Roadman, today I want to talk to you about 10 items you absolutely must bring on every bike ride. Let's cue that in troll! The big question is this. How do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness and our longevity? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh and welcome to the Roadman Podcast. Well, thanks for listening to another roadman podcast. Welcome back. Today's show, I want to talk to you about 10 items you must bring on every single bike ride and some of them are not what you think. So stay tuned for this one because there's some wild and wacky things that not so much wacky, they're all very functional and they're not crazy things I bring out. Like in a recent podcast, I've talked about how I'm building myself a mobile coffee shop and bringing out an air press and some Colombian coffee and a hot water flask at the moment. They're not like that, they're 10 really tangible things that are going to make your life better. Not that the Colombian coffee won't make your life better. Guys, before I jump into today's podcast, I know you're sick of me beating the same drum, but please, it makes such a difference. Head on over to patreon.com. Link is in the boil. Forward slash Anthony underscore Walsh. If you can't afford to a Corona voice, a lot of people have lost their jobs. It's tough times. If you can't afford a price of a beer once a month over on Patreon, there's no hassle. Five days a week this podcast is coming to you free of charge. If you can't afford, I would ask you to head on over to Patreon and buy me the price of a beer once a month. It keeps this podcast going. It's 100% user funded. If you aren't subscribing at the moment, you can thank your fellow Patreons who have subscribed because it's their generosity that's bringing this into your ear free of charge at the moment. For a long, long time, I didn't get the concept of Patreon. I didn't understand that. And then when I started questioning, I started thinking, okay, I'm paying for Sky Sports. I'm paying for Euro Sport. I pay for Netflix. I pay for Spotify. Why have I got this? Why have I got a notion in my head that I shouldn't pay to listen to the Blind Boy podcast? Because he's working. He's a small creator. He actually needs it more than I do. And that's when it flicked from me. And since then, it's a few years ago, I've been a contributor to a number of podcasts that I listen to because if you're listening, I think you should be paying or you should be making a contribution towards the dissemination of it. Link is in the boil, road man. And now we're gonna get into today's episode. 10 things to bring on a bike ride. I'm gonna rattle through. Somebody's will need explaining and somebody's will just be like, oh yeah, I already do that. In no particular order, 10 things you need to bring out on a bike ride, food. You need to bring out food. And when I say food, if you're out on a training ride, Food does not include tings that you could leave open, in a press and even bacteria would need it. That stuff I call NASA food. That's like spaceship shit. And if rats and bacteria only do stuff, probably shouldn't be putting it into your body. That category on talking, gels on talking, sports specific bars and all that dribble with ingredients on the back that you can't pronounce the names of. Best thing you can do out of this category And this tip is anything you buy, flick over the back and look at the ingredients section. Ingredients are listed in descending order. So if you see something listed first, that means there's the highest quantity of that food in it. So if you see big long words, you can't understand. If you see enumbers early in a bar, you should not be putting that into your body. When I'm talking food, I'm talking bananas, I'm talking dates, I'm talking sandwiches, songs, brioche's, this type of thing. Get creative, there's loads of recipes, we even have our own energy ball cookbook, which I'm actually going to put a link in the boil for us. And I was mad on experimenting on what little balls I could bring out on the bike. I love the idea of a ball because they're single serve and you make them, you don't have to re-wrap it up one at a time. And so I mucked about with probably 500 recipes, I'd say, through the years. And I've narrowed it down to my 10 best recipes. Some of them like just they're very personal to my paler but it's like I've like Frero, Roshain, Nutella balls and all sorts of cool ones. So I'm gonna put the link for that in the bio and yeah you can pick it up there. So number nine this will get you out of all sorts of problems. It's a phone. I know a lot of people get out training, get out on the bike to avoid the phone.
Number of reasons I like the phone I love to listen to a podcast when I'm out on the bike you might be listening this on the bike right now. If the worst happens and you need to get home, you can call somebody, you can order a taxi, you have a revolution or a contactless payment on the phone and another brilliant thing to have. It's the phone. Number eight, it's your entire puncture repair kit. I'm not going to itemize days. I've seen a similar video done online where they're going through 10 things you need to bring and they itemized all these and it just made the entire list shit. So we all know what we need for a puncture. We need pump, We need tubes, we need levers, we need a patch kit, we need maybe a CO2 canister. You need to know how to use it as well. You know, I'm definitely talking to a few people on our local roadman, Royd, who don't know how to fix their own punctures. You need to practice that at home. Number seven, you need a drink. You need water or you need some sort of salts mixed in, but you need to be drinking about one bottle per hour, a 500 ml per hour give or take, depending on your weight. I'm not going to harp that one too much because it's very non-sexy. Number six, it's the raincoat or cafe coat. Even if you're in a warm climate, I would still encourage you the best layer you can buy. It's like the black bag raincoat. These are cheap as chips. I think I have one up on roadman resources. They're so cheap, but they're unbelievable. If you're on a descent, it's going to keep you warm. If it lashes rain, they're the only rain proof thing you're going to get. If you're sitting at a cafe to stop the chill getting in, they're easily packable in your back pocket, regardless of the weather, have the raincoat or cafe coat in the back pocket. If you stop to get a puncture, it goes on. If a buddy stops, it goes on. If you stop for food, it goes on. Descent, it goes on. I put mine on probably five times a ride. It probably cost me $50, and I've had it for years. So it tells you how many years I've had my rain cape for that I'm still calling it dollars, because I haven't lived in Canada in probably five years. So definitely go get one, stick it in your back pocket. Now here's a trick I learned from my time in Canada. This is number five, it's the spare base layer. A lot of you guys aren't doing this one, and this is a sweet, easy one. So if you have, I'm rockin' a handlebar bag at the moment, so I have a little bit more space, but I didn't always rock a handlebar bag last season, it's the first time I started doing it. What you do is get a small, light, packable base layer, and you stick it inside a Ziploc bag, and you stick that in your back pocket, in your handlebar bag, wherever. And when you get to the coffee shop at the halfway point, you know when you stop everything just gets wet and it gets wet from the base layer on up. And you go into the bathroom, pull out your fresh base layer, throw the old one into the Ziploc bag, you will feel like a new man on the second half of the ride. I learned to strict riding over in Canada where it gets super, super cold. And if it gets cold, or if you get wet when you're stopped at a cafe and you get cold when you go back outside, it's a really, really dangerous place to be. So having that spare base layer just means not wet and then get hit with the extreme cold. But I've been riding the normal and I've been doing this one for years and it's a cracker of a trick. It will make the first half-hour after you stop in a coffee shop. So so much more enjoyable. Number four, I only started doing this in the last 12 months. Trew it into the handlebar bag. I got a tiny narrow cable lock. It barely has a lock and mechanism at all and you would cut it with probably a garden shears. But But what it does is it just hangles up the bikes outside the coffee shop. You can wrap this around tree bikes and wrap it around a fence. It weighs probably 100 grams, like absolutely nothing. It's just a long cable with a small lock in the voice on the end of it. But it will stop the opportune teeth. So you're not going to stop somebody who's coming along and who has the bolt cutters and we're not going to carry a U-lock on our spin. But what this does, it just makes life very inconvenient for the opportunistic teeth. I definitely encourage that. Especially the cycle is getting more and more prevalent and we're seeing more and more of these. You know, the winter used to be a time when everyone was out on winter hackers, and honestly there wasn't that many people out cycling, but now we've just this crazy critical mass of cyclists and a lot of people out on 10 grand bikes with bringing more cycling thieves and you know, we're using things like Strava to see where the Popra cafes and stops are, and bikes are getting robbed and stuff like this, it's brilliant.
Number three, it's a cable toy, the humble cable toy. You can use the cable toy for anything. So Cable Toy, you know that old meme and it's like, is it stuck? You need WD-40, won't it stick? It's duct tape. Cable Toy is our duct tape and WD-40, all in one, and the bike. You can do anything with a cable toy. Broken Sea Post Clamp, Cable Toy. Broken Spoke, Cable Toy together. Even Broken Chain, Cable Toy. Cable Toy, Cable Toy. Broken Light, Broken Garmin Mount, Broken Shoe, Cable Toy. You can think of a thousand uses for a cable toy. I've used a cable toy on so many occasions, I can't even remember for so many different things, way is absolutely nothing. Lock your bike, I just came up with a new one. Cable toy, lock your bike, bring in little scissors which you snip cable toy. It's all about that, make it inconvenient for someone to rob it. The cable toy will do anything, you need to have a cable toy. Number two, it's a multi tool with a chain breaker. I've been caught up the side of the mount in so many times and a broken chain is one those things that it's it's almost a taxi ride home for most people if they're not prepared but if you have a multi-tool it's such an easy fix and this leads me a spoke tool is also brilliant on the multi-tool so make sure your multi-tool has your bunch of Allen keys some of them have tar levers built in little knife is always cool you'll use a knife for loads of things fighting a bear up the mountains maybe and chain breaker and spoke till number one and this ways, I don't even know about five grams, because I know the criticism I'm going to get on this is 10 tanks, do you want me to carry a trailer with me? Powerlink, and a powerlink re-joints a broken chain, a powerlink will, it takes about three seconds to install, get your chain, flick in the powerlink, and you're away again after a broken chain. You multi-tool with a chain breaker and your powerlink, and you're good to go. I've been up the mountains, and we're looking of her and Dublin, the Dublin Wicklow Mountains. I'm probably 35 minute ride from them and then you're disappearing into Narnia and you're gone. You're gone. So I talked earlier on the podcast about they need to have a phone with Revolut or Moitaxi or Uber up on it. But if you're in the mountains and you hit Uber or you hit Moitaxi, you're not getting one. So you're going to be waiting there and you know, cycling, what did I say? You play golf, you play tennis, you play football, You don't play soiklin because the consequences are real if you're in an October November day And you're stuck up the mountains and the bad weather comes in or you're losing daylight You have a problem with a broken chain. It's serious if there's serious consequences to this You can get badly sick or worse up the mountains on your own So having small bits of tools like this thinking them like survival tools get them and know how to use them Roadman that is 10 things things. Someone unlikely that you need to have out on your ride. What I want you to do, wherever you listen to this podcast, if it's Apple, if it's Spotify, if it's iTunes or any of those crazy Android platforms or use pocketcasts, I want you to take a screen capture of this podcast right now, share on Instagram stories, tag me, roadman.soiklin, and let me know what I've left off this list. What do you bring out on the ride? And I'm I'm going to share that story around so you'll even get yourself a few followers extra out of it. Roadman, thanks for listening to another Roadman, Cycling Podcast and I'm going to chat to you all again tomorrow! Hey everybody, it's Anthony again. Really quick, I want to invite you to join arguably the best thing I've ever put out inside the Roadman community. It's a challenge. It's a challenge called a 14-day Kickstarter challenge. So regardless of where your fitness is at right now, this is going to be the catalyst from making you faster and making you the leaner. I've created this challenge to take the guesswork out of everything. It's 14 days of training plans regardless of what your level is. There's a master's beginner advanced, there's meal plans shopping list and even a video course holding your hand and talking you through at all. So what I recommend you do right now is just stop everything, press pause on this audio and go to roadmansoycling.com forward slash 14 day or check out the link in the bio that roadmancycling.com slash 14 day.