Velo Podcast

The 2018 grand tour season was a British invasion! Simon Yates made it a clean sweep by winning the Vuelta a España.

Was it a good edition of the Vuelta? What does it mean for Yates? How do we rank this year's grand tours? We unpack the action from Spain.

Then, Fred talks to Gregor Brown who followed the race on the ground and he speaks to Mitchelton-Scott team director Matt White via Skype after the team's first grand tour victory.

Plus, Spencer talks about the story behind Breck Epic mountain bike race's decision not to sell to Ironman.

This episode of the VeloNews podcast is sponsored by Health IQ. To get a free quote and save money on life insurance, go to www.HealthIQ.com/velonews

The best riders understand … mindset wins races. And controlling your thought patterns in races is one of the most powerful things you can do.

Mindset in cycling is an important and frequently neglected side of our training and racing. It's avoided because it seems unclear, inconsistent, and, let's face it, can be too new-agey for the likes of us "tough guys." In reality, mindset is often all that separates the best from second best and can be the difference between reaching the podium or finishing a race.

When Coach Connor managed Team Rio Grande, he offered to cover the costs for one of our riders for a few sessions with a top sports psychologist in Colorado. The rider refused and ultimately quit the team. But when Trevor told several high-level pros the story they all asked the same thing: "Can I get those appointments?!"

Today, we'll delve into this concept of controlling your thoughts for performance. We'll touch on:

1. The concept of dominant thought and why it's so important, including whether we are funnels or buckets.

2. How athletes are either task- or ego-oriented, the pros and cons of each, and why it's important to know which one you are

3. Using trigger words to control your dominant thought

4. Why it may not actually be good to stay mentally focused for an entire race and how to pick your moments when you are on your mental game

5. And finally, how to control your thoughts when your body is screaming in pain and telling you to stop

Our primary guest today is a professor of sports psychology and is a senior teaching professor at Colorado State University, Dr. Brian Butki. Dr. Butki has worked with athletes in almost every sport, both at the university level and on professional teams in the Colorado area.

In addition to Dr. Butki we spoke with:

Dean Golich, a head coach at Carmichael Training Systems. Over decades as a top coach, Dean has worked with athletes all the way from recreational amateur riders to Olympians and world champions. He is uniquely qualified to talk about the mindset of top athletes. You may be very surprised to hear what he has to say.

Sepp Kuss, a WorldTour rider with LottoNL-Jumbo and winner of the 2018 Tour of Utah, talks with us briefly about his mindset and the danger of being too focused on the win.

Finally, local top coach Colby Pearce gives us a variety of tips on controlling your mindset both in training and in racing situations. In our next episode, we'll talk with Colby and Chris about the hour record and their experience with it.

But in the meantime, Colby is going for the master's world record from September 22-25. We're still waiting to hear if they are going to livestream it. If they do, we'll put a link up on the VeloNews page for this podcast along with our references.

So let's get to the task at hand. Find your balance. Focus your mind. But don't get too focused … you need your breaks. Let's make you fast!

Wow. Kate Courtney won world mountain bike championships, breaking a 17-year drought for the U.S. We call the champ to hear firsthand about the exciting race in Switzerland.

But first, Andrew Hood catches us up on all the key storylines from the Vuelta a España — the budding Colombian rivalry, Simon Yates's chances of winning the overall, that terrible crash at the finish of stage 12, and whether Movistar can use its strong team to win in the race's final week.

All that and more on this episode of the VeloNews podcast!

What’s up with all the “standards” in bottom bracket technology? Tech editor Dan Cavallari talks to Jay Sycip from Chris King to find out why there are so many different bottom brackets today, what happened to threaded bottom brackets, and whether we’ll ever see the end of creaky press-fits.

It has been a big week for American cyclists — Ben King won two stages at the Vuelta. Sepp Kuss, in his debut Vuelta, has been tearing up the climbs. And Ashton Lambie set a new world record in the individual pursuit, winning Pan-American Games gold.

We talk to all three of those riders, plus we hear from European correspondent Andrew Hood who has been following the Vuelta.

Spencer also has a quick rundown of what Rebecca's Private Idaho is all about. This gravel race put on by the "Queen of Pain" Rebecca Rusch is just as fun as it is hard.

This episode of the VeloNews podcast is sponsored by Roka. Spencer wore the superlight GP-1 sunglasses at Rebecca's Private Idaho and loved their comfortable fit and clear optics. Learn more: https://www.roka.com/collections/apex-sunglasses/products/gp-1-sunglasses

We received so many questions after we published episode 51, "Polarizing your training, with Dr. Stephen Seiler," we decided to take an even closer look at the polarized model of endurance training, to help listeners execute such a model in their training.

Our discussion includes:

- Why cycling is an aerobic sport

- What is meant by the two thresholds — LT1 and LT2 — and how to determine yours, both in terms of power and heart rate. Dr. Seiler provides a test protocol to determine LT2, which may sound very similar to Neal Henderson's test that was described in episode 33, “Is FTP dead?”

- Why it's important not to over-estimate LT1 or LT2, and how to use them to determine your zones in a three-zone model.

- The specifics of zone 1 training: how long, how much, how easy? We take a deep dive into what zone 1 training is all about, why it's important to keep those rides easy, and the value of long rides.

- Finally, we discuss the 80-20 principle of the polarized model and how to put it into practice to map out your week.

Did you just tear up your list of Vuelta GC favorites? We did. Vincenzo Nibali, Richie Porte, and others are already off the back. We discuss how the race has unfolded so far and look back on the first mountaintop finish won by American Ben King.

Also, there is sad news out of Ireland as yet another team is folding. Aqua Blue Sport made the unusual decision to cease operations immediately, putting an end to a weird saga that began with a premature announcement that they'd merge with Wout Van Aert's team.

And finally, Megan Guarnier announced she's retiring at the end of the season, we remember some of our favorite moments from her decorated career.

Your drivetrain does a lot of work, and in order to do it well, a bike has to be designed with chain line in mind. What's that, you ask? That's exactly what we cover in this week's VeloNews tech podcast.

VeloNews tech editor Dan Cavallari asks SRAM's chief system engineer for road drivetrains, Anthony Medaglia, how your drivetrain's chain line influences the way your bike is designed. Does chain line matter as much as it did ten years ago? What about 1X drivetrains — what kind of stresses affect the chain when it's angled like that? Medaglia's got the answers.

The Colorado Classic offered plenty of storylines over the past week. We hear from Travis McCabe on what the atmosphere has been like on a UnitedHealthcare team that could fold at the end of the season despite the team's dominance in Colorado. We also hear from Lauren Hall, for whom the Colorado Classic marked the final race of a long career.

The podcast also looks ahead to the Vuelta a España. The season's third and final grand tour gets underway this weekend with a start list that includes GC heavyweights like Nairo Quintana, Vincenzo Nibali, and Richie Porte, and also the reigning world champion, Peter Sagan, returning to the Vuelta for the first time since 2015.

This episode of the VeloNews podcast is sponsored by Feedback Sports, which makes the stable and easy to use Sprint Repair Stand. For more, check out www.feedbacksports.com.

This spring we sat down with Sepp Kuss, the recent winner of the Tour of Utah, to discuss what it was like to go from domestic U.S. racing to the WorldTour in three short years. The theme that returns again and again is the struggle of jumping to the highest level and the need to persist when your first year is a grind.

There's also some great advice about training, raising your level, and the value of persistence. So, in honor of Sepp's Tour of Utah win, we present our interview. We talk with him about:

- His career so far: Since Sepp did his first road race just three years ago, this part will be short.

- What his spring was like in Europe, and surviving his first big race: the Tour of the Basque Country

- The mental side of stepping up to a higher level and getting beat up over and over again

- What training is like in Europe compared to what it’s like in the domestic peloton

- Finally, we have a longer discussion with Sepp about something that may surprise you: his focus on the process rather than the results

We'll also hear from Joe Dombrowski, a leader of the EF Education First-Drapac WorldTour team. Joe was one of Sepp's chief rivals at the Tour of Utah this year and won the race himself back in 2015. The discussion will serve as a good comparison of how the two riders train.

So, get some popcorn, pull up the highlight reel of the Tour of Utah, smile along as Sepp dances away from the competition. Let's make you fast!