Hello roadmen, in today's full featured roadman cycling podcast I…
Hello roadmen, in today's full featured roadman cycling podcast I catch up with Trek Sega Freidoster, Alex Kirsch. We talk Tour de France, alternate routes into cycling, life after cycling and the pressure of being a domestic at world tour level. Let's cue that intro. Big question is this, how do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness, and our long changes? That is the question on this podcast, we'll give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh and welcome to the Roadman Podcast. Hello Roadman! Welcome back Roadman! It's a full feature land roadman podcast. It's been a In a minute since we don't want to do this, the Tour de France was epic and I still am reeling from it, but we don't have long to wait until the next Grand Tour, because the Vuelta kicks off on Saturday week with the World Championships this coming weekend. I cannot remember the last time someone has been as heavily fancied for both the TT and the road race as Wout Van Arts gone into this race. for all those cycling fans at the late 90s it's probably Miguel Ingerain was the last rider that went in as heavy a favorite but the crown is heavy and the fatigue from the Tour de France is definitely real so we see if Wout can carry the expectation of an entire country on his broad shoulders. Roadmen this is an interview that I'm excited to bring you as one that has been in the pipeline for a little while but I'm glad that we got to do it now and we got to reflect on the Tour of France, we got to reflect on Yumbo Vismas, tactics, what the fatigue is like from a grand tour and the reality of being a domestic in world tour racing. Alex Kirsch is a rider from Tric SEGA Freido and I'm delighted to catch you up with him today on the Roadman podcast. Before I jump into the full interview with Alex, let me just remind you to head on over to patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore watch. That's where you can go and you can buy me the price of a beer once a month and it supports this podcast. It does really two things. It's vindication for me. The podcast has gone the right direction but also it gives us that financial support to be able to bring you these podcasts week after week, month after month and hopefully fingers crossed year after year. Now we've taken care of business. It's time for the main event. Take it away Alex. Alex Kirsch, welcome to the podcast. Hi, thanks for having me. Good, how are you? Yeah, I'm very good. Thank you. Did you get a chance to watch much of the Tour de France? Actually, I did. Yeah, yeah. I pretty much followed every day. And is it a bit of a, we have an Irish saying where we say it's a busman's holiday, where like if you work in the industry, so you really want to go on a bus tour, is it kind of like that with the Tour de France for you guys, is where you're riding the bike all day racing every week, then to chill out and watch the tour, is that enjoyable or is it a bit weird? No, I mean, of course it's enjoyable, it's the biggest race in the world. Obviously, if I have a training session or a race, I don't need to see every stage and I'm not really spending hours on the internet to find results sheets, but obviously the big days Nice to watch. Were you guys happy from a team perspective with Richie Porte, stepping onto the podium? Absolutely. I don't think that was what the team hoped for going into. I think they were going for obviously a good GC ride and maybe a stage win. They were close with the stage win, but Richie being on the podium is great for a team, it's obviously also very grateful for him. I think people in general they realized it went under the radar maybe for the fight for the victory in the last two days and so on but it meant a lot for him. He has a long career and a lot of talent and he's a bit under the radar probably through his career but for him finishing on podium is a big thing and makes me super happy. I think Richie's a really good time trialist and it was almost like no one was talking about this before. Because I was looking at it and going, Lopez is shit against the clock. Richie's really, really strong against the clock. Land is not great against the clock either. So it looked like a possibility going into the time trial, but I definitely didn't see Lopez going that badly. No, he went super bad, that's true. When I was calculating a little bit the time, it was like 120 and I was saying to my wife actually on a good day, he has this in him and it could have been really close.
Obviously it's not a flat time trial and Lopez seemed like super…
Obviously it's not a flat time trial and Lopez seemed like super strong in the climbs the last week. So in my opinion, it would have been very tight in the end. It wasn't even. But for sure, I texted him the day before that he should go on in. Also because I believe that it was within his possibilities. Yeah, definitely. What's the atmosphere like a trek? Are you guys completely delighted with something like that or is it just like a colleague doing well and you're like, you know what, it's good but honestly it doesn't really affect my life that much. I think we have, I mean I wasn't in many different teams so I can't, you know I don't have so much experience but looking at dinner tables and so on and how does I feel like we sit much longer at the table speaking to each other and having a lot more than you see maybe another team. So I think we were we are closer to each other and we're at least from my point of view I was very happy for the team and for the riders that perform well. It looks a fun team to be on like some teams I just look at and I think you know what you could not give me 10 million a year or a year to go ride with Astana. It just looks no fun. You know, Vadikorov looks like a prick. The whole dangerous looks terrible. But Tract just looks fun. I mean, for 10 million I would consider, but yeah, I know what you mean. And obviously I had Ryan Mullen on the podcast a while ago. He's a team at yours. Do you want to embarrass Ryan with any stories? Well, better not see. He there's a video. I mean, I probably you've seen it already, but there's a time trial video, which I just love to see once in a while where he just goes off the run, I start running and just crashes immediately. And we did kind of a mashup video with the music behind and so on. I think it's an unusual Twitter or whatever. You can maybe put the link in there. So yeah, put the link in that one. I can't find it. Yeah, I had Roy in on a few weeks ago on the podcast and yeah, he's a funny fucker. Yeah, definitely. He was in a strong run. Yeah, he's strong. any shit. I don't know if he's coming back. We've got national championships here in like two weeks. I don't know if he's coming back for that or if he's raising broad still. But yeah, he'll definitely be ripping the legs off me and that will no doubt. And you wrote your first grand tour last year in the Vuelta. What's it like managing the fatigue through a tree week race like that? I know the longest I've raced is like an eight day stage race. And I know like when you're two days in you're kind of looking at it and going I've six days left this sucks what's it like when you're kind of two days in you're looking at it and going shit I've nineteen days left it is definitely an experience that mostly at the first one you don't know what what to expect then I personally went into it thinking okay I try to look at it a little bit scientifically and thinking, okay, it's three weeks, so we can't raise so hard all day. It's impossible and then the first day was just incredibly hard. Also the second one and I was thinking, okay, how are we going to keep going like this? In the end, I think you pretty soon reach a point where you're just very tired and everyone Everyone gets tired and it's... I don't... I mean, it wasn't really physically... It was very exhausting and towering, but it's not something that I would be afraid of. And I think it's very doable for any rider to finish a grand tour. Obviously, it's harder to perform in these races, but just raising three weeks is more of a mental thing. and you know not giving up. We had like one or two days where when you just don't have it, you need to fight and then that is mentally quite tough. I say Ryan Mullen was talking about the Jiro last year and he says the Jiro as an 80 plus kilogram rider, it's like a three week outax like exploration type race. It is definitely with the, I have the feeling the climbers get lighter and so to speed in the climbs is for sure it's very high overall and also the level of the worst rider improved dramatically over the last five years. That's what everyone is saying and when I talk to riders or maybe those who just retired recently some of their values they pushed to write in a group head or in the bunch wouldn't even make you in time cut nowadays.
Don't think the fastest writers write much faster but it's more that…
So I don't think the fastest writers write much faster but it's more that just the worst writer is a pretty good writer nowadays. So of course if you're 80 kilos you just push some words but actually making time cut is more a thing of pacing, then really pure, I think you just should not go too deep and explode and then lose minutes if you ride a good speed in all the climbs. I never had problems with time cuts. Because it's something we just don't see when we're watching on the television, just the battle that was going on at the back of the race. Obviously, I'm recording this here in Ireland and we're massively proud of Sam Bennett and the great jersey. He had some days where the camera wasn't on them, true those mountains that are going to be pretty difficult and everyone thinks this printer is going to rest during the mountains. It's still for work. Yeah, for sure. If you look at the KJs, that was something pretty impressive that I realized during the world. Some days I've finished 30 minutes behind, not even a problem with time cut us out but just spending like 6,000 or 500 kjs whereas you could see the winners like some skinny climber spend for 4,500 kjs. So it's definitely a bit of work to get this stage of time. Have you seen the stats from Pogacha on La Plaad Belfie? I saw some WhatsApp kilogram and climbing times. Yeah. I seen someone had a 6.9 for the climb, 6.9 WhatsApp kilogram. And then after that, and the treads, all I say and after this was like, if it seems too good to be true, it is too good to be true. We've been here before. I'm like, I don't know, for me, you know, I'm not from that era of, you know, the Toyota Hamilton era. I had him on the podcast and he spoke about it for me. You know, gotcha. It doesn't have any history of open infractions. it's almost like why can't people believe in a talent? Is there any sort of view inside the bunch that this kid is just a wonder or is he treated with a business suspicion? I don't know him at all personally. I mean, I'm much older. He's only pros since one and a half year, if I'm correct. I actually saw a number that said 6.5 for 16 minutes which I personally must say is high, I mean high high level obviously but it didn't seem crazy when you, when I looked at it, you know when I was watching it and just realizing how quickly you end up and so on, I expected more obviously I can't push 6 and a half watts per kilogram for that. But it didn't, it wasn't for me something that seemed crazy, unbelievable, like you mentioned. It's only two seconds ago, that was done. That was done. Exactly. And when we're talking times, I mean, I don't know, but there's also wind playing a big factor there. So material, which is completely different from five years ago when Ahu did this time on, I mean if he was using already time trial tires on the road bike, this is a big difference. So there are some things you can't really compare just purely on climbing times because material changed and it's a short, I mean that was a road race so tactics were involved, You know, there were maybe some people were looking at each other. Here he just went all in for 16 minutes. Obviously he did already for the minute effort on the flat and so on. It's hard to come. But I just purely on the climbing times and the number, I saw 6.5. I didn't see 6.8 if that would change a little bit. But 6.5 that didn't see him for me crazy. He took like a minute or 50 seconds on Tom Dumouleur, but Tom Dumouleur riding on a TT bike, you know, wasting two kilograms and just the different, not just not a good setup for climbing. You think that was a mistake? Not changing bikes at the bottom? No, I think it was just calculated in my opinion. He thought for him, I don't know about Fanarti, he changed bikes and also did a really good time. I don't know what I would have. I mean, for sure, he calculated it. He did for, he didn't do it based on feeling only. So, you for sure had his idea, but others had a different idea. Alex, you mentioned tires there. I think that's something that a lot of people listen to the podcast won't understand the difference they make. What tires are you guys using for time trials and just talk us through a little bit of difference between a road tire and a time are. Ryan is more of an expert than he probably. Just some things, they are obviously slow. They're the faster you want to go, the light, the tire needs to be or the wider.
Has to be, all these have effects on speed but also on comfort and on…
It has to be, all these have effects on speed but also on comfort and on durability and so yeah for a time trial you would try to just get the fastest tire maybe having less grip in the corners or so there's always a trade-off there's probably more puncture probability in there which you don't want in a tire for road race because it's just much longer and you probably have downhills and different road asphalt and so on. That is basically the day. I mean, that's just a training tire. It's just super big. It's very comfortable, it has a lot of grip, you never puncture but you're also very, very slow. Yeah, I remember for me the first time I really hit home the difference it makes is inside of the velodrome, like riding a pursuit. I mean, you go from training tours to race tours, you can be lapping like half a second faster per lap, which... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, difference is huge, difference for sure. And then there's difference between, for sure, there's a difference between brands. Now I'm not an expert on which brand is exactly faster and so on. But for sure, there's a difference between even a road race, tyre and a time-tribe tyre. And then there's a huge difference between a training tyre and a racing tyre. You were on the long list Alex this year for Tour of France selection, am I right? Yeah, yeah. Is that difficult to miss out on? And then the follow-up to us, are you hoping to ride somebody other grand towards this for sure it was difficult to I was disappointed because first of all I was happy because it helped me to be motivated throughout the whole lockdown thing and so on and could really it was some kind of gold that was above anything else so that really pushed me reaching a higher level. And then of course when you did all the sacrifices and training during these quarantine times and doing altitude counts and seeing yourself being in the best shape, probably ever. Not being selected is disappointing of of course, but I just use that shape, try to refocus and use it for different races. Will you kick on for a year or a year or a year of delta? So that was even more disappointing because I knew that tour was my only chance for a ground 2 this year as I'm pretty important for the classic team. So the classics are the races I will do at the end of the season which go on at the same time as the Jura in the world. Looking at the guys you have in the squad, like you know, you've, me believe, obviously a world champion for another week anyway. Mads Pedersen, Richie Porte, bulk Molama, like is it kind of pinch me at times going oh my god, so I'm the biggest stars in the sports, you know, to my teammates or my friends. You learn and so much off these left guys. No, I don't look like I try to learn obviously from someone who is better than me or can do at least in something better than me. You know, I'm more looking at it as a job and I show up to the race. do what I'm asked for and do what I'm good at. I'm also a little bit older now already, even that it's only my second year at the world to a level, but I'm pretty experienced and actually more trying to teach younger writers than teaching myself. Would your characteristics look like you could potentially win a classic? Maybe not this and might be too early. I don't know what your conditions like, but you must have your oil on a classic win. Sure, sure enough. Yeah, of course that's a dream and I believe I'm not ready yet for sure not. I think we have to, as a rider, you have to be very, you have to pay attention to what you are aiming for because it is a business, it's a job and you have to do what you best at. At the moment, I believe I'm one of the best helpers in the world tour and it would be very dangerous for my career to write linguistically just to get more results, personal results. So I think you have to carefully choose your spot within the team and that makes, can make a more successful career and longer career. Obviously, I mean, I think on a good day and out of the right break away and so on. I hope that I'm able to do a really good result in a classic at one point in my career. It's interesting because I had Mitch Docker on the podcast a while ago and Mitch is obviously coming towards the end of his career. He was talking about just the changing roles he's had within the team through the years because he said like exactly like you were talking about, he said you need to look at as a job and then within this job you've all the different roles that need to be filled.
He has needed to look at it and talk, okay, my characteristics, which…
So he has needed to look at it and talk, okay, my characteristics, which role can I feel best? And except from season to season, that's actually changed. So you have to adapt from pure lead out man to all of a sudden we're going for the green jersey now. So I need to be a lead out man, but I also need to be able to get over kind of medium mountains and be there at the fire. So that's got to be a challenge to keep kind of re-refining yourself or redefining yourself? Yeah, I believe that, yeah, you're right. I think for the moment I just try to become the, I mean, my personal goal is to become the best domestic possible in a sense that I don't really focus on getting one climb better up but just being the best in everything I can and giving a big value to the team by just being longer in the climbs with the GC riders and being longer in the finals of classics for the leader and doing I'm more focused on doing lead-outs in the strings and so on. So just getting into this so that you can actually get used for many different scenarios. And that will make for a good career. I think that's my strategy at least. You had kind of an unusual route in the cycling because you started out and you were with, Is the trek development team was a trek Leo part? Yeah, yeah exactly. And then he took your Stasier with trek and you went pro-Gonti the following year but then he actually took some time out and went back to college and study economics. No, I mean I studied economics but from the, you know, after high school immediately. So basically next to writing for Leo part development and then still the first three years that being professional. And was it okay, balancing, training and college at the same time? It wasn't easy and for sure it cost me a little bit of time in cycling or it slowed me down a little bit. That's for sure you can't do both 100%. and anything you need to be fully focused to do something really good. But I'm really happy I did it this way. I wouldn't want to change anything, because once I came out of high school, I wasn't a super talented rider. I was for sure lucky that Leopold development team was based in Luxembourg. I was a great team and I was one of the talented writers in Luxembourg. But I was lucky that I got a spot and could develop there slowly. And I never felt like it was a security for me to pass professional and I always wanted to be able to decide on what job I want to do. Do you feel like it was a safety nest for you? Like I gave you a conference. I know I raced in France and I was riding for a division national team over there. And I finished law school when I was in France and my real mate, who was another Irish rider, he was the Irish under 23 champion that year. He dropped down on high school to come to France and race and going into races I could just feel like especially a big race. It was just very different because for me I had in the back of my mind you know if this doesn't work out I can still go home and I'm gonna have a career whereas he was just so stressed all the time and he found it difficult to enjoy the racing and he just thought this is it I have to make it or else like I'm on the scrap heap. Yeah sure sure for sure that was some kind of safety net and I think my career also took off in a sense that once I finished university it was like a much more time obviously for training and but there was also just this this big security that I could find that not even a well paid job. Obviously you also tried to be well paid but just a job that I like and yeah just have more freedom. So for sure that that helped me a lot and it was also that thing. In fact at that time I was saying if I managed to do this now I can do anything. was kind of, you know, once you do something really hard and you manage to do it, then it just gives you more confidence and more strength to take on new challenges. For sure, you draw experiences like that. I remember the year I was due to entrance exams for law school. I also got my Masters in Law at the same year, and I was trained in that year. And I remember just in times I've been busy since just thinking back, and that's my new reference point where I think, you know, when I'm super busy, I wrote, I think the World University Championships or something that year.
Pretty good condition. And I got my master's and I got it accepted…
So a pretty good condition. And I got my master's and I got it accepted into law skill. And now I kind of, when I find myself busy, you know, you know, have a couple of podcast episodes to record and some biscuits, I'm like, cup on, like you're not as busy as you are at the end. So could hope. Yeah sure, for sure, that this not only in cycling related it, you know, just sometimes we have to do some hard things and they will bring us forward. Have you settled into being a world tour rider now? I know when I talk up to a lot of guys, especially guys who are inside the first five years of being a world tour rider, they're almost afraid to jinx us and are afraid to, like Mitch Docker Chris spoke about how he was living in Durana for 10 years and he still didn't feel like he could properly unpack in his apartments. He didn't feel like it was home because he taught, maybe I won't get a contract next year. Maybe I'll have to go back to Australia. So what's the point in the couch? What's the point in the lamp? Are you finding them or are you feeling settled? No, I feel pretty much settled. I want to sound in an arrogant But for me, there was the long term. Even though, how can I say this now, I always wanted to become a world tour rider, even when I was 18 or 19 years, and not at all so far away from that level, going through university. And so the goal was always to end up in the world tour. and it took me four years on pro-country level, really fighting hard, let's say because life is really tough on pro-country level. The people are tough and the racing is tough. There's know, basically no support. And all I did, you know, all that kept me going was, you know, ending up in the world. So once I actually signed with track, life became easy. Because you have finally, you're in one of the best teams in the world. You have coaches that support you. You have a whole team that is just standing behind you and making life easy, basically. Nice yourself in Luxembourg now for shining? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's Luxembourg like for terrain and training partners? It is perfect. It is silly. Just no flat and basically no flat. You have climbs from 5 to 15 minutes effort. good weather obviously in the winter but colder good for traveling to races just general good lifestyle you're not tempted to do the Monaco or Antoritane like a lot of the guys seem to be down not at all not even one second I think I mean I'm I'm pretty sure most riders would perform much better if they wouldn't live where they in Spain or wherever they just moved now. Well, I can see Jerome. I like I loved Jerome. I try and get over there whenever I can. It's a cool town. For me, if I was a pro cyclist, I don't know if I'd love it. It feels like it's too claustrophobic with pros. So my opinion, but everyone is obviously different, is that if you choose a place to to live for a job and this is cycling is a job. You should always try to understand. Could you imagine having a family there, growing up a family because a cycling career could, you know, you could become actually a father, or there's high chance you become a father, or get married, have a wife that she needs to work at the place where you live. So can you imagine having a life on that place? I personally couldn't imagine my kids going to school in Spain and so for me it was never an option to move a lot from Luxembourg. Well definitely that's what gets me with Andorra. I was over there a couple of years ago. There's nothing there. I'm sure it's cool to go on holidays and go skiing and stuff for a week of cycling. But there's not much in Andorra. It must be pretty full on like borderline depressing at times living there. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Andora is more for tax reasons than anything else because it makes otherwise no sense to living under her. But just in general, this whole you have to move to the south thing is, I don't, I mean, We are, for me it's a little bit soft to say, oh, it's a little bit colder on my place in November and so on. It's like a true classics man. Yeah, but isn't it, isn't it like this? Yeah. Also, actually nowadays with seasons, finishing mid-October, you have the first training camp already in December in January. You start racing end of January. You don't really train so much in the cold, don't you? Well, like it rains every day here in Ireland. So like our friends in America, and they're like, oh, don't train in the rain.
I'm like, if you didn't train in the rain and you lived in Ireland,…
I'm like, if you didn't train in the rain and you lived in Ireland, you fucking never go on your bike. Yeah. Well, my speed is in this world champion. And he lives in Denmark. There's no single meat of climbing. And I don't think he sees the sun a lot of times, but he's still the best right in the world right now. For one more week. For one more week. But what I want to say is that I think it's more important to you. You live on a place where you're actually happy, where you might have your family around you, where you just feel home. And there's a nice culture next to cycling maybe. And I think this gives you more energy for good racing than maybe, you know, some training group or whatever. Is there a good cycling culture in Luxembourg? There is actually, there's pretty many Luxembourg-ish professionals now It used to be a lot of Danish riders living here back in the days Dude, dude, dude, it's intermission time It's been a while since I said that on a long-form roadman podcast Guys, if you're enjoying today's podcast and all the other podcast content that I'm bringing to you five days a week on the roadman cycle and platform, please consider heading on over to patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore watch, make a small donation of the price of a beer once a month and that really ensures the future of this podcast. Sorry for the interruption and let's get back to chat with Alex. I seen an interest in article you had online. I think it was on the Trek website and you know, a crap question that everybody always asks. If you had a dinner party and you could only invite three people, but I thought your answer was interesting because it's not the usual. You always see these questions asked for cyclists and the answers like, oh, Eddie Merck, Slurr on Finion and Miguel Ingerine or something. Yours was all business guys. I think it like Steve jobs, Warren, both of them, Bill Gates. That's pretty atypical for a cyclist. What led you to be so interested in innovation, business, and entrepreneurship? It's just really interesting, isn't it? I try to see more fired than just my second career right now. keeps me also a little bit calm, you know, just not focusing all the time on cycling. And in a sense, cycling is also a business. Our career is very short. We have to look further ahead. So yeah, I would like to, I'm not really a businessman in a sense, but I tried to set myself up for after my career. And these are very interesting people that I admire for how they change the world. I think it's just I nearly think to go hand in hand, like the mindset of trying to be a cyclist, especially when you get to your level, it's all about it's a job and it's, you know, fitting into roles. But definitely when you're coming up as a junior and trying to strive for that pro contract, it's a very like growth mindset that you're doing everything you can to try and get better. You're training harder, recovering smarter and you've just this tourist for knowledge. And I found that for me when I decided, you know what, I've found my level, I'm not going to get past continental. I channeled that energy and I turned it over to business. It's the same sort of mindset and the same questions that I was asking and cycling as a how I progress. I now find myself asking those same questions in business. So it's a great outlet for that creativity and passion. Yeah, sure. I mean, if you, I'm a big reader, I would say so. If you read books and biographies of just successful people, they are basically all the same and it doesn't really matter in what and where they are successful if it's in sports or just in business they basically invest in themself and set really high goals and then try to find a way how to achieve those goals. So yeah, yeah. So I went through kind of an interest and journey because when I came back from being continental, I was running for a team in the US and I came back to Ireland and I set up a coaching company and that was doing okay but I had this business head on me now and I went and set up like four or five other businesses. Like I bought a cycling cafe, I set up a media company, tried to build an app but I started doing all these things and I've never had any weight on me as a cyclist or before that but I started finding, I'm trying to balance all this stuff and I'm still trying to ride my bike a little, but I'm starting to put on a little bit of weight. And then I found I was just getting so overwhelmed that I was almost not as happy as I used to be.
Got to a point where I went to a race and I just got dropped in the…
And I got to a point where I went to a race and I just got dropped in the first four or five K. And it wasn't a particularly high level. And coming home from the race, I remember thinking like, shit's just gone wrong from here. I need to to just press pause on everything and figure out my next step. And it was going away and pressing pause on everything that I figured out, look, there's a different way to do this. I can't take the old full-time cycle and mentality and then just keep stuffing on like forced business, second business, toward business, relationship, eating out in restaurants, drinking wine late at night. Because what happens is it just explodes and everything falls apart. So it took me pressing pause and stepping back to figure out, you know what, there's a different way of doing that. It's a different skill set when you're trying to balance this stuff. That transition was real hard for me. Yeah. Do you see yourself building businesses on the soil as you kind of gravitate towards you? Still got a lot of your career left. You're only in your, what are you, a second year at World Tour? But you see yourself starting to transition towards building businesses on the side are leveraging your personal brand as you go through your career? I'm open-minded. Let's say like this, I'm not sure if I want to build businesses right now, but things can come quite quickly. So I have some ideas that what I want to do after. I finished cycling. Right now I would like to go back to university for two more years and become a professor in economics. Something completely different from cycling. Definitely I opened a restaurant last year in Luxembourg which which is not a big business and I'm not really into managing it right now so I don't need to spend time on it. But that opened my eyes a little bit on what is still out there and then I could also imagine myself just trying a job with recycling which probably two years ago I would never have imagined. So I'm pretty open but the most important is that the career is on, cycling careers on track. This you should, you think you shouldn't be too busy on, on trying to grow something and so on. I think I'm pretty much set up for a job after cycling with my degree and a little bit of money on a side to afford going back to university and so that there should be 100% focus on on just a cycling career but if there is something coming along you should be prepared to go for it. What's your cycling team restaurant or just a regular team restaurant? No cycling team yeah. What's it called? Well, definitely. You have to pop me a link to that and I'll show it into the show notes for people to check out. Before we finish up, Alex, we couldn't have you on without getting a prediction for the weekend, for the world. Who's it going to be? Oh, I haven't thought about it at all. It's going to sound boring, but it's hard to say because some, the mental toll on the, on the ground tour is big. So, if you look at just the, the shape out of the tour out for now, it should be for sure a big favorite. Now is the question, if you can hold on to that momentum, because you could also, if you relax too much, your, your body tension is, is, is fading and you kind of just get really tired I guess. I guess it's gotta be difficult to manage to period. Well, it's only seven days between the tour of finishing and the worlds. Now I know there's probably no part. How does the team celebrate last night? Was there a party here or just in? I don't know, but I don't think so. Yeah, probably just dinner. Yeah, that's gotta be pretty shit if it's your first time to France and your way for that party. I also don't think that Jumboviz might have a lot to celebrate, just Sunday evening, but... Fuck, that must have been just so close. Like, what's the story of Jumbovizma in the bunch? I heard a couple of whispers that are not particularly well-liked. Is that... is there any truth to that? Not that I know of, but I read that article of Edimax saying they wrote stupidity as stupid. And I must agree that they didn't write on a very clever way. This just to the France, they for sure used a lot of resources and who knows if that is what caused Roblidge to win on the second last day. But I mean if I would have been Sports Direct, I would have done it completely different and I guess in AOS did it also very different last years, although it's obviously easy for us as armchair critics to criticize them now, but it just seems to me obvious that you need to use Dumelan.
He's valuable lieutenant as a domestic, but much greater value if you…
Like he's valuable lieutenant as a domestic, but much greater value if you can keep him close on the general and then put him up the road and force you away to chase. Chase? Yeah, that is even further ahead in tactics, but there were even some days where they should have let the break away just get 15 minutes and take a rest day. Because even it's not only the teammates that couldn't rest at all, but also the way they rode, the Roblach had to use a lot of energy in some of the semi-climbing stages that could have been on paper, yeah, it's never rest day, but also mentally less stressful day, a little bit like in Aos we're doing these the last years. Basically every team did this the last years and they took on more or less every stage from the gun and by doing that they even lost two times I guess. If you're in the bunch, is that just so fucking annoying where you're just saying chill out what are you doing? It's meant to be an easy day where the break gets 50 and 20 minutes and goes to the finish and they're just writing all day. That can't make the massively popular. Yeah, I mean I never did a race with them being so strong. I wasn't there, But in the end, every team has the right to write the way they do. We are not friends together. I mean, we are paid by a team and should do what the tactic, what the sports record says. But obviously it didn't work out and I think they could have done differently. For me, what was interesting was in recent years, we're so used to, you know, in Eos or Sky, winning the Tour de France. That Bresford is so cautious in the day, the final days in Tour de France, even when, you know, freedom or Thomas Urbanale, even when they had a big lead, he was still so cautious saying, you know, it's not over till it's over. But the Yumba Visma director was basically like interviews I was saying, he was almost celebrating before it was done. And they even had an ad in the Dutch newspaper I say today, like basically congratulating Roglich on the Tour de France win like two days before it was finished. It was crazy. Okay. Yeah. I mean, the way they wrote, I wouldn't have imagined his TT performance being below average, But yeah, it's true, but they did the very impressive job in the climbs, that's true. With the race never opened, it's over. Or even in Paris you can crash or whatever. So what's up next for you Alex? So you're going to ride the classics? Yeah, I do a Bingo and then the classics. Nice, nice. And if someone wants to follow up with you on social media and kind of follow along, journey for the rest of the season. Where's the good places to catch up with you? I prefer Instagram and Twitter. So I have those accounts but there's something like Keasch Alex or Alex Keasch. I'll probably find them. And I'll put the links in the description to this podcast down below for anyone. Alex Keasch, thank you for joining us and thanks for giving us a little glimpse inside the palletan. You're welcome. Thanks. 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 kickstart challenge. So regardless of where your fitness is at right now, this is going to be the catalyst for making you faster and making you 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 Masters Beginner Advanced, there's Mail Plans Shopping List and even a video course holding your hand and talking you through it all. So what I recommend you do right now is just stop everything, press pause on this audio and go to roadmansoidglings.com forward slash 14 day or check out the link in the bio. That's roadmansoidglings.com slash 14 day.