race, we were attacking quite a lot. So it's different for every situation. But it was big tailwind from that point. So we turned like the 40 km in the event. You turn left and hit a big tail cross. So it was fast from that point. So a few mistakes I heard with people was.

doing too much in that middle part of the race or too many turns or over indexing on how you're feeling in that middle part of the race and figuring that all that second climb is going to be the main decisive point using that 30 K in the middle to take it easy, take a back seat. Instead, people were going to the front trying to keep the pace hard, keep it fast. So you kind of want to lean on other people in that situation and save your energy. That's what we did in our group. had a big group and

I average zone two for that 40 Ks in between the two climbs. That was really easy. So was quite, that was probably the best strategy to do is try and take it as easy as possible and then use the tailwind. You just got to go as hard as you can for that climb. Cause the final 40 K was flat along the coast road. So the group that you're in, if you're in a good group there and you're rolling turns, then it wasn't going to change much. But that, that main second climb was kind of the last big decisive point of the event.

Mmm.

Cam Nicholls (25:44.526) And I think it's really important what you mentioned there, like how the climb came in threes, because understanding that before you go in means that in the moment, like if you're going up one of those, let's call them three stages, if you're in stage one and all of a sudden the pressure really ramps up in the final part of that stage one, and you might be like redlining a little bit.

But if you know that it's going to drop off a little bit and the pace is going to come off, then you're probably inclined to stay with it because you know that maybe in 500 meters, you're to be able to catch your breath a little bit. But if you don't know that, and if you haven't gone in sort of examining the terrain and what the climb looks like, then you might be like, is, know, heart rate's gone up. I'm well over threshold. This is a 15 minute climb. I'm going to let these guys go.

Exactly. That in context, like our specific, our specific group, there was, there's one right hander and everyone who did the event will know this exact one. It's like 10, 12 % like really steep corner before the last, this is like the last little rant before it flattened off slash went downhill. And our event we were doing like a single file, there was two or three meters between every rider. Like it was full attack there. And in my head, I was like, I've got to be with the front because

Yeah, so.

Ryan Thomas (27:06.798) goes downhill here and if I'm behind and I'm gonna have to chase so it was like full attack there and then we rested and then we did the second part but I think a lot of people in that same boat everyone was a couple people talking after the race that that that corner was everyone remembered that corner quite well because I was like final crunch before that second and third phase

So is there anything that you wanna mention before we finish off with a couple of questions from the RCA community or additional questions, I should say, with the actual course?

just an interesting point that, the decent back down was 70 K an hour gusts, a crosswinds downhill, 70 K an hour. So it was really sketchy and there was a lot of people that crashed. I didn't see any personally, but I heard a lot where on the, on the ground and walking down that hill because it was so dangerous. but I just, yeah, hope everyone that crashed was, is okay. but it was.

Yeah, I had a lot of fun down there, but there was a couple of moments where I was like, oh, this is like, this is the limit of everyone's capacity. Like at one point you came to an opening and you're doing 75K an hour and you look 200 meters ahead to the rider in front of you and their bike just starts going sideways from the right hand side of the road all way to the left. You're like, oh, just brace for impact. Like it was, it was really sketchy.

That sounds intimidating.

Ryan Thomas (28:38.222) It was very intimidating. And I know you spoke about Chris Miller before he said he got dropped on the descent. So it sounded like he was being cautious down the descent. He got dropped and he had to chase when he got to the bottom. I just saw that on his drama. So I think there was a few situations like that where it was it was quite gnarly. And then the last 40k was pretty gnarly as well with a lot of gusts of wind. So I know I hope. Yeah, it was a very tricky.

tricky last 50k with that descent and in the crosswinds headwind tailwind, it was wild.

Yeah, that's a challenging one to prepare for in training. guess going back to what you said at the start of the podcast, it's like, you got to look at it the night before. And then if you're prepared for at least mentally, then what can you do in that instance, Ryan, you know, you make sure provided you've got the right bike skills that, on the decent you are closer to the wheels than perhaps you might be typically because, you know, a gust could push you back a few bike lengths and you can get dropped pretty quickly.

Yeah. Yeah. Or in that situation, I'd say you've got to give more space because it's the unpredictability of the wind. And if someone gets pushed from the right hand side of the road to the left and you're close to them, like you're going with them. So you have the unpredictability of it was just ride within your limits really in that sort of situation. It's yeah. Pull the, the elbows out, brace for impact and just hold, hold the bike nice and tight. I had my hands were sore at the end of the bottom of the decent from gripping the bars so tight. Wow.

That says a lot for a skillful rider. So questions from the Ask Our community. Were you prepared to deal with a flat tire?

Ryan Thomas (30:25.0) No, I said two, two different mindsets here. I saw a couple of people with saddlebags, in our group, my mindset was win or lose. I was, I was gonna, yeah, I was taking the 500 grams less on the bike to, to save a bit of weight and go a bit faster and try and win the race. Then if I got a flat, I was going to be, I was going to be stopped anyway for five minutes and I wasn't going to catch back up to the group. So I was happy to sit and wait for the sag wagon.

If you were, if you were doing it for time, a hundred percent just ride your normal setup. Yeah. Saddle bag and maybe carry a CO2 canister instead of a pump or something like that. but I'd say always be prepared. Otherwise I've, I know I've heard a lot of stories. The wait, wait for the sag wagon or the wait for someone who's got a flat is like, you know, getting in for three or four hours after the event, like, so, so you're off the time. So the sag wagon is the very last car of very last rider of the day.

So it's a long, long day out there waiting for them.

It happened to me, Melbourne to Warnable 2020 at 130 Ks in got rear ended, got a flat tire. It was a really rainy morning. So there'd been lots of punches that the SRAM support vehicle didn't have a spare wheel. So I sat on the side of the road for 45 minutes waiting for the sad wagon. And then yeah, you're just in the back of the sad wagon for another 120 kilometres picking up riders.

It's really depressing. I can vouch for that. So moving forward, will never not, I don't take a saddle bag. I keep it pretty light. I'll just put a spare tube and a mini pump in my back pocket. Surrounded by gels and bars and all that kind of stuff. Just as a just in case. what did you pack with you? So this will be probably a good one to discuss.

Ryan Thomas (32:16.62) strategy.

Cam Nicholls (32:23.182) you know, obviously external to food, nutrition, but I'm keen to understand like how many grams of carbs per hour you were aiming for. So what did you pack with you nutrition wise and what were you aiming for in terms of carbs per hour? Did you pack anything else?

It was a tricky one because 130k three hours roughly for us so in my mind I know I know how much I lose in sweat and how much fluid loss I and I'm over a litre an hour so in my mind it was going to be tricky to not be dehydrated and try to I was kind of accepting that I was going to cramp at some point in the end because I wasn't going to be able to get enough fluid in because I didn't want to stop and fill bottles because I was racing for the win so yeah

My sort of situation was a little bit different. If you're racing for time, or it was four or five hours and you have 100 % you have to stop to get water because you can't get through that sort of duration without more than, um, less than two bottles. Um, so I had two 950 mil bottles. So two big ones, a lot of people had two, five, six hundreds. And I was very suspect on that for three hours and I'm pretty sure the cramping was the theme of the day.

pretty much everyone I talked to had cramps. So that's kind of the nature of doing 130K event with only two bottles. I'd probably guarantee that's why most people cramp. They just couldn't get enough fluid in. So yeah, I do 950 mil bottles with 120 grams of carbs in each. So I was gonna sip on those throughout and I knew that I needed to have another 120 grams in gels throughout.

to keep it up. I was aiming for around 100, 120 an hour turned out from training piece that suggested I needed 400 grams of carbs that three hours. So three hours, 10, I think it was so around 120 was right. And I had, yeah, I did that. had all else then the other things I carried, I carried my, yeah, didn't carry a pump or saddle bag. I carried my phone in my back pocket.

Ryan Thomas (34:31.893) just in case I got stuck out there, I had a crash or something. I didn't want to be stuck in no man's land for without anything. And I took a sneaky video during the race. And the only other thing I had on me was two nootropics gels, two caffeine gels and a Crampix.

cup. And when did you have your caffeine?

I had 200. So the new tropics gels, 200 milligrams of caffeine. had that I had one 15 minutes before the start. Um, then I had another 200 milligram caffeine and air and a half into the race. So around the night, about five K before the second climb, the main decisive climb. Um, and then I had one more gel, which was, I had a lot of caffeine and I don't recommend people do this, but I'm a high caffeine user and I use a lot.

then I had another hundred milligrams of caffeine off the descent, for the, before the final 40 K and then I ended up cramping with 15 K to go. So I had a current fix at 15 K to go and it helped a bit. And I just sat in a waited for the sprint.

Interesting. What else have we got here? So the other question was, was anyone handing out additional, because obviously three and a half hours is a long time with only two bottles, even though you basically got the liter bottles, is a smart move. So you've almost got two liters there, but you're still probably not enough. And a lot of people who intentions, I've got the 600 bottles, which is...

Cam Nicholls (36:08.14) does surprise me but actually doesn't surprise me. Were there people handing out neutral water or did you have to pull over and stop somewhere?

I didn't look for neutral water, but I did hear that there was some neutral water that people were handing out red bottles. don't know if that was just, they thought it was neutral water or not. But if in an ideal world, I would have had a supporter handing out water at the feed stations, an extra third bottle. there was for people competing for time, you could just stop. There was three aid stations throughout. So there was plenty, plenty of opportunity to stop and refill.

refilled bottles and water. And I'm pretty sure they had some nutrition like gels and bananas and lollies and stuff there as well. So there was ample opportunity to stop and maintain, maintain that energy and fluid intake. If you, if you were willing to sacrifice those couple of minutes to Yeah. Good. Which a lot of people did.

Yeah, okay.

I think that is it from the questions at the RCA community. Anything final to add? I mean, I've got a question, but I'll let you, and it's to do with your bike set up. But before I ask my questions, do you have anything further to add?

Ryan Thomas (37:27.81) No, no, that was it. just, yeah, I had a great time. It a fun race.

Okay, so I know your bike's the Merida Skoltura. Yes. Dura Ace. Shram, Shram Red. Force, carrying a bit of extra weight there mate, you could have been on a podium if it wasn't for that Shram Force.

Shram.

Ryan Thomas (37:50.008) don't say that.

Just joking. So what was your front, what was your gearing set up?

Bye!

Ryan Thomas (38:00.846) I have a 52 40 chainring at the front and then a 10 32 cassette.

for it and what's at the back.

Cam Nicholls (38:09.71) Okay, cool. And what was your tire of choice?

I have the GP 5000.

28 mil. TPU tubes. I'm a non convert to tubeless like yourself. Sounds like you're going back to tubes in the very near future. I run tubeless on my mountain bike and love it. I've never had an issue, but for some reason I'm just a tube guy on the road bike. don't know. I just haven't converted over and I don't know if I will. I'm just like the tubes. I don't feel like I'm losing anything.

Okay, achieve this.

Cam Nicholls (38:36.279) Exactly.

Ryan Thomas (38:52.194) with TPU tubes.

What's PSI? You're pumping them at 70 kilos body weight.

I had 60, 63, 60, 63 in the rear, 60 in the front, roughly.

Yep, cool. what wheels have you got? You got the Cadence?

We've got the cadence. Yeah. Which are unreal. 60, 60, real 60 mil rear, 50 mil front, which was perfect. Perfect for that course. And they are unreal in the crosswinds, like going down that decent with 70 K an hour gusts. Like I was not moving anywhere near as much as other people. don't know. They're deep 50 even 60s, deep wheels. So they're, I don't know what it is about those wheels, but they're just good in the crosswinds.

Cam Nicholls (39:19.029) stagger.

Cam Nicholls (39:39.534) Good. All right, well, thanks for sharing Ryan. If you're all out there listening to this and you've got some Fondo events coming up, don't forget at the RCA, we're a coaching business and as part of coaching, it's not just about giving you intervals and giving you zone two sessions and structuring your plan in a way that helps you recover properly. It's also about the advice that you can get from coaches about Fondo events, how to prepare nutrition-wise.

BikeWise, I know Ryan, go through all the Fondo events that we deal with at the RCA all around the world, Canada, USA, Europe, UK. You are going through with your members on your monthly catch-up calls, the course, is that correct? And then what it looks like.

100%. Yeah, we always break the course down, always look at the demands of the course and what sort of strategy and pacing strategy you should use. So yeah, always, always break the course down. It's the key part of any event. And if you're not thinking about what sort of strategy you should do, then yeah, we can, we can certainly help you with that.

I think that's what a coach proactively enforces. I think when people are doing events by themselves, I've been guilty of this, you don't really lean into it as much as you should. And let's face it, you're not going to sit down with your partner and go through it because if they don't ride a bike, they don't care. So having a coach could really be valuable in this space. So if that sounds of interest to you, make sure you check out the road cycling academy.com website.

Where you would wanna go for this one is hiring a coach. We've got a monthly and a weekly option if you're unsure. Just submit an inquiry. You'll get me on the inquiry guy will jump on the phone, web calling and go through things and understand your cycling goals and make a recommendation. So yeah, if that sounds of interest, check out our website. Thanks for listening and we'll catch you in the next podcast.

In this episode of the RCA Podcast, Cam Nicholls sits down with RCA Head Coach Ryan Thomas to unpack how Ryan managed to secure a top-5 finish at the Men's Fondo World Cycling Championships—while averaging only 8 hours of training per week.

Ryan opens up about balancing full-time coaching, family life with a young child, and the constant setbacks of illness earlier in the year. Despite the challenges, he pieced together a 12-week block of smart, targeted training that pushed his threshold power back up, sharpened his VO₂ max, and prepared him for the critical climbs on race day.

From the structure of his weekly sessions—VO₂ on-offs, threshold climbs, and tempo bursts—to the importance of communication with family, racing bunch rides for "real world" intensity, and carving out just one long ride each weekend, Ryan proves that you don't need pro-level hours to perform at a high level.

Whether you're a busy parent, full-time professional, or just looking to maximise your limited training time, this conversation is packed with practical takeaways to help you get fitter, faster, and more consistent on the bike.

Coaching with the RCA; https://roadcyclingacademy.com/one-to-one-coaching/

Transcript:

Cam Nicholls (00:00.034) Welcome back to the RCA podcast where today I am joined by RCA head coach, Ryan Thomas. And I've asked Ryan for this podcast because I'm impressed, Ryan. You've done over the last 12 weeks averaged eight hours of training time per week, which is not a lot. You've gone down to Lawn, Victoria, Australia and participated in the World Fondo Championships and completed a road race, was

130 kilometers, it? Yep, 130 kilometers in length on eight hours training per week and you're finished fourth or what you call a grass podium, which is bittersweet as you said previously, but it's an amazing result. And I think, you know, given the dynamic of, yeah, obviously you've got natural talent, but eight hours is still not a lot of time. And I believe...

Yes.

Cam Nicholls (00:55.822) knowing how you coach, you've obviously coached me before, you're the head coach at the RCA, you do it for a living. Your training is very effective, you're very smart with your training on your limited training time. So I wanted to go into detail on what you've been doing training wise over the last 12 weeks. And I know you've pulled up your training peaks there so we can be quite specific. Before we sort of start at that 12, you know, going back 12 week mark.

Can you give the listeners a bit of an idea on your age, the age group you are participating in, and just your personal dynamic at home, like what you're, you know, because it's not, you're not single. Yeah, you've got a fair bit going on, like a lot of people do. So, yeah, give us a little bit of a background on that. And then once you've done that, what you were doing, like before the 12 weeks started, because it's not like you've come off

I just want to make sure people realize it's not like you were doing big K's at the start of the year and you've had this huge base engine going in. It's more like you've been fighting gastro bugs and all sorts of stuff. yeah, tell us a little bit about yourself and your age group.

I've been down a lot.

Ryan Thomas (02:07.746) Yeah, so I'm 30 years old. I have a wife and a young son who's almost 18 months now. So that's 12 to 18 months. Anyone who has kids is quite challenging. They're growing and learning a lot and need a lot of attention. So, and hasn't always been in daycare. So I'm looking after him some days. So dynamic at home is quite busy along with.

Yeah, work being a full time coach at the RCA is takes takes a lot of hours as well. So trying to fit training around that I would just think about me as any other person with, so I'd say a semi flexible job. But working working full time with a young kid and wife and all the social stuff going on is, yeah, it's a hard balance. But yeah, I think a lot of people have have a very similar experience, especially a lot of members, members in the RCA. So

It was a challenge and.

Absolutely. Can I just before you move on, also confirm that your wife works as well. And the little one has been in and out of gastro. Wish you could call it gastro, couldn't you? Daycare. Yeah. little bit. And I know I kind of get out the popcorn. I'm a bit of a narcissist when it comes to this. Not narcissist. What's the word? Massacacist or something like that. When I see other people suffering when they're having a young kid because

Yes.

Cam Nicholls (03:34.452) I reckon I had gastro 40 times between the ages of 30 and 40 while my kids were going through daycare to kids. And I was just always sick and it was always disrupting my cycling. And I know that you've had to face a fair bit of that this year as well.

Yeah, well, was so much so at the start of the year, we pulled him out of well, mid a couple months into the year, we pulled him out of the daycare he was in, because it was so bad. And we removed him. So he was he was out of daycare for a few months there, which was even more challenging on training. And that's where that was before the 12 weeks, thankfully, before this, because it kind of locked in at that moment. But before that, it was even more juggling, because yeah, I was having to look after him share the

share the dad and mom load between us and when we weren't working, one of us was looking after him. but just before that 12 weeks sort of kicked in, then he was back in a daycare and the new daycare, fingers crossed has been unreal. I haven't actually been sick since, so that might rub you the wrong way, but.

Now you've said it, you'll get sick next week. Just touch some wood. So what were you doing, like just at a high level, don't spend too much time here, but like what were you doing before the 12 week block started?

Uh, yeah. So while the start of the year from like two or down under was a like, would go back to then, because it's kind of when I started thinking about this really, it was like, it's going to be 10 months of 10 months of training. And I was like, I'll use two or down under the set a bit of a base. And then all the sickness happened. All of it got it all. Um, so March was pretty much no writing. Like I've looked at my training pigs performance management chart now. And it was, yeah, I was down to 30 CTL. Um,

Ryan Thomas (05:22.99) by April, is very, very little, basically not writing at all. And then the next few months was very similar. I was just in and out, in and out, in and out, sick, not sick, just trying to maintain, keep a little bit of fitness. And then around sort of June, that was kind of the period where it all eased up for us at home. So I could start a locked in consistently. And I was in my head, I was like four months, I need to.

This is it. And my wife was really supportive and she knew that I was going to go and do this event and I'd. Pined a lot like investing quite a bit of money to get down there. It's not cheap. So it was like four months. I'm going to try and train when I can and get up early and do those sorts of things. for a month or two, my mindset was I need to ride four to four days a week minimum. So that was kind of like my base. If you want to call it base, I wanted to do four rides a week minimum, which wasn't happening.

the few months before that four rides a week and yeah, focus around that low end energy system, do some tempo, do try and build a bit of threshold because I knew I needed to get my threshold high. So I looked at, knew the cause cause I'd done it the year before. So kind of knew where I needed to be and what I need, what sort of power I needed to be doing. And in my head, my first, my first mindset was get my threshold up. So I need my threshold to be back at pretty close to where it has been previously.

in order to put the layers on top of that in the final six to eight weeks.

I like just to go back on something that you said. You spoke to your wife or your partner and you said, you're going to do this event. It was important to you. I don't know if you said that, it sounded like you. Yeah, you're kind of assumed and that you were going to be focused on it. And I think that's really important because I think a lot of people, I've been guilty of this in the past, particularly going back

Ryan Thomas (07:10.926) We did.

Cam Nicholls (07:22.958) into my, you when I first started racing my early thirties, you just, you know, you don't set those expectations and it's all a bit of a burden and it's a bit of the unknown. and, you know, I think as well, specifically, if you're only targeting one or two events a year, which I think is a really good way to do it when you're busy with a family, you've got, you know, two, one to two, three to four month blocks in the year. And then the rest of the time you kind of just.

do whatever and you're not so focused on it. But if you're doing it like that and you sit down with your partner and you express the importance of it, then they're on board as well. And there's no guilt when you're doing it. Everyone's aligned and obviously you step up to the plate in other areas. And I used to do the same as well. But I think just it's all comes back to communication, communicating. I even now do it with my family. I'm like, I'm training for Grafton in Varela side of the year everyone, just so you know, I'm gonna.

but be a little bit more fatigued and tired, maybe grumpy at times. Although I feel probably for that event. So I wasn't grumpy. surprisingly that, you know, the afternoon grumps on, after you've done a five hour ride on a Saturday. but like, I, I don't just tell my partner, I tell my kids who are now old enough to absorb it. I'll tell my parents. and that's pretty much those who are close to me, just so they all know that the next three months are important training wise. And yeah, that, you know, there's the, once you've, once you've sort of like expressed it,

Everything just there's less tension when you're going and doing your training I find.

Yeah, especially personally for me, like I, my wife works every second Saturday. So I usually race on a Saturday, but every second, I know that every second Saturday I can still feel guilty leaving the house for four or five hours. But like that's my, that's my four or five hours to get my long ride, my quality done. And I don't have to feel anxious or rushing back home to help with the help with the young one. so it's like carve out a specific amount of time, maybe one day on a weekend, five hours and

Ryan Thomas (09:23.266) That's your time. That's you don't have to feel anxious or feel worried that you're the team down. It's yeah, if you if you set those boundaries, definitely helps.

Yeah. And obviously we're going to get into more of this as we go through this chat, but I think that's one people don't recognize as well really to get fit for a Fondo event like this. You don't need to be doing multiple long rides per week. As long as you've got kind of like one day where you can go do three, four, and you might even push up to five hours, but you three, four hours once a week. That's great. That's all you, all you need. And you can work around that. That that's your kind of, you know, durability ride or your endurance ride.

You don't need to do that two or three times a week, which I think there's a bit of misconception about.

Yeah, agreed, agreed.

So 12 weeks, you're 12 weeks out. You've been riding consistently four days a week for about a month. You've been focused on building the aerobic energy system, doing some tempo stuff. I assume doing maybe a bit of sweet spot stuff. When you start getting specific, what are you now doing? Are you ramping up to five days a week? Are you doing more time?

Cam Nicholls (10:36.43) What type of interval sessions are you doing? What type of recovery sessions are you doing?

Yeah, so my my golf or Frequency was still four days a week. So I was realistic on that if I got five in then awesome But I was pretty pretty realistic that four days a week is probably going to be my limit And in within those four days, knew that every second week I'd be able to get one long one with a racing on Saturday and then on the on the opposing week then I'd probably get another one a long one in on the Sunday and

maybe another one during the week if I start work late. But four days a week was kind of my minimum. When around the 12 week period started, I was pretty happy with what I'd done. So I've done a a few threshold efforts and a few little tests just to figure out where I was at. And I was probably like 20, maybe 30 watts under the threshold that I wanted, but I knew that would come up in the 12 weeks. I was pretty happy that I could ride pretty close to

to where I needed to at the start of that 12 weeks. And I've done a couple of hard VO2 efforts that were well under where I needed them to be, but I needed to push myself to see what, I use the 12 week mark as like, what do I need to improve on? Where do I need to go? And knowing my body, I know that if I can do 400 Watts for a certain amount of time, for example, then I'm good for that. I'm good for my VO2. Or if I can only do 370, then I'm like, well.

VO2 needs to lift because I know in a race that 400 watts is kind of like you spend a fair bit of time around that 400 watt mark in that age group and in an event like that. So I knew that my VO2 needed to be really high. So I kind of focused a lot on that.

Cam Nicholls (12:24.043) What's your weight just for those power to weight geeks out there?

I'm 70 kilos, anyway, 68, 70, 70, 70 at the moment, sell 70 on race day. And I usually a good threshold for me is around 350 watts, 355 watts.

watts per kilo was, let's look it up now, divided by say, five watts per kilo. And your bigger efforts that you need to sustain for two or three minutes here and there, which is 400 watts, is what's that watts per kilo? 400 divided by 5.7, 5.8.

Bob exactly.

Ryan Thomas (13:05.198) Yeah. So yeah, I ended up being, I ended up getting quite strong in the end. But that's kind of where I knew what I needed to do. Yep. But when I started the 12 weeks, was, I did a, I did a test and I was around 335 critical power. So I was, I knew I was about 20 Watts off what I needed to. And last year for Amy's for a bit of context on the first climb, I did 370 Watts, 365 Watts for 20 minutes. So

In my head, I was like, that was really difficult. And the dynamic was different because it was just a normal fun day. wasn't a world championships. It wasn't other teams there and stuff. But in my head, I knew that that's probably this event was going to be harder. So in my head, I was like, I need I want to be able to do 380, 380 watts, 20 minutes was my goal. I was like, that's that's the number I need to hit everything else. I'll figure it out. Like 380 for 20 was that's all I was thinking about.

was being able to do that. Cause I knew that that and the second climb were the critical points of the event. And if I couldn't do that, I wasn't going to be able to make a difference on those clients, which is where I wanted to make a difference. So that was my, that was kind of my mindset. Um, and I knew that I was comfortable, comfortable with getting, getting up there if I could get some good VO to into my, with four days of training a week was my, my theory for the 12 weeks going in.

was I need to get one really hard VO2 session in. my, because I have so much experience with doing these type of VO2 efforts, I hadn't done a lot of 3015s myself in the past. I was always a 4020 hero. I love 4020s. 4020s were my bread and butter whenever I was racing 10 years ago. Just loved them. And I knew that they worked really good for me. But I've only got a shorter climb where I live now. So 3015s was a bit more efficient.

So I just did once a week for probably six, six to eight weeks. just did a set of 30, 15 or really hard via two set. Um, and I essentially, was just emptying the tank. Like I know where my body's at. So I was just going as hard as I could. Like I knew what sort of power roughly I could do for that sort of duration, but I was kind of using it as a benchmark, just going full stick for 30 seconds, recover and just back it up.

Ryan Thomas (15:20.684) from a racing background, I know that I can do that. It's different for a new person doing those sort of intervals, but I know that I can kind of stay seated and go as hard as I can and then repeat it for six to eight minutes. Okay. So that was one of my key session, key VO2 building session each week.

And you started that like from 12 weeks out or more like from, you know, eight to 10 weeks ago.

I did a couple of trial, like I did a couple of testing VO two efforts just before the 12 weeks, like on the indoor trainer, cause it was around around winter time, 12 weeks out from the event. So I was still on the indoor trainer. So I did a couple when I was really time crunched, like a 40, 40 minute, 45 minute session with a couple of three minute hard start VO twos, something like that, just to test the waters to see where that power was sitting.

but from 12 weeks, that was pretty much where I started doing my proper on-off hard efforts.

Yeah. So 30, 15 session, can you just break it down? Like, obviously it will vary as you progress to get stronger towards the event, but like how many reps are you doing and how many sets and what's 30 is all out. What's 15 is it, is it, you're spinning in zone one or you're trying to stay at a more of a zone two pace.

Ryan Thomas (16:39.182) What was that? So it's for me, I did a couple on the trainer and I just didn't feel like I was getting enough out of them because I couldn't put out the power I wanted to. So for me, I have a, I have roughly a six minute climb within five minutes, my house. So what most of the time I would, or if I had a bit more time, I would go to a longer eight minute climb. but I have a six minute one that's pretty fast. So I do a 10 minute warmup with a couple of activations, a couple of 30 second.

above the power I wanted to for the 30 15s, roll into the climb and just hit the lap button and go hard for 30 seconds. I was aiming for like anywhere from four, 400 to 450 depending on what sort of day I was doing. And then my 15 seconds was usually around high zone too. I know that I can keep the power on with experience with these, but anywhere from 240 to 280 in the, in the 15 seconds off to keep the power.

I was doing, yeah, around six minutes most of the time. And then I would roll back down the climb and it ended up being like a four minute recovery. So it's not like the perfect session. And I think it's a, like, it's a takeaway from, from that is that like a, if you look at the research, it's like going to 12, 30, 15 and you have three minutes recovery and it's like perfect on a dot. And a lot of people, a lot of people would do that sort of session and like, missed an effort or my recovery was a bit longer. I failed today. It's like,

No, it's if you think about what you're actually trying to get out of it is it doesn't really matter the duration. One missing one effort or not doing one effort perfectly or having a bit extra recovery doesn't matter too much. It's pushing yourself to your limit in the effort and going as hard as you can. That's kind of where you're to get the benefit.

Yeah, I think as well a lot of people get the 3015s or the 4020s wrong because they come back to like a really easy spin or they almost don't pedal at all. But I think the research is saying that you should be at about 50 % of what your effort is. So if your effort was at say 400 watts, you should come back down to roughly 200 watts.

Ryan Thomas (18:41.39) Yes, yeah, 50 % of your VA to match 50 to 60 % of your VA to max is kind of what the research says. Yeah, that's what they use for their benchmark.

Yeah. And I think the idea is that by doing that, you're more likely to stay physiologically in that VO2 max state through the whole set. So you're almost like, you know,

Yeah, the oxygen demands are still there like zone two power in that 15 seconds recovery is not that different to a zone one power. But think about what your muscles are trying to reap out of that. Your still muscles are still requiring a decent, like it's only a couple of percent, right? It's these little percenters that can make a big difference over a 12 week training block. But in that 15 seconds, if your VO2,

If your oxygen consumption drops 3 % less every 15 seconds, then it's going to be, you're going to get more benefit, more physiological stimulus out of each effort.

So that was one of your mainstay hit sessions during the week. Obviously we'll talk about what you did on the weekends in a bit more detail in a second, but what was your other mainstay kind of hit session during the week? And I'm assuming you weren't doing these hit sessions back to back.

Ryan Thomas (20:04.11) No, no, sometimes I did because I was time crunching. I know my body can handle it. And I often, I actually feel better the second day just from a lot of years. Yeah, kind of my other key session that I really wanted to hit throughout the 12 weeks was threshold because I knew that riding at a steady power. So the client first time was 20 minutes on the pedals, like no, no rest. So I knew that that sort of long

threshold power, consistent sustained effort was going to be important as well. Similar with the second climb is a sustained effort for 5k and then rest and then some sustained effort. So I wanted to be able to do that eight minute, 10 minute threshold effort. So I'd, I have an eight minute climb, eight to nine minute climb that I would go and do threshold efforts at. just kind of four to sometimes I did six threshold efforts, just go up and down that climb four to six times, riding around threshold power.

The other session I did was a bit of over-unders or a long tempo with bursts in it. So over-unders like minute over, minute under. Threshold. That sort of effort over under threshold, which is more like a race style effort. And then some tempo with spikes, similar same sort of thing, building that lactate clearance and being able to ride for 30 to 40 minutes with pressure on the pedals.

So talk about the tempo burst session because I don't think we've spoken about that one much in the past. What are you doing a tempo effort and then bursting or you bursting and then doing a tempo after the burst?

We're a burst or a triple burst. You can do both, very similar. It just depends if you want to spike, get your system firing early or settle in and then get your system firing. I like to do a burst first because it's easy to, it's nice and efficient to get it going quick. And you can break it up into two or three efforts of 10 to 15 minutes for three efforts or two 20 minute efforts if you like.

Ryan Thomas (22:05.774) depends on how much time you got available. It easy for me to just go and do an hour 15 loop and I do a 15, 20 minute warmup, press the lap button and just go until I hit traffic really, or until I couldn't do the effort anymore. So it was like anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes and do a 30 second burst in anaerobic capacity. So for me up over 450 to 500 Watts for 30 seconds. If I was feeling good, then go as hard as I can.

thinking about it like you're following an acceleration or jumping out of a corner for 30 seconds to hold the wheel or following an attack. So 30 seconds is, hard, but it's not all out. And then you settle back down for four and a half, five minutes in tempo zone three. So for me, I'm going to 80, 300 Watts and just get comfortable. And then after four or five minutes, accelerate for 30 seconds again. So I, I don't do,

My any, any of my intervals that I do aren't like exact seconds or exact time duration. I'll often use the intervals around the terrain that I have around my house. So for example, that 40 minute tempo burst, was like, sometimes the tempo was three and half minutes sometimes or six minutes because I wanted my 32nd effort to be quality. So every time I'd go up a 32nd little climb, that's where I would do my 32nd burst instead of keeping it mundane and doing four and a half minutes in between. yeah.

quite flexible, that just comes with experience, knowing what you're trying to get out of the session that sometimes the durations doesn't actually change the adaptation.

Well, it aligns with one of our core values we recently worked on at the RCA Rime, which is sustainability. that is where practicality meets science. So that's basically what you're doing. And that's what works for recreational and amateur cyclists. You've got to work with what you've got. And a lot of people can say, just do it on the trainer. But it's nice to get outside as well. A lot of people don't want to be on the trainer all the time. So you've got to work with what you've got.

Cam Nicholls (24:09.838) Two sessions during the week. Were you doing another session? Were you doing any zone two work or anything like that?

Yeah, I was usually trying to fit one one short zone two in my weekday or on a sometimes I would have a bit extra time. So I'll try and do like a two, two and a half hours on to during the week. And those those intensity rides for me those two sessions already talked about three sessions were usually only an hour, hour 15. That was pretty much all the time I could carve out. So I had calls until 10 o'clock, I'd jump out of the house for an hour quickly and then come back and get back into work.

because mornings are my time with my son. So it was hard to get out during the week for that. So yeah, definitely try and squeeze in one, just normal zone two, either on the trainer or on the road for a little bit longer. But the weekend, the one day on the weekend was where, what was important to me. I knew that that, I knew that for the last six months of riding for me was really interrupted and I hadn't had been consistent with my long ride. So the longest ride was

biggest TSS I had before I started this training block was like 150, 200. So I knew that the, like the demands for the race was going to be around 300 TSS. so in my head, I knew I needed to get, yeah, five or six long, hard, four, three, four, five hour rides in with intensity. And I'm not just, not just endurance, they needed to be three or four hours, like hard. So how I was structuring that was different each week, but

Every second week I would get a race in so a club race here in Brisbane, we pretty lucky that we can go and do a club race. Most weekdays, weekends, sorry. And that'd be an hour, pretty much full gas. So I'd race it and every week I was getting better and better. The first, the start of the 12 weeks I was struggling to be competitive and by the end of the 12 weeks I was competing for podiums and I won a race. So by the end of it, it was...

Ryan Thomas (26:10.414) the training work, I was, yeah, I was getting stuck in on the one weekend ride in that 12 weeks was racing. And then the last six weeks I was doing racing. Every one week I did two races in one session, which was really, really hard. And then I was doing intervals after the racing as well. So doing an hour, hour full gas race, then doing riding for half an hour to 45 minutes to a climb, and then doing hard effort type of climb to kind of simulate what it was gonna be like.

in the event.

But yeah, so there was a bit of structure in there then in terms of these long rides, but mostly it was random because racing is relatively random. It was more about accumulating the TSS or the fatigue.

Just stress. Yeah, stress on the system and just push. Yeah, pushing. You can get the same sort of thing from a bunch ride or a chop off or something like that where you just push your body to the limit. Like you don't have control on when you're accelerating or when you have to sprint or when you're when you're fatiguing. Like you just have to hold the wheel no matter what. Like in my mind, I'm a racer and I perform a lot better around people. So I was just like racing is just the best way for me to get

build that in aerobic and a VO2 engine because I'm just going as hard as I can for 55 minutes, not thinking about the consequences, just emptying the tank. is, I think that's a little piece missing in a lot of people's training is that emptying the tank and really being able to suffer. Like racing and grand fondos and hard courses, your ability to suffer makes a big difference on the outcome.

Ryan Thomas (27:55.158) doing those hard bunch rides and group rides, pushing your body to its limit. It's not easy to do, but it's definitely something that can help you if you want to improve.

Absolutely. That's the 12 weeks from a periodization perspective, like I know the RCA, it's not a general blanket, but we typically follow a three week build where we'll do an easier week, a moderate week and a hard week. So everything that you just described in terms of your two mainstay and hit sessions and your base training session amongst that, and then your harder, longer ride on the weekend.

you'd have a moderate week and then a hard week and then you go back to an easier week but you're bit younger and you're very conditioned so maybe you might have been doing a different blend more of a four-week build or even a five-week build. What did yours look like?

it was quite sporadic based on schedule work and like it wasn't a regular build. There was no, two week, three week. was just whatever time I had available. then usually, so I'm looking back on my, on my training peaks now and within the last, what was that? mid August to now. within the last eight weeks, 10 weeks before the event, I had five rides over.

that were really hard. So I can just see the TSS numbers were really high. But after those rides, was, would, though every, pretty much every two to three weeks, I did one, one ride like that. And after that ride, I would use the next three or four days knowing that I'd push my body to limit pretty close. So I'd use those next three or four days to do, I didn't do any intensity in those days. It was just so into or completely off the bike based on.

Ryan Thomas (29:45.614) how the schedule looks. So some of those weeks were 10 hours, 11 hours, and then the next week was only four hours, for example. That happened like three or four times in that 12 week block. Unplanned in those, I would have liked to have done a little bit more, but that's just the nature of what it's like juggling a few different things. So yeah, I didn't plan my easy weeks. I just knew that I wanted to get big hard rides in every couple of weeks. And then I would use the weekdays to try and recover.

Yep. And you did have a week off the bike for a family trip to New Zealand as well before the event.

actually, I ended up I ended up taking my mountain bike with me. I took I did. Yeah, I did reduce volume quite a little bit. Quite a lot and that so it was it was only for the only had 10 days at home before championship. So the yeah, from four weeks out to three weeks out on the road five times. So it was a pretty big I use like, yeah, in my mind, I just used the

three weeks out as well, I kind of taper, reduce the volume. And then I did one, one hard session, one hard long session the week prior, and that kind of sharpened me up knowing my body needed helps a lot.

Absolutely. Cool. Well, thanks for sharing, Ryan. Obviously, next podcast, we're going to go through your pacing, your tactics for Fondo events. And we've got a few questions that RCA members asked on our community forum. So we'll be going through those. So let's not go through that today. But all that training. Well, not all that training really, know, averaging eight hours per week.

Cam Nicholls (31:30.37) got you to fourth in a Fondo World Championships, which is pretty amazing. So well done.

Thanks, Cam.

All right, thanks for listening. You know, if you're listening to all this and you're like, well, that blend sounds quite interesting. And you know, I haven't done that. I'm just smashing the local group ride every ride, or I'm just going out and half wheeling my mate or whatever you're doing. And you'd like to step it up a notch. Make sure you check out the RCA's website because we're a coaching business at the end of the day, roadcyclingacademy.com. Head to hire a coach or we've also got something called the 12 week custom plan where you can get a custom 12 week

plan put together by one of our coaches here at the RCA. We'll catch you in the next podcast.

Summary

In this general-discussion episode, we unpack the 2025 World Champs Fondo edition of Amy's Gran Fondo in Lorne, Victoria—what the day felt like from the start corrals to the coastal finish. We cover the course flow (early climb, rolling mid-section, fast finale), the wild wind and sketchy descents, bunch dynamics, and how the event logistics stacked up this year.

Inside the episode:

• Event vibe & logistics: Registration, start grid, road closures, aid stations, neutral support, and crowd energy.

• Course & conditions: Key climbs, crosswinds/tailwinds along the coast, and how weather shaped the groups.

• Racing vs. riding: What decided the front, why some riders waited vs. chased, and takeaways for non-racers aiming for a PB.

• Safety & skills: Managing crosswinds and high-speed descents without burning matches.

• Fuel & kit notes: Practical nutrition/hydration for 3–4 hours, gearing, tyres/pressures, and wheel depth choices that made sense on the day.

• Lessons for next year: Pacing checkpoints, where to position before the first climb, and simple tweaks to turn fitness into a result.

Whether you were there, tracking friends, or planning your first Fondo, you'll get a grounded debrief plus actionable tips to make your next Amy's (or any Gran Fondo) smoother, faster, and more fun.

Hire a coach with the RCA: https://roadcyclingacademy.com/one-to-one-coaching/

Transcript:

Cam Nicholls (00:00.098) Welcome back to the RCA podcast where today I am joined by the head coach of the RCA, Ryan Thomas. And Ryan has just been at, or just been in Lorne, Victoria, Australia, which hosted the World Fondo Championships in conjunction with the Amy Gillett's ride. And for this podcast, seeing we're only a few days since that event has occurred, I just wanted to have a bit of a debrief with Ryan about the event. Because I know we coached a lot of people, Ryan, for the event. lot of people had some great results as well.

But you were there, you experienced it. I know a lot of people were following it on social media. So I thought, let's just do a bit of a podcast about the event. We're going to talk about your results specifically in the next podcast, because you actually only train for eight hours per week average for 12 weeks and finished fourth on the grass podium there. got on the podium, which is pretty amazing, given your training time. So we will talk about that in the next podcast. And then the podcast after that.

I wanted to talk about your pacing strategy as well for Fondo events. So I think you nailed that, particularly given your training time. But for this one, we're just going to have a bit of a waffle about Amy's in the experience. So let's start from the start. You flew in from Queensland and you get to the Melbourne airport. What happens next?

wait, waiting for a few of my mates. so it's the vibe of the vibe of the world champs was really cool because I actually went down last year and I went down just with one other, one other mate. and we did the event and it was, it was a good vibe and we were just hanging out and having fun, but went down with like five or six mates this time. So it was just a, yeah, just a good, called it the bros bro's trip. We just went down for a bro's trip and

rode her bikes on the Great Ocean Road and yeah, cruised around and then had bit of a race in there.

Cam Nicholls (01:51.052) Nice. you got down, so the event was on Sunday, you got down on Friday.

We got down on Wednesday, actually. the kind of schedule was spread out. So there was a time trial on the Thursday. There was a team relay on the Friday, which we can talk about. Saturday was a free day and then the race was on a Sunday. So we got down there because a couple of our, a couple of our mates are doing the time trial on the Thursday. So we wanted to get down Wednesday, run the course and then go and support them on the Thursday.

Yeah, okay. So you got down on Wednesday and you rode the whole course, did you?

No, just the time trial course. I was familiar with the course, but a few of the other guys wanted to be there to ride the climb a couple of times and just, just enjoy five days, five days away with the bros. Yeah.

So Thursday was the time trial. Did you see RCA member Alan Nelson in the 65 to 69 category take out the world title again?

Ryan Thomas (02:55.47) I saw that it happened. wasn't there in the moment. Unfortunately, I wish I was. wish I was in lawn to see it happen. It's a pretty regular occurrence for him. He's got six world titles, I think now. So he's very familiar with the process, but it was very cool to see that I had a, I had a chat with him after and broke down his power and saw what he did. And he looked like he did a really good performance because he was there for a week or two before just learning the course and really getting dialed in. So

who went all in

Are we allowed to talk about his power?

I think so, well yeah he... Yeah I think so, he...

think you'd be okay with it.

Cam Nicholls (03:35.694) I'll ask him before this podcast goes live and if he says no, we'll beep this out and if your people aren't hearing beeps, you know he said okay.

He just sent me a couple of screenshots of it and I looked at, I think I looked at his Strava pacing as well. But essentially the difference between his 10 and 20 minute power was quite significant for a 30 minute time trial. So that tells me that he went out quite hard and he said that he went out really hard. So his 10 minute power was 350 and his 20 minute power was 320 or 310.

That doesn't sound like Alan.

Ryan Thomas (04:13.486) So there was like a 30, 40 watt difference across with only 10 minutes difference. So that's, um, there was a couple of freewheeling decents in there cause there was a couple of technical corners, but there shouldn't have been that much of a difference between a 10 and 20 minute power for a 30 minute course. would, you would imagine. And not if I was going to, if I was going to pace it and set, set a power target for any athletes, would want those to be very similar. Um, but he was, he was by far the strongest on the day and won by.

30 seconds. So I think his strategy worked out well in the end.

Yeah, yeah, you can't really fault it when you walk away with the gold medal, can you? So

No, no, he's still critical of himself though. He's a racer so he's like, I went out too hard but yeah, that's all good.

So what was his 30, if it was a 30 minute time trial or what, do know what his 30 minute power was roughly? What was the?

Ryan Thomas (05:04.43) No, because he just showed me his peak powers. I didn't see his average average for the event I think he hides his power on Strava, which is controversial in itself

He's a typical cyclist, isn't he? Yeah, so he actually won, not only did he win his category, the 65 to 69, but he's also faster than the two age groups below him. I just, I love his story because it just gives you so much, it's inspirational. Like I'm mid forties and we get inquiries at the RCA often now. And this is not one word of an exaggeration.

Yeah.

Cam Nicholls (05:42.318) I'm just wondering if I'm, you know, like, okay to be coached because I'm over 40 now. like the, the theme of the, the, the inquiry is like, they're over the hill. And I'm like, I often linked to Alan and I said, have a look at this guy. He's like doing his best, best power numbers. He's training in Europe during, you know, uh, you know, our winter Europe summer, you know, he's, he's, he's super fit, super healthy. And you know, he's 65 turning 66. It's incredible.

Yeah. And that's kind of what the grand Fondo world is about, right? Like it's, it's everyone who in their own right can go and perform against people, their own age and just show, show that it doesn't really matter what, what sort of age you are. can go and perform and perform well.

Yeah, so time trial was on Thursday. What happened on Friday?

Friday was a team relay. So in your country and I'd prepared, you have to enter a team relay yourself. So it wasn't organized by the nations. was, or you had to find a team and enter a team yourself. So I saw it immediately and was like, this would be cool to do. Like it'd be cool to have an Australian team win or on the podium or whatever happens. But I found four really, really strong writers who I knew and there was

They have some rules around the team relay, which was kind of interesting. Tactically was you needed a male and female of any age. You needed a male or female over 40 and a male or female over 50. So you needed to comprise a team of, yeah, a couple of older people and a couple of young, strong, strong male and female essentially. So I was obviously going to race myself because I was super keen to be involved. found a, I found a, um,

Ryan Thomas (07:28.878) young female who was keen to race at a, at a over 40 who I knew from Brisbane who was going down and then Alan was my first choice over 50. Cause he's the new RCA and I knew it was a bit of a record. So he knew it was going to be down there. So yeah, it was really cool. we had very strange format. Yeah. What a strange format. Think about athletics four by 400 meter relay. So mass star relay. So

So what is the right?

Ryan Thomas (07:56.846) Everyone the first you have four four writers and you choose what order they want to go in. So I was the team manager. So I selected what order I think would be best based on what other people would do and finishing and starting. So 22 teams lined up altogether. The first writer was selected. You do three laps of a Criterium course in Geelong, which had a really fast downhill and then a bit of an uphill. So it was

had a bit of everything. So it was like six kilometers, just under six K each rider. So the first rider went off, did three laps. After three laps, they crossed the line. And then the second rider went, they did three laps. Third rider came across the line, third rider went, and then I was the final rider. And then you finish in the first, first team across the line was a winner.

Right, how'd you go?

Yeah, we went really well actually. so strategy wise, sent, I sent my 40 plus first, cause I knew he could handle himself in a group. So 22 riders had to go, had to be able to ride within a group and still go hard. So he finished, he was second or second or third across the line, which was really good. our young female was Salzy, from Brisbane and she did really well. First, she's very new to cycling and she performed well. She came across the line fourth, I think.

In the end with a couple of males in that age group in that wave as well So it was really good and then Brendan came across the line in I think he was he was fifth and sixth and then I was There was a group of three off the front when they when they tagged me So I came through and it was like ten seconds to the group of three off the front And in my mind, I was like, I just gotta go as hard as possible to catch him I want to catch them and the podiums gone. So yeah

Ryan Thomas (09:44.44) probably a bit of a rookie era from my part because there was another guy who's a pro veloracer who was off the same time as me and he started just behind me. And I basically went as hard as I could for 30 seconds to try to catch the front. Didn't quite catch

He was probably trying to catch you, so you were both caught. We should have worked together.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I had a look behind and he would have waited and wouldn't have done 700 watts of the first 30 seconds. Probably would have had a bit bit extra energy left in the tank. But we ended up catching we got together after three quarters of a lap caught the front three a lap and a half in so we had a lap and a half to go. Bit of tactical sales five of us five of us off the front. But I have to go and also I was like, well, I'm racing for the win here. I was

cook by that point because we've gone so hard to catch but got to the lap and a half to go and the Polish team had won the year before this guy was an absolute weapon. He attacked us and I had nothing to go and he just rode away from us from a lap and a half and he ended up winning and then there's three Aussie teams left for second and third and fourth. So we came into the last corner was like an uphill sprint. We came into the corner third or fourth on the road. I was like, I'm just

That's the podium is just there. can't, can't let it go. So I ended up crossing the line in third. we're in the team really, which is cool. Yeah. So we've got a medal. Nice. Nice to get a medal from, that.

Cam Nicholls (11:08.553) that. That's great.

Cam Nicholls (11:14.434) Yeah. And then what happened on the Saturday?

Saturday was a rest day or activation day, collecting number days. So nice chill. Just went, yeah, went for a nice ride around lawn. a couple of members on the climb doing activations and got together and made sure collect numbers and had a coffee and sat down and relax for the rest of the day. You're getting ready for Sunday.

So before the event, long would you ride? Like, so how long did you ride for on Saturday as you kind of pre-warm up? Even though you'd obviously had a bit of a crack on, you'd almost done more than an activation on Friday, it sounds. How long did you ride for on before the event?

Yeah. So it was a bit different from what I actually set members to do because they didn't do an all out effort for seven minutes on Friday. Um, but I, was like 17 kilometers into the main climb into lawn for us. Cause we were staying a bit out. So we just cruised in, went up the climb, came back. It was like a two hour nice, easy ride. did one effort, one effort in there just to keep the legs firing. Yep. Um, but a little bit different normally for what I would set, but I was pretty.

I'm just, was there to have a bit of fun and wanted to ride in the lawn and just nice two hour cruise was good.

Cam Nicholls (12:30.018) Yeah, nice. did the, you know, you're there with the boys and you're there for a few days before Sunday, like, you know, there's a lot of nice pubs in Lawn. Did you pop in and have a couple of cheeky beers somewhere or you were good?

what did we on, on Wednesday, we had a beer when we got there. went to, went to dinner and had a beer and had a, only one beer. yes. But I was, it was just cause we were there for short amount of time. I wasn't opposed to having two or three. but now after that, we were pretty, pretty serious because Thursday was busy with the time trial. And then we had the, I had a beer on Friday after the, after the team relay on the way back, actually. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That's well deserved, though, Sam.

Okay.

Long's a beautiful city.

Cam Nicholls (13:16.312) So talk me through Sunday and just the atmosphere and people. And because I know, you know, we do, we've got a newsletter we send out every Friday called the Friday training trend. If you're listening and you're not on that email, just go to our website and you can subscribe on the homepage to that newsletter. But you were so, I could tell from the way you wrote that newsletter that you were so excited about being there. And obviously, you know, you've,

done a lot of cycling over the years. You've ridden at an elite level in Australia. You've ridden at a continental level overseas. You've done a lot of events. I could just tell the excitement. It's hard when somebody's been riding for that amount of time. It's hard to get the dopamine going because you've kind of been there, done it all before and probably multiple times. But I could tell just by reading your newsletter, your dopamine was firing, Ryan. talk me through why that was.

Yeah, it was a bit of just like hanging out with the boys and everyone was super keen. We were just having a good time. But the atmosphere whenever you're whenever you're riding around, there was like hundreds of cyclists just riding around like it's just cool to see a lots of cyclists getting around and like you get to hang around the TT and then the team really honestly, like my mates like came in and watched and they came out of the team really like absolutely pumping like probably more than me and I was in the podium like

And a couple of my, who I was on the, on the podium with like, were absolutely cheering, like the vibes really high and just the atmosphere around that really that kickstarted it from, from Friday. And that's kind of when I wrote, I was writing the training trend, preparing for that. Like it was, it was not the atmosphere was awesome. but then when he got there on Sunday, like when you're looking at the start list and there's 200 people for each, each age group and you got the Amy's and Gillett.

actual normal Fondo. They've got 2000 people. So you like you prepared for 4000 people just to be there. And you rock up on the day and there's just bikes everywhere. It's just cool. Like I, you go to an event I was did Amy's last year and it was a bit, it was kind of similar. Like Amy's is always a really cool event. but this was like on a double the scale. So it was just cool seeing all the different nations there and you hear all the foreign languages and you know that everyone's serious like

Ryan Thomas (15:40.558) everyone's locked in. No one's going there just to, to, just to get around like in the world, the world champs. So everyone's there really serious. And yeah, I liked that. I liked that sort of racing atmosphere. And I wasn't really nervous at all, to be honest. I was just kind of just enjoying it and got there and knew that I'd done bigger races before. So I was just like, Oh, just go and enjoy it, have, have some fun and to soak, soak up the atmosphere.

So just confirming, think you might have just said it wrong incorrectly. You said there were 200 in your age group, mean 2000?

200 in my age group 200 in in each age group. So was 2000 in total for Yes, yeah, so I think the biggest age group I did it I ran it through Ran it through the biggest age group was the 50 to 54 and I think they had 213 right

Okay, I get it. I get it.

Ryan Thomas (16:43.188) And it's pretty, quite a few.

There was a photo that you shared at the start and it looked like there was a lot of people and you were a fair way back. Just talk us through that one.

Yeah. So how, how it works is a, it's just a pen. So you can line up whenever you want. Like it's, there's no, there's no, or there's priority for people who have podiumed in your qualifying event. So if you finished top three and you're qualifying event, there was a separate pen that you got access to, and you didn't have to line up half an hour before to get a good spot.

That sounds like a good pen to be in.

It's worth it's worth, especially for this course, because the climb starts after one kilometer. So you don't have much time, but yeah, we got, got there with like 25 minutes before start time, I think. And there was 150 people lined up in front of me. So I was at the very back of the pen. And I was, I was like, at that point, I was like, well, it's going to be this first comment is going to be quite difficult. I was like,

Ryan Thomas (17:45.014) As soon as I got there, that's my first thought. And then my second thought was, can't do anything about it now. I'll just do the best you can to get as far up again on before the climb and just go with it.

How did they let the age groups go? Was there a significant portion of time or did you end up writing with everyone?

five minutes between each age group. And then they bulked together a couple of the women's age groups were together and then over 60s were a couple two age groups were together each. So it was quite a different tactical talking to a lot of our members and one of our female members who was, yeah, it's a good shot for a good result when she ended up getting a really good result. There was a bit of tactics in play because the age groups behind were catching so like they're

Okay.

Ryan Thomas (18:32.93) Dragon riders cross and then male age groups are catching the female age group. So you got to like female age groups getting in and getting the draft and getting turned back to groups. It was my age group was very straightforward because we were the first age group off. we didn't have anyone in front of us. So it's quite, it's quite straightforward. But for the any, anyone in the older age groups, there was a lot of play between ages.

Yeah, I was going to say that first climb would have been for one of a better term, shitshow, because five minutes, you know, sounds like a lot, but when you're going straight into a climb, I would assume that all of a sudden you've got a lot of age groups together. So there's no regulation, you know, like you can't jump on another group, you're able to

There is in the rule book there is, but I don't think they're following around 2000 people and checking the number of colors to see if they're rolling with other age groups. So there's certainly a lot of collaboration going on out there, but I don't think it had too much influence on the results.

Yeah, okay. So tell me about just the first climb for you. I know we're to do a video about how you paste it and how you paste fondos specifically, video I should say podcast, in the next couple of weeks. But just give us the high level. What did it look like? Was it like deep into the red straight away? Or were you like, okay, this isn't too bad. Or these people are tacking left, right and center. Like, how did it go?

It was so, cause I started so far back, my like, I, to be honest, wasn't thinking too far about the climb. was like the first kilometer I just needed to get as far out of the group as I could. Um, so I just was slicing through the peloton. think I ended up, I went from 150th to 50th in 800 meters or whatever it is before, before the base of the climb. Um, and then the

Cam Nicholls (20:18.615) mode.

Ryan Thomas (20:30.38) The weather played a big part in how that first climb was raced for us. cause it was really fast climb. It 30 K an hour average, but it was a block head wind up the climb. So it was so easy sitting in the wheel. Like the first kilometer just for me to get to of the climb to get to into the top 20 wheels was hardish. But after that, it was like, I was, I rode tempo for the rest of the climbers. was actually really easy.

Some people may not want to hear that because their races may be very different, but we had a big group of 50 riders and I was just sitting 30th wheel the whole way up the climb and just in the draft getting a tow at 30k an hour. So it was quite easy for our group. And there was a lot of people attacking, but from my perspective, it wasn't worth spending an extra hundred watts to get 30 seconds up the road for 20 minutes.

Yeah, absolutely. So you got to the top of your the climb with your age group with how many people in the same group?

I think there was around 50 or 60 in our group. didn't, I didn't look, I actually didn't go to the back of the group or I didn't look to behind too much, but it was a big group. There was a group of, there was a group of three off the front and then a group of four in the middle. But I think there are only 45 seconds ahead max at any time. Yep.

Good. Well, we'll go into more detail on that in future podcasts, but you get to the end. know, what's it like at the end? Is it, I know you might've been like happy and frustrated with your result at the same time. And I think there was a few RCA members you said over our WhatsApp chat that a lot of grass podiums, which is something to be really like, you know, proud of because, you you're coming up against really top level competition, but it's also like, you're so close to stepping on a proper podium.

Ryan Thomas (22:21.23) Yeah, it was very bittersweet when I crossed the line because, uh, yeah, we'll talk about a bit of the race dynamic and how actually the race actually played out. But yeah, I was, I was a bit bittersweet for, I was, was happy with fourth. If you had told me the day before I was going to finish in fourth, I would be stoked. Um, so I'll, I'll take that and similar with other other members. know it's in the moment, fourth is a really hard position to position to get, but it's still, yeah, it's a world championships, grand Fondo world championships, but still.

still good to get. Any race is hard to get a good result in. So I was happy looking back on

Yeah, I think I, you know, not only did we have a lot of force in the RCA community when I switched on social media later that evening, I think Chris Miller, who I follow, for those people who don't know, he's got his, quite a well-known podcast on YouTube called The Nero Show. He's a very strong writer as well, my age group. He finished force. I got a little bit triggered by his post actually, because he said, I did it all for nothing, or there's something wrong with terms of nothing. And I'm like, man.

And

Cam Nicholls (23:27.21) I would be happy about finishing fourth at a World Fundo Championships. Don't call that nothing, but he's obviously a very competitive guy, so I get it. There's a guy called Fresh Crits from Melbourne who's got a YouTube channel who knows a lot of content on Glenvale and St. Kilda Criterium scene. He finished fourth. I'm like, who actually finished on the podiums? was like, everyone's just finished fourth.

So, and what was the vibe like afterwards? Was there a village or did you go, you launched your bike off a pier and go straight to the pub like to tell us what happened?

And so because we're the first first to finish so like there's no other writers around the way finishes quite empty for 10 20 30 minutes until big bigger groups started coming in but after half an hour there's just bikes everywhere and there's people everywhere and villages pumping and those beers in the village and everyone was debriefing like that are the post post race or post event chat is always one of the funnest because you hear all the different stories about

all the different groups and all different age groups and your mates come in and I really like that chat just debriefing what happened and even in your own group like it's it's a completely different experience from one person to the other. So I had three three mates who finished with me who were down staying with staying in the same in the same accommodation. And so we all had three quite different experiences finishing in the same group. So yeah, that that's always fun. And then we are yeah, we got under the beers as soon as we could.

Nice. Yeah, I love that polar opposite kind of mindset from start line to finish line. When you're at the start line, you're like, why am I doing this? This is a logistical nightmare. have to travel here, this training, had to sacrifice my family time. Why am I doing this? And then you get to the finish and everyone's talking, I can't wait to do it next year. That was amazing. I loved it.

Ryan Thomas (25:25.1) Yeah. All those, the other side of the spectrum, the people are absolutely empty, just laying on the ground. Like, why do I do this to myself? I'm sorry. caught. But then they're to a beer in them and then they come back like, yeah, let's go. Let's do it again.

Exactly. Well, those people are going to say, probably just haven't had a gel or a card mix or something like that for three hours. That's why they're on the ground.

Yep,

Cool, well, thanks for sharing the experiences of the Worlds. It was great to watch it all unfold online and on our WhatsApp group. And a lot of our members had some really, really great results, even though a lot of grass podiums, but that's something to be very proud of. Before we wrap up, was there anything else that you wanted to bring in there, Ryan?

I was just really, really stoked with the event. The organizers O2 events. were unreal. One of the, one of the best organized events of, of, being too, to be honest, it was, it was really good. Even with the big amount of people there, it was, yeah, just an awesome vibe. Awesome to see so many cyclists about and Aussies, Aussies getting around a home world championships. was, it was really fun. Yeah.

Cam Nicholls (26:37.55) Good. All right, well, thanks for listening, everyone. If you're interested in preparing for maybe Amy's next year, or you've got a Fondo coming up on the other side of the world and you want some support with it, don't forget at the RCA, what we do is we help people improve their road cycling through coaching. So make sure you go to our website, www.roadcyclingacademy.com and you can hire a coach there and get started. We'll catch you in the next podcast.

Summary

In this conversation, expert bike fitter Neil Stambry discusses the inadequacies of road bike sizing charts and emphasizes the importance of individual differences in bike fitting. He explains how factors like flexibility, body proportions, and personal comfort can significantly affect the choice of bike size and model. The discussion highlights the necessity of professional bike fitting to ensure optimal comfort and performance for cyclists.

Bike Fit Fundamentals: https://roadcyclingacademy.com/bike-fit-fundamentals/

15% Off code (first 10 people): RCAYouTube15BFF

Takeaways

Road bike sizing charts often fail to account for individual differences. Flexibility and body proportions play a crucial role in bike fitting. Two cyclists of the same height may require different bike sizes. A good quality bike fit is essential for comfort and performance. Bike models can vary significantly in geometry, affecting fit. Self-assessment of body proportions may not be sufficient for accurate fitting. Professional bike fitters can help identify the right geometry for cyclists. Understanding one's own physiology is key to finding the right bike. BikeFit Fundamentals offers a structured approach to bike fitting. Comfort on a bike is vital for long-distance rides.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Road Bike Sizing Charts 03:06 The Limitations of Sizing Charts 05:46 Understanding Individual Differences in Bike Fitting 08:52 The Importance of Professional Bike Fitting

Transcript:

Cam Nicholls (00:00.046) Welcome back to the RCA podcast where today I am joined by expert bike fitter, Neil Stambry, and we're gonna be talking about why road bike sizing charts don't work. Just be aware this chat is also intended for YouTube. So please excuse any visual references. Let's get into it. All right, so Neil, recently I wanted you to write an article for the RCA website on a blog about road bike sizing charts. And you're like, hang on a sec.

They don't work, so I'm writing an article. like, oh, we should make a video about this then.

We should yeah deceptively simple question with a really annoying long-winded answer, so let's dive into it What is a road bike sizing chart so look some of the manufacturers you look on their website And you'll see a chart. It's got a list of like

like you.

Cam Nicholls (00:50.904) Bites of sizes, small, medium, large.

Here how large this is how tall you are. This is the frame you need then you're okay She's all right better go and get that medium or whatever that is Why don't they work some of them have are really quite detailed some of them have like

Obviously can work because they're there and you know.

They can sort of work. They can sort of work. I'll explain. They're very hit and miss. There's plenty of, there's enough people out there that fall, even though they fall into one of the correct ranges for the correct height, they should go for a different size bike. We'll try and nut out a little bit about why that is. Some of them are a bit more detailed. They have multiple data points. A lot of them just have your height and this is the one you should have, which is obviously insane. But if you've got really long legs or short legs or something, it can totally change the frame geometry that you'd look for.

Well, it's like an anecdote as well before you go. I rode a 56 for maybe five years. Did you? Yeah. Yeah. Because I'm right on the border of a 56 and a 54 and I do have short legs. Yes. And then I went to a 54 and my life changed.

Neill Stanbury (01:47.822) Yeah, you're unusually low seat height for a 56 centimeter frame. It'd be you're right in the realms of a 54. Yeah, so yeah, you're great example. Yeah, just just here. So Yeah, why don't they work? Let's use let's use two hypothetical twin brothers, right? They both got exactly the same height

They both got exactly the same leg length, same arm length, right? So they're falling within some of these, let's say they fall in the range for a 54 centimeter race geometry frame. One of them has got hips which don't flex up beyond 120 degrees because he inherited a different set of genetics from his mum versus his dad, which means that his hip joints are particularly immobile. In addition, he's been sitting at a desk eating Twinkies for 20 years and he's 15 kilos overweight. He's got a bit extra around the middle and he's all hunched over because he's an

and the other guy is a supple yoga teacher who flexes around a lot and he's 15 kilos lighter and he's got amazing hip mobility. So these two guys have the same skeletons, right? But vastly different flexibility levels and vastly different, in particular, hip mobility levels. And hip mobility, as your knee is coming up to the top of the stroke, is one of the primary determinants of how much drop you will tolerate to the front end. So if your hips can come right up, you've got amazing mobility in your hip joints, it's likely that you're gonna ride in a more

deeply flexed position preferentially compared to a more upright position relative to your identical twin brother who sits at a desk and eats Twinkies. So what this will mean is that the guy who's really flexible who's got amazing hip mobility his drop to the bar might be 50 to 80 millimeters more sort of severe than the guy who sits more upright because he's got the extra weight and his hips are not so flash. So you might choose a bike with a 30 or 40 millimeter lower stack in the front end which immediately moves you from

something like Specialized Roubaix which is one of the one of the least aggressive geometry endurance frames on the market. It's a really short tall bike. We often sort of recommend these to older guys who sit quite upright, people who don't have a lot of capacity for reach and drop in the front end and they're a fantastic bike for that. You might go for the you might you know the the guy who's the accountant he might go for one of those but the guy who's the yoga teacher who's really hyper flexible he might need 50 80 millimeters more drop you know a normal sort of

Neill Stanbury (04:06.416) drop number from the highest point of the seat to the center of the bar, you might be looking at a 54 centimeter bike. A normal number, about 100 millimeters, which is about what my drop is, right? But the really inflexible guy might need 50, and the really flexible guy might need 130. Huge differences in the stack. So obviously the flexible guy, he's never gonna be able to get the bar low enough if he buys a Roubaix to be comfortable. And conversely, the guy's very, very stiff. He's not gonna be able to get the bar high enough if he buys a tarmac, or specialised.

So this is a great hypothetical example, just one of the many things of what can make these charts not work very well. They're just looking at...

You're referencing two separate bikes, just playing devil's advocate here, you're referencing two separate bikes here, not referencing the same bike.

Yeah, so you could you could go for like the what I mean is that the the recommendations for the sizing could be so far off that not only are you looking at changing the size of the frame but the actual the entire model of the frame Yep, yep, so you know

Yeah, okay, so it's almost deceiving. So somebody's like, oh well I'm actually a medium here but you actually know you should be a medium in a different bike altogether.

Neill Stanbury (05:17.046) Yeah, so you might have something that's like long and low, know, let's use your tarmac as an example And then you've got your rubay, which is short and tall So you might be the flexible guy might be on a 52 centimeter tarmac with a hundred and thirty millimeter stem because he can get out and down to that low front end and then not only is the the short, know, the inflexible guy with a bit of a gut not only is he on a rubay, completely different bike model that's really upright and comfortable in the front end and very tall but he's probably on a 54

With a shorter stem so not only are they different sizes with different componentry, but also completely different frame models Yeah, so yeah, I've seen situations where people have rocked up and they've they've looked at her I had a great example to use a great example. I had a young fella came down from northern Queensland last year I think it was And he bought a Madone, know 20 20 odd thousand dollar bike really expensive bike and he he walked in the door He had the shortest legs I've ever seen on anyone who was a bit he was about my height, but his seat height was

When we were done his seat height was 50 maybe 60 millimeters lower than mine because his legs were so short We couldn't get the seat low enough because the Medone has a certain amount of seat post travel before the goes into the frame and it blocks out We were 20 millimeters too high even with the seat as high as it could as low as it could possibly go There was no chance of him riding it and it was a 54 because he fell right into that range of the 54 with his height and I said mate you're much better suited with a 52 because we just can't get the seat low enough first of all, but even a

or a 49 would have been fine for that guy even though he's my height. you know limb length and all that sort of stuff and flexibility levels and arm length and torso length there's just so many things that come into it which mean that sizing charts can be very hit and miss. What's the solution?

Yeah, what's solution? That's what I was gonna ask.

Neill Stanbury (07:04.622) Solution is a good quality bike fit. Yeah, you've got to set your position up on your current bike such that you're comfortable and then extrapolate from the geometry of that. Forget about what you should be on because you're a certain height. Look at what you actually need in terms of the geometry and your bike fitter can help you out with that.

Can you self assess before deciding whether a bike sizing chart is gonna work? So for example, if you know all your limb, you know, your torso and your lower is standard and your flexibility is good, are you more likely to be served by these charts?

Possibly, possibly. But there's so many things you can't know about yourself. True. Yeah, like relative mobility levels in your hips compared to other people and all this sort of stuff. Yeah, it's very hit and miss.

Yeah, see I didn't know I had a hip impingement and I've been riding for 12 years before I came to see you.

Yeah, I mean not to harp on too much, but that is why my profession exists. It's one of the reasons my profession exists is to not only solve biomechanical problems and aches and pains and make you more comfortable, but also to get you precise correct geometry for your next bike.

Cam Nicholls (08:08.34) Yeah, and I am way more comfortable on that bike over there, which is the BMC Road Machine versus the one directly behind you because I'm more upright.

Yeah, yeah, I think I think when we looked at the geometry for the team machine are it was I think you had 10 millimeters or so more dropped than you than you had the time I'd fitted you before which was on an SLR one I think and then that one I think we found out that the bar center was about 15 or 20 millimeters higher and that's you know You were right on your edge with the SLR one that was a little bit too low and that's very nice. Yeah for long rides

Exactly. Yeah. All right. Well, if somebody is watching this and they're like, well, I wouldn't mind some support with actually understanding my physiology and what bike might work for me. You put something together called BikeFit Fundamentals.

Yeah, it'll be a good first step to get yourself in the ballpark with your fit so that you can then extrapolate from your current geometry of your current frame to a potential new purchase and make sure you get all the componentry right. Seven part course, mate, the link's in the description. We highly recommend it. It's been a really good thing. Thanks for time. No worries at all.

Summary

In this episode of the RCA Podcast, expert bike fitter and sports physiotherapist Neill Stanbury discusses his recent performance improvements despite a reduced training load. He shares insights on the impact of dietary changes, weight training, and the importance of understanding insulin resistance in optimizing cycling performance. The conversation highlights how strategic adjustments in training and nutrition can lead to significant gains, even with limited time for workouts.

Takeaways

Achieving best performance on reduced training hours is possible. Dietary changes, including reduced sugar intake, can enhance performance. Weight training is crucial for improving cycling power. Intermittent fasting can help manage energy levels and cravings. Insulin resistance may affect performance and energy management. A balanced approach to training can yield better results than sheer volume. Listening to your body is key to optimizing performance. Incorporating strength training can lead to muscle gain and improved cycling. Energy management is critical for endurance athletes. Finding time-efficient training methods can enhance performance without burnout.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Performance and Training Dynamics 03:06 Dietary Changes and Their Impact on Performance 05:56 The Role of Weight Training in Cycling 09:04 Insights on Insulin Resistance and Energy Management 12:06 Optimizing Training with Limited Time 13:48 Conclusion and Reflections on Training Strategies

RCA Coaching: https://roadcyclingacademy.com/

Transcript:

Cam Nicholls (00:00.11) Welcome back to the RCA Podcast where today I am joined by expert bike fitter and sports physiotherapist, Neill Stanbury. Just be aware that this conversation is also designed for YouTube, so please excuse any visual references. Let's get into it. All right, Neil, I wanted to talk to you about your recent performance on the bike because like many people, like many RCA members, I would say you're in bit of an off season phase because we can't train 10 to 12 hours.

You know, all year, it just doesn't happen. So there are periods of the year where you go down to about four five hours per week, which is what you are in right now. Yet you went out and did a bunch ride recently and you achieved an all time best five minute power and an all time best or almost best 10 minute power. And for those familiar with chronic training load, your CTL, also known as, is about 40 at the moment, which equates to about five hours per week of riding versus normally when you're training

For something, you're doing about 8 to 10 hours per week. So how is it that you could go out and achieve all-time best numbers, 5 and 10 minutes is pretty significant, on 5 hours per week of training?

It's been really interesting for me. I don't talk a lot on our channel about the performance aspect of cycling because I'm more interested in the biomechanics and that sort of stuff. But this has been really, really interesting for me. we were talking about it extensively before we recorded this.

I thought there might be some interesting lessons in here for people at home who want to try this as well. So I'll tell you what I did and how this came about. But you're right, I did a bunch ride a couple of weeks ago with a bunch of guys who are way fitter and faster than me. And even sitting in the wheels and rolling the occasional turn, I managed to do an all-time best five minute power, about 340 watts, which for me is... Huge numbers, mate. 66 kilos at the most.

Cam Nicholls (01:49.098) Watch your weight, people will want to know your weight.

Powder weight wise, pretty solid.

Not terrible for an old bloke like me, especially an old bloke who's only riding four hours a week or so, and with no particular cycling talent either. But I managed to do that and I've never done, that's biggest number I've ever done for five minutes, which was really interesting because I've done almost no training.

Is this the A group or the B group? Was it? there you go.

Even rolled a couple of turns with Kavan Wiggo. Just a couple. So these guys are obviously much more powerful riders than me and especially on flat terrain. These guys have got 10 kilos, 15 kilos on me. you know I might be able to be up the front on hilly terrain but on flat terrain I really struggle against these kind of guys. So it's a huge challenge for me. So how did this come about? Now I started noticing earlier in this year that I was sort of waking up

Cam Nicholls (02:38.818) Fatigued more often than not I was jumping on the bike and I had sort of low energy levels that typical sort of mid-afternoon you're feeling sleepy that sort of thing and I thought you know there's a lot of things this could be but one of them is it could be the beginnings of some insulin resistance stuff going on so I've been reading a lot and listening to a lot of podcasts about About sugar and all that sort of stuff and I decided to make some changes to my diet and to my training mode to see what would happen to my body

I've always struggled to put on weight, right? I've been, ultrally, my entire life. I started lifting weights dedicated twice a week without fail. Twice a week doing lots of legs and a bit of upper body. And I slowly managed to put on, over that last sort six month period, about three or four kilos of pure muscle mass, which was helpful. So I'm about three kilos, maybe three and a half kilos heavier than I usually am, down at that 63 kilo mark.

gym sessions are twice a week and you're doing legs in both of those sessions and a little bit of upper body. What sort of sets and reps are you doing? out of curiosity.

Typically I'll do Bulgarian split lunges and single leg RDLs and I will do some Cossack squats or deep squats as well with like a goblet squat, that kind of thing. This is all just with hand weights and kettlebells. There's no gym equipment involved. I do it all myself at home. Three sets of about eight of the heavy ones and then if it's something like a Cossack squat with a 16 or 18 kilo kettlebell held in a goblet position, I will then do sort of probably three sets of 20.

okay. Quite high reps. That is high reps.

Cam Nicholls (04:11.52) Yep, it goes against the science. Mm-hmm. Although as Aaron the Strength and conditioning coach the RCA says sometimes you're just better off moving some stuff around. Yeah, which is what you know 20 reps as you're moving stuff around. really like

Yeah, so I'll do I'll do heavy like my single leg my single leg split lunges I'll be using a 22 kilo hand weight so on each leg and for that's a third of my body weight well Which is quite a lot and three sets of eight or three sets of ten of those sometimes four sets of eight And so I do a heavy heavy fit the starter then larger volume with lighter load for the other ones Nothing too complex there in addition to the weight sessions. I started doing one day a week of intermittent fasting

Now this is something I've never done before. It was really, really difficult in the beginning, but I was noticing that I was really craving carbohydrates a lot. And I thought it was just due to my training load, right? I was eating very clean rice, that sort of stuff for my carbohydrates, oats, that sort of stuff. I was eating very clean carbs, not a lot of pure sugar apart from the drinks that we drink on the bike, which are essentially pure sugar. And I thought, you know, let's try and move away from the sugar for a while. And I started doing intermittent fasting one day.

Every Monday, I'll just not eat breakfast. I'll get all the way through till about 12 30 before I have lunch and I try and make that lunch a pure protein meal and the dinner if possible pure protein and veggies So almost a zero carbohydrate day just one of the seven days in a week when

When do you have your last meal on a Sunday? Six, so it's about an 18 hour fast.

Cam Nicholls (05:36.654) Typically about 6pm. About an 18 hour fast. It was tremendously difficult in the beginning. Once my system got used to it, now it's easy as pie. I reckon I could go through to dinner without any great trouble. And that's probably gonna be the next sort of iteration of this is to try a 24 hour fast. So probably once a month or so. Just see what Yeah, absolutely. There's no way you can ride and then fast afterwards. It's just gonna be a recipe for disaster.

It's on a day when you're not doing any training.

Cam Nicholls (06:04.098) So I did those two things and the third thing I did was I drastically reduced my sugar intake which was essentially that was basically drinking liquified sugar on the bike. I am just a sugar and cordial guy. I just use white sugar but if you're using a carbohydrate drink that kind of thing I really cut those back. So on my Zone 2 rides even if it was sort of a two and a half hour Zone 2 ride zero liquid carbs I would basically I would eat a little bit of light breakfast at a banana before I went and then maybe another banana halfway through.

get home and have a proper meal afterwards. And I basically cut out the liquified sugar during my rides. The theory being that the liquified sugar is very, it's very inflammatory to your endothelial system and your liver and all that sort of stuff. And what I was trying to do was figure out if I'd been starting to develop a bit of insulin sensitization, which is a common problem. I think it's much more common than we give it credit for, but a little bit of insulin.

Sort of reluctance essentially where your nervous system is is relying too much upon the carbohydrates as an energy source And I was trying to shift my metabolism back towards more of a fat burning metabolism in between the heavy hits of for example when I would do a fast bunch ride or a Vo2 session I would carb up for those sessions and then in between I would drastically reduce the carbohydrates down now This is hard to do if you're doing big loads if you're doing 10 hours a week

very, very hard, but when you're only doing four to five hours a week, it's actually pretty easy. And after about a month of this, I noticed that my endurance was way better. My general energy level on the bike, way better. I was waking up, I was sleeping less, waking up more like earlier in the day, but with much greater energy. And I was having a lot less days on the bike where I got on and just felt kind of dull and fatigued. Most of the rides I would get on and feel really, really good.

So I started noticing after about a month of this that my zone two power output for the same heart rate, about 125 to 130 beats a minute, was jumping by about 20 to 30 watts. So I typically tap along in zone two at about 200 watts. I was suddenly doing about 220 to 230 with the same heart rate. So a really big jump. And this sort of reiterated to me that I was either overtly fatigued, maybe my nervous system doesn't cope with eight to 10 hours a week very well,

Cam Nicholls (08:21.734) Or it was just basically insulin resistance, know, insulin and carbohydrate, like critically dependent metabolism. And so the theory being that if you can switch your metabolism over to utilize both energy sources, you might be a bit healthier and do a little bit better. And this culminated with me doing, I did a couple of VO2 training sessions and then I went and did this bunch ride, got home and I thought, gee, I felt fantastic in that ride. Got home and looked at the numbers and went, that was my best ever five minute.

power by about five or ten watts and it was the best ten minute power I've done for probably around two or three years. Wow. And this wasn't even up a climb this was in a bunch ride rolling turns you know where you're on and off the pedal.

It's not a big bunch ride, so it's not like a three hour bunch ride is it? Because you would have suffered. But this is on the pedals, it's about an hour isn't it?

Yes.

Cam Nicholls (09:12.586) about an hour on the pills really, really, really hard. Yeah, so I thought that was really interesting. So my take home from this is that perhaps training more is not always the solution. If you're trying to increase your power output, sometimes it's a healthy idea to look at your metabolism deficiencies. And if you are a person who is exhibiting some of those traits, things like craving coffee in the morning, not being able to function with high energy levels without stimulants throughout the day,

That mid-afternoon crash in energy waking up tired and you know bleary-eyed and and and not sort of feeling energetic until mid-morning that type of thing often a sign of insulin resistance So yeah, this this is really really interesting for me It's been a real eye-opener and I feel way better with a little bit of extra muscle mass less training load on the bike and more weights and perhaps that's the other take-home message here is that the the weight training super critical

Super critical for some people. I didn't realize how much I was missing out on until I really got diligent with it. I used to do some leg weights probably twice a month, you know, just to keep it going. But this has been for six months, continuous, two days a week, and it's made a huge difference. So a lot of kind of all these things coming together, you can kind of think of this as kind of a metabolism rebuild that I tried to do. Very, very interesting for me, and I don't think I'll ever go back to the way I was before, which was just lots of riding.

lots of sugar and constantly going up and down, yo-yoing in my performance, I felt much more steady with my performances with this sort of dietary and training change. Interesting. Yeah, so there you go. Interesting kind of anecdote for you that people at home, hopefully there's a bit of interest in this and yeah, if you guys have got any similar experiences, I'll be very interested to read the comments on this one, because I reckon there might be a few people out there with the same problem as me.

Yeah, well I've got a similar story and that is that I haven't been doing any of the diet things and I haven't been fasting. I need to get back into that because I used to do it but I've actually implemented a workout that's been going around the RCA community recently because one of our members was stuck on a boat cruise with his family for 10 days.

Cam Nicholls (11:25.902) stuck.

Yeah, he was training for a seven-day charity ride So he's doing big volume and all of a sudden he only had access to a gym bike So one of the coaches shared a research paper and the research paper Demonstrated actually Maintaining FTP and improving sprint power over a three-week period where you're just doing endurance training But incorporating a one session which includes 30 seconds Yeah, so I've dropped off on

30 seconds all out.

I'm not in a three week transition phase, I've been in a 16 week transition phase since my last event. I've been doing about five hours per week. once a week I've been doing this sprint session. So it's 30 seconds all out with a four minute recovery. You do five to six. Yeah, yeah. And you can break them up into two sets. So you could do three sets of, sorry, two sets of three reps with a, you know, like a 10 minute recovery in between.

many of those do you do in a second? Five to six.

Cam Nicholls (12:19.598) And I recently went out and did a bunch ride. Had done a bunch ride for three months and I normalized for 90 minutes. So there's some durability in there as well. Cause I was able to pull turns at the end of the ride, which surprised me. 310 Watts, I normalized power and my FTP now would probably be 330, 340 pushing it. I would have thought so. I was very surprised at that myself. And I feel.

the one change for me was just purely implementing that one workout. I guess the take home story is, if you're only doing four or five hours a week, there are probably ways you can optimize what you're doing, whether it's a workout, whether it's nutrition, fasting, going to the gym. So you can still go do the group ride with your mates, pull some turns and not get dropped off the bar.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I don't think Massive volume is is potentially the answer for a lot of people, you know If you if you're time-starved and you're still looking to optimize your performance like this is some of the best performances I've ever done and with very little training a CTL of 40 and in a really really low-load almost no structured training just a couple of VO2 sessions with some 30 15s that you've mentioned before and some bunch rides and I'm still still feeling as good as I've ever felt and the one bonus here is

Lots more free time to do other things. Exactly. Because you're not always out on the bike.

Exactly. And you probably a bit of freshness in there as well might have contributed.

Cam Nicholls (13:41.838) Yep, absolutely. Yeah, so an interesting case study, mate. You and I have both similar experience by the sounds of things. There you go.

Cool, thanks for sharing. Hope you enjoyed that conversation with Neil Stanbury. We'll catch you in the next podcast.

Summary

In this episode of the RCA Podcast, expert bike fitter and sports physiotherapist Neill Stanbury discusses the critical role of the sacroiliac joint in cycling performance. He explains how dysfunction in this joint can lead to significant issues, including pain and reduced endurance, particularly due to asymmetrical movement patterns. The conversation also covers corrective measures and exercises to address these issues, emphasizing the importance of maintaining symmetry for optimal cycling performance.

Takeaways

The sacroiliac joint is crucial for cycling performance. Dysfunction in the sacroiliac joint can cause significant issues. Asymmetrical movement patterns can lead to pelvic torsion. Pain is a major detriment to cycling performance. Symmetrical cyclists tend to have better endurance. Corrective exercises can help address asymmetry. Sacroiliac joint torsions are common among cyclists. Understanding your own asymmetry is vital for performance. The joint has a significant number of proprioceptive nerve endings. Addressing these issues can improve overall cycling function.

Chapters

00:00 Understanding the Sacroiliac Joint 07:02 Addressing Asymmetry in Cycling

Online Bike Fitting Course: https://roadcyclingacademy.com/bike-fit-fundamentals/

Transcript:

Cam Nicholls (00:00.11) Welcome back to the RCA Podcast where today I am joined by expert bike fitter and sports physiotherapist, Neill Stanbury. Just be aware that this conversation is also designed for YouTube. So please excuse any visual references. Let's get into it. Neil, what have you got in front of you there?

This is a spine, hopefully it's not a real one, right? I never thought about that before. Hopefully this is a plastic replication of a real one, otherwise I'm probably gonna get in trouble for this. no, purchased directly from eBay, this is almost certainly plastic and not real, but this is a spine and a pelvis. And I wanted to show you guys, I get asked this question a lot, like to do with, when we're sort of explaining asymmetrical movement patterns to people on the bike, and when people come in with really big, what we call pelvic,

This is a question that I get asked a lot. It's kind of interesting. So let me run you guys through a bit of anatomy I'm gonna try and describe to you why I think this joint here called the sacroiliac joint is probably the single most important joint for cycling in in terms of Its correct function if it's dysfunctional if this joint doesn't work well, you're in big trouble on the bike Now what is the sacroiliac joint? It is the joint between the sacrum and the ilium's there's two sides of the pelvis here the left and the right side

This joint is two in the body, one on the left, one on the right. It's a sliding or a gliding diarthrosis joint, which is a fancy way of saying it's not a joint like your shoulder or your knee or your finger. Basically, this is two faces of bone which sit in on each other like this. There's a massive collection of really strong ligaments across the front and the back. And this joint moves about five degrees or so, not much. It rolls forwards and backwards and on the inside faces of the joint, it's got kind of a knurled surface that kind of...

Interlocks the two the two sides got little valleys and depressions in it which interlock now the joint doesn't move much But why is it the most critical joint for cycling? Performance the reason being that this joint when it's dysfunctional it causes more havoc than any other joints in the body I've found for riding a bike Which is really interesting because it doesn't actually move that much the joint seems to be incredibly important

Neill Stanbury (02:09.634) for proprioceptive function of the leg and for general kinematics of the rest of the leg. If it is dysfunctional, what happens is as you drive down on the pedal, for example here, if your left leg is driving down on the pedal, the sacroiliac joint, as the hip extends, is supposed to roll forward a little bit. And then as the hip comes up over the top of the stroke, it's supposed to roll back a little bit. So it's supposed to basically just move a little bit like this, forwards and backwards, forwards and backwards. Because of the planes that the two SIJs operate in, like this,

They go like this, rhythmically, as you're walking, running, cycling, all of that kind of stuff. Now if you operate asymmetrically on a bike for a long period of time, let's say you've got a rider who's dropping their right hip forward because their right leg is shorter than their left, for example. Typically what will happen is the right ilium will get a lot more forward rotation with very little rearwards rotation, and the left one will get the converse going on, is that it will have to rotate backwards a lot more than forwards with every pedal stroke.

Now we do this about 4,000 times an hour and some of us are doing 15 or 20 hours a week. You multiply it out, it's a lot of repetition, right? Over time, the pattern is that you can develop what we call a pelvic torsion, where the two, that's what I call it anyway, the two sides of the pelvis mutate relative to each other. So their neutral position, they're supposed to just be symmetrical, their neutral position starts to gravitate towards an asymmetrically dysfunctional, know, torsional position.

So when you're sitting in a seat for example watching TV, it'll be like

They're just sitting like that, right? The reason that they get like this is complicated, but basically the the muscle, the drag of the muscle system of all the large muscles which attach onto the pelvis, the quadriceps and the hamstrings and the glutes, the drag of them becomes sufficiently asymmetrical that the two iliac, the sacroiliac joints become torsion at rest to each other. Now when they get torsion at rest, this is starts to, this is usually where you start getting pain.

Neill Stanbury (04:02.466) bike and this is why this joint is so so seriously compromised when it's really compromised it's so serious for your function on a bike because when they get torsion it's usually because you've got really large-scale asymmetry happening on the bike and it's affecting your muscular system which is then dragging the two sides of the pelvis out of plane with each other and as they go out of plane with each other what's embedded in the side of the pelvis your hip joint so as the two sacroiliac joints move like this

it changes the neutral position of the two hip joints. And the two hip joints, the ball and socket joints, they start to go out of plane with each other. And you'll see the person basically flaring one knee away from the bike and the other one's coming right in towards the top tube, which is a classic pattern of complicated asymmetry that we'll see all the time, typically because the person's been dropping their right hip forward a lot of the time. And this torsional effect is catastrophic for a lot of things. It causes most notably pain.

And as I've said many times before, pain is the single biggest detriment you'll ever have to your performance on the bike. If something is hurting, your nervous system is going to curtail your power output really significantly. Not only that, when the pelvis is torsioned, the complicated compensatory patterning which goes on really takes a lot of energy, a lot of neurological energy, which really hammers down your endurance. It really causes trouble. You basically end up utilizing a lot of calories compensating that you could have used for pressing down on

pedals. This is one of the reasons why highly symmetrical people tend to have better endurance than highly asymmetrical people. And the asymmetrical people will usually find that one hamstring blows out before the other one on a long hard ride or one quad or something like that. So this torsional effect is really really serious for your function on the bike. Typically the side effects if they go forward on the right back on the left is left-sided gluteal pain, left-sided ITB pain, left-sided lower back pain,

but the pain is what curtails your performance mostly on the bike. So the Sacroiliac joint, because it's such a critical joint, when it goes bad, I've never seen any other joint in the body cause as much trouble for a cyclist as this one does, which is really fascinating because it is such a, it's a joint which barely moves at all. Depending upon which textbook you read, you might see like five to eight degrees of rotation in the SIJs. So really, really unusual joint.

Neill Stanbury (06:28.992) It seems to have a lot of proprioceptive nerve endings in it. I've heard, I've heard bandied about numbers that contain within the sacroiliac joints, you might have 30 or 40 % of all the proprioceptive nerve endings in your body contained within these joints. So they're really, really critical for posture, balance, general function, all that sort of stuff. And when one of them gets torsion backwards or jammed up, you're in big trouble.

Okay, so how often do you see that in your clinic with people coming through and then what can you do about it?

Ah, what can you do about it is a complicated question. Take up hockey. Take up hockey. What you want to do first is you want to correct for the asymmetry on the bike and then you want to give them corrective exercises off the bike which they vary between people but we give them isolated strength training to do for the weak muscle groups to try and correct the torsional drag that's happening on the pelvis because of that. But how often do I see it? We see it probably, I probably see three decently torsioned SIJs every week.

When they, and that would be out of potentially like 10 to 12 people that I fit in a week, something like that. So it's fairly common. Now there's different grades of how badly they get twisted. A lot of people just have a mild adaptive torsion and they haven't yet gotten to that end stage where when one of the iliums gets turned back a lot, it can actually get like jammed. They can actually get stuck. And that's when you get really big trouble is when they get stuck and they don't move. That's when a lot of the pain really starts.

But in terms of small adaptive torsions, yeah, probably about a third of people. It's really, really common. But when it gets really bad, and these are the ones which we're sort of referencing more here in this video, when it gets really bad and one side gets jammed and it won't move properly, that's when you're in big trouble. So sacroiliac joint torsions are really catastrophic for your function on a bike and in general in everyday life. But cycling, there is no other joint that affects your function as much as the sacroiliac joint in my experience.

Cam Nicholls (08:26.7) Interesting. If somebody's interested in figuring out how they can deal with this from the comfort of their own home, you've put together a program called Bike Fit Fundamentals which has a tutorial on asymmetry.

I think it's think it's part six or seven. Yeah, we're right. Yep. That's the one mate It goes through a lot of the corrective or a lot of the what would you call it? Diagnostic methods of figuring out your asymmetry and it's pretty detailed and this is a good first step to try to prevent or Reverse this fun this this situation if it's starting to happen to you at home Because yeah this long-term effect of compensating asymmetrically on the bike is really problematic for this joint

with a downloadable guide.

Neill Stanbury (09:06.316) and the flow down effects through the rest of your kinetic chain, really, really catastrophic. yeah, that is a really good first step is going through that asymmetry module to try and correct your own asymmetry and see how you go from there.

Hope you enjoyed that conversation with Neil Stanbury. We'll catch you in the next podcast.