Row men, today I want to talk to an ordinary man with an extraordinary story. It's Connor Griffin. Let's Cute Out Intro! 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 Welch and welcome to the Row Man Podcast. Connor Griffin, welcome to the Robeman Cycling Podcast. Thank you very much. It's great to be on. Great to be back, you mean? Great to be back. I'll let you explain that one. So it's all my hands up. The microphone suffered a bit of damage in transit from Jirona, and we recorded this interview last week, and I went to edit it, and it was just, it was like your roba. It wasn't possible to say that it was in a lot of robotic sounds. So Connor has kindly agreed to come on and have an identical conversation with me for the second time. Connor, a lot of stuff, some of the stuff we're obviously going to touch on the same, but I've known those from last day, so we're just going to go and I'll start with weird angles. But to start out, I spoke some context because you're the first non-professional writer on the roadman cycling podcast. You're not a PhD in sports physiology or exercise physiology or a physiotherapist for a world tour team or a nutritionist or any of those other sort of guests we've had. What's a PhD? So what is it that you do? 9 to 5? 9 to 5? What I'm meant to do is I work in sales. I sell truck parts. I sell truck parts. So why is a man that sells truck parts on the podcast? You're probably wondering at this point. For the record, can you state what category of a boy crotter you are? I'm in the premium sought after a four category. So for the international listeners, that is category four. Don't let the A confuse you there that it's just been some sort of rise to the top. And you've tried to drive the dress it up over here and I don't know. Why have they done that like a for a three a two a one all over the rest of the world it's just cut for country cut to cut one when I started actually it was a better system and I'm going to go back to this. Use the call it a b c d. So you're a d. You're a d times as well. But what's brilliant about this story and why I love it, it was prompted by a post that Connor had on social media that kind of just caught my attention. And we hear the World Tour Reuters every week and they do, you know, spectacular things or, you know, they really don't have the Dauphin A or some mad stuff. But they're pro-boy curators. They're meant to do this spectacular stuff. While your story is super interesting, your category for a guy who is a salesman selling and truck parts, you're not meant to do crazy spectacular stuff, but yet you have. You went and you decided to complete an Everest thing. What was the motivation behind that? And also congratulations. Thank you very much. I said I only got served at the last podcast. It was grueling. What was the motivation behind it? I suppose it started last year over here in Ireland. obviously we're going through same as anywhere else, pandemic and the lockdowns. And we had no racing, so there was no real motivation to do, you know, the motivation honestly did. So one of my clubmates has done one before and I kind of always said it, yeah, I'd love to do an Everest, but I never really said it out loud. So stupidly in an email to Sean one weekend, I said, man, I think I'd love to do whatever's. And sure, once I said that, I put it out there, he was like, yeah, dog with a bone. Let's get on this. Let's make it a good year. So for context, Sean McKenna is one of our coaches at Roman. Connor's working with him. Sorry for the interjection there. So, yeah, so I said it to him. He just jumped on straight away. He was supposed to do it or supposed to get me to. He definitely. No, no, I didn't see him. there were too many meters on the day. So yeah, so unfortunately, it didn't happen after just with the regional lockdowns and that. So we just put it on the back burner and said, yeah, we'll build up over the winter break towards it. And we did. And they're two weeks ago. So what are we in the June now? So yeah, started started June, the sixth of June is when I got it done was the D-Day.
And what's trend like I always find with a big distinction between coach and on-coach athletes, I think is this idea of putting a goal in the diary and then starting to fine tune everything as we move towards that goal. When I chat with friends who are on-coached, they have kind of vague stuff like get faster, do better, be Johnny to the top of the hill. You know, Johnny could have been on the pace for the last month. Now you're beating into the top of the hill, like, this is not something to pat yourself on the back about Johnny's in alcoholic, but they're the sort of vague goals we set, but it's really interesting, when you move over to being coached, you put these concrete goals down, and then because when you're balancing work, social life, family, all this other stuff around it, you can't leave like a monk, 364 days a year, but the goal allows you to just heighten up that lifestyle a little bit as you get closer to the goal, and then ease off as you get the fire side of it. Do you find that? Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I suppose being coached, it takes, obviously the guests work out of it. I won't say some of the things I suggested, John, might tell you about coming up to it, like I was like, right, Sean, I think I should do this and I think I should do this in preparation. You're just like, no, you mad, man, there's no need to. So yeah, having that coach in there, obviously takes the guess for about, it's also accountability, you know, because you're kind of, you set this goal out and you have a couple of bad weeks or a couple of bad days or busy in work or busy in life or shit weather or whatever. And you know he's checking in on you. So it's like, right, yeah, I gotta get out on the bike. I gotta get the hour and a half, two hour session done, whatever it is during the week. And- Well, it's not the thing I was reading a quote somewhere And it was like commitment is doing what you said you do long after the mood you said it in has left you I thought that's brilliant because it's like every single person that watches rock leaves the theater thinking like I'm gonna be a boxer Sums up my efforts because I was like I'd be great. Wouldn't it like you know I Mean he he took it on. It's like yeah, yeah, you're gonna do it. Here's how we're gonna do it It makes it happen because we've had Reuters come in and Sean's worked on actually one of the guys that wanted to do dirty cans. That gets 200 miles off road. It's 14 hours for the pros, I think. So you can imagine for amateurs. It's anything from 15 hours to 24 hours. But when you say something like that, you say it in a mood because you've just watched dirty cans as our friends talked about it. You're going to romanticize it. You don't have an idea, the hardship you have to go through to get to it. But when you say it and you verbalize it to a coach and you stick it into diary, the rest of it's just nearly joined the doctors. Just follow the session he has planned for you every day to take into that. And what I haven't chatted to Sean on it, what's your sort of compliance with training sessions like are you lad who does all your training sessions? Are you lad who starts moving your rest day to later in the week and stuff? No, the fact that you just told me you haven't spoke to Sean, I can say whatever hell I want. So, yeah, no, I do it 100%. I'm probably pretty sure I'm the best guy he has that he's coaching at the moment. I'm pretty sure he said that. No, I'd be pretty good, to be fair, I would. I'd be pretty good. I'm going to say that. I have five days out of seven under two days, rest days. And so obviously, shit comes up. You get an ad hoc meeting that you weren't planning. So you have a bit of wiggle room or change my rest of the day. But yeah, I think I think I'm pretty good with my training. So how does a man that's balancing work? And also, you're in your early years, your cycling career. And we joked about the A4, but it is an introductory category. And it's one, you're definitely going to gravitate up to categories as the years go past. But you're you're very much in the early phase of your cycling career and you're so you're balancing something that's relatively new, work with girlfriends. What does train and look like for you on a week to week basis?
It's during the week. It's with three sessions during the week, one that's Friday. So it's 90 minutes, maybe an hour and a half, two hours session. And then Saturday, I want you to say maybe again, two hours and then Sunday the club's been so that's three four hours getting the endurance in but it depends. Yeah, it depends what kind of phase you're going through. I suppose building up to the Everest, it was kind of a lot of strength work and then coming up to it some VO2 max sessions and then tapering off and just being ready for it and then changing it up, get back into the race and getting and the legs speed up and sprint sections back in. It's amazing how if anyone hasn't had gone through it, I've built up this, built up this, built up this where you're completely fucked and you're thinking, I'm not even gonna get through this event. And then you stick a taper into it. It's amazing how much you freshen up. Like people are always looking for, you know, I spent all those on last week's podcast and we were talking about just marginal gains and he was saying, guys are coming to him all the time with, you know, I'm looking at these new wheels $4,000 euro, there are 50 grams lighter and stuff. People just want to spend money and they want to ignore the glaring massive gains you can make in other areas. His massive gain he was saying was body weight. But another huge gain is free, it's a taper. It can give you 15 to 20% extra on race day or event day. Yeah, absolutely. And as well, that's where when you haven't studied cycling or you haven't gone through all the categories and grades and the life of cycling or the success of cycling like yourself or Sean have done. So that's the joy of having him there, just telling you what to do. Obviously, I want to learn what, I don't want to just get out and I am like, I haven't been told before that hard for five minutes and then rest and go hard again for five minutes. Obviously, I want to know why am I doing this, what's the benefit? But it definitely helps having him tell you, you know, to figure out yourselves. It's funny because some writers just don't care. Like I had Ryan Mullen on the podcast and we were talking about, you know, chronic training load, acute training load. And he's just like, I don't know. I don't know what any of this is. Like I just get my session. I look at it like a menu, like I'm baking a cake and I say, well, this is what I have to do. And it's just boom, boom, boom. That's someone else's job. They planning. I do it. They're different jobs. then there's other athletes who really want to intimately understand, like what is the purpose of this session? How does this microsolica fit into the macrosolica? Where is this in my long term plan? And I think it's horses for course with it. Why Everest? Why not, you know, north to south, Milan to Miznehead? Why not, you know, 300 K in a day? Why? What was it about Everest that captures your imagination? I suppose everyone who has looked into it or thought about it's just a weird, it's a fascination. I don't really, it's just, it's so brutal, it seems so, I think on the website, it's so friendlessly brutal or something is what they name it. And it is, like, you know what's so simple. There's no great work in Ouchs of it. It's literally to pick a hill right open down a number of times until you reach the same elevation as Everest. It's so simple. How do you map? Because I've never looked into it. You literally have your Garmin Ouch and you're just looking at the meters taking a boy. Or have you worked this out on advance? Yeah, well, pick your hills. Luckily, I kind of went around looking at a couple of different hills. The first one I looked at was the one I ended up doing it on. You don't know. But people go around looking at houses and stuff on the weekends. You look around looking at hills. Well, I was going on to Strava. Like I wasn't necessarily writing them off. It was a lazy way. I just go on Strava and Google Maps and see what's that gradient? What's the surface look like? But the first one I looked at was the one my club mate did it on two years ago. And that's the first one I looked at. And then I came to play it around. And I just brought back to that one. I said, that's perfect. It's ideal, gradient, the surface, the visibility on it, the shelter. And it kind of had a bit of everything.
It ticked all the boxes. So is there an ideal optimum gradient for it? Or is that just preference? Yeah, again, I suppose it's preference. Like I'm, well, I say I'm, I think I'm a life writer. I'm pretty smart. I, so kind of eight and a half percent, I suppose, when you're doing 53 times, it's steeping off. So it's eight and a half percent 2K. And so you can kind of, you can get up in a nice tempo, you're never really going into a red zone. But 53, it's relatively low amount for apps. you know, some veils, you go shorter one, you have to do it 70, 80, 90 times. So that just takes over dead. It's like, God, I've cycled something 70, 80 times. That's cruel. Whereas if you only have to do a 53, there's the other side of it that you go a real long climb and you only have to do it maybe 10, 15 times. We don't have too many of them in Ireland either. Well, like I'm wondering for the records, because I know I've had Rowan on the podcast and talking about his record, but are you not better off with a straight up just long climb. So you're not taking the extra time for the descents because it's meters climb. And so going downhill here, obviously climbing zero meters. But you are getting that rest, I suppose. Yeah. So it's kind of fighting the balance that you want. And all Ronan's claims, like 14%. So he was all, you know, that was a big video to effort. It's what the pace he was doing. And then he was was to send them at 110k an hour. Whereas mine was a bit more gradual, so you weren't pushing yourself into the red. And then I didn't really want to come down at two quay heater. Like, you know, I wanted my bit of rest by coming down and especially later on into the efforts that you weren't coming down something crazy pay cedar. Because I wrote a, also the Letras allegedly the longest line in the world there as New Year's. Columbia and like it's horrific. It's like the guts of 80 kilometers straight up here. But like the taut of me getting to the top of that and then touring around to do it again. Like I was cooked. I've pictured up on my Instagram account, speedbook and check them out. It's on roll band that's Eichlen and it's just like I'm on the ground you'll spend that the end of it. Like it's actually it's it's funny because I was with two lads, one's a Columbia and one's Costa Rican and like I'm roughly 80 kilograms this is the lads were 61 62 kilograms max and you know they're not pros but they're very good amateurs and one of them had been pro back in the day and like I rode the forest I think four hours with the lads and I was coming apart so badly because once I know it comes to training right like I had a handlebar bag on I think I had one bottle water or something like that. It's like the focus going on here. So for a bit of sightseeing cycle and four hours in I was like open a pyre to convey the crumbs starting to come. And I was like oh yeah lads I'm gonna stop and take a few pictures. You said oh I can't just in a favor. I had to stop on the side. You're capitulating on the side of the road. Oh man it was horrific so when I think of Everest I get post-traumatic stress disorder instantly. because it just feels such a difficult ask. And I think some of it is, obviously we touched on the physical side and you getting ready with you and your coach, but a huge aspect of that must have been mental. Yeah, absolutely. And I suppose that's where, you know, that's where the people, people around you, you know, training buddies, club mates, friends, family, that they come into it as well, because I got a massive amount of support on the day. I didn't actually plan on getting out of support. I had kind of a couple of the guys lined up to come out, the girlfriend was there for the day. She was the swanny for the day and nutritious nutritionist and the water carrier, everything else. But you had a club mates, I think 17 of them throughout the day rolled out and did a couple of reps of me and cheered me on. So, you know, that parks you open. You get a couple of hours out of that, then you get a bit of a slump, and you see someone new, and you park up again, and then the jersey change. I actually told a couple of friends, because a couple of friends are thinking that they are going through the whole, they're actually doing a group ever this week.
So I was telling them about club mates? Yeah, yeah. So they're looking at doing a Thursday, whether it's depending Thursday or this common weekend. per charity. So it's pretty good. So I think this podcast is going to go on Wednesday. So best of luck, lads. That's the luck lads. So yeah, so today came out. And yeah, it was cool. The jersey changes actually a funny thing. That was one of the kind of men's I had planned for myself. So I've kind of a couple of nice jerseys, you know, that just feel got in and the chutney when you put it on. I've wondered, I'm not just saying it is the road managers. I don't know, like, I'm assuming if you're listening, you might not, you might not. It's Pink Jersey, you know. It's pretty fucking peacock. And there's a, there's a bit of an element that if you were to a flow bright, you better be on form because if you turn up in a Pink Jersey and you get dropped on the first slide. Yeah, it's not a good look. No, no, so I had that, I had a really nice jersey I got from the birthday and then another club jersey. It's amazing to be able to use an effect of changing your kit. It's a trick I used to use on long roads or wet roads where if you had a look enough to have a car with your own aroids, you do three errors and you change into fresh kit. It's like you're changing it to fresh legs. It's like you're restarting the ride again. It's like a new ride. So that's what it is. I treat Jersey's plan. And every time we got into it in New Jersey, it just felt like I was setting restart and I was going from zero and that I didn't have 3000 meters I claim it in the legs already. It's insane. So that's the kind of, that's the mad thing about, you know, the average challenge, or any of the Jordan's challenge really. It's just, you're actually so strong. You just need to tap into it and you need to trick yourself and you know, it really is mind over matter. And a lot of time when we we've no idea where our limit is because so few as I've ever pushed past that when you think you're at 100% You're at about 20% you have so much more to go like the human body is just an amazing machine at overcoming adversity like millions of years of genetic program and overcome this stuff But we're just getting so lazy and soft Like spent all my days away spent off last week was on a mad one about people being soft and It's telling me crazy. He's just someone who loves hardship and the wilderness and the wild and he just thinks we're an Xbox society that's just getting erode and muscle atrophy by the day. You mentioned nutrition and your girlfriend's playing a key role in the nutrition. What does nutrition look like? Are you getting hand ups? The scent for me looks like an obvious place to grab something to top and eat it under the scent. Yeah, absolutely. So every time I came up, so she had a map out, it was 60 grams of carbs every hour and then eating every half an hour. So we'll see even 30 grams, whatever way it mixed up. So she did a different foods mixed out, so it didn't get bored of eating one certain thing, loads of rice cakes. I've never wanted to see a rice cake again. But yeah, so it's basically just right up and after half an hour stick out the hand, she he gave me your race kick or whatever it was, and just stuffed it in my mouth, and going down. And again, that comes back to the hill as well. The chew, choosing the hill, because if you have something technical, you obviously need two hands on the bars. If you have something, you know, 14%, it's hard to eat. Again, we've taken a hand off the bar. So he even a half percent wasn't too bad. And you wanna have a finish put a bottom, I guess. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So you need a bit, you know, 2K was pretty good. I could eat it. But yeah, it was kind of, so that was, that was the nutrition for most of it. So what we have about rice cakes, bananas, dates? Rice cakes, bananas, and then she makes a lot of the, a lot of nice bars, like these track bars, bike bars and energy balls. So I couldn't tell you what, send them to be honest because I have no concepts nutrition or culinary skills, but they're good. I was close to Oxon from that. And, but yeah, so she, she had that kind of mapped out. And I didn't actually, I didn't consume a gel at all throughout the day.
I'd won ball of pasta near the end. Right. Well, I tried to eat pasta, compared to feeding myself water. Yeah, puts pasta near the end and then a packet of crisps. A packet of crisps. That's it. Oh, no. It's a problem cocktail of offers. Okay, so that is the secret. Walkers are a Protestant crisp as well. Oh. Jeez, yeah, we need to re-record this podcast. I can be saying that. I don't know if he's going to be hate more. Me or you for letting me on. So what is the biggest challenge of this? If someone's looking at it right now, is the biggest challenge? The physical preparation for obviously there's a lot of, you know, violence and work and family around China. There's the mental element to this and there's the logistic element. Can you put your finger on and say, that is the most difficult part or that's the key to success of it? Yeah, I'd say probably somewhere between the mental and the nutrition. Nutrition was obviously a massive thing. I don't know if this is right, but I said it to the lads. You know, obviously you get nervous coming up to these things. Again, am I fittin' off? Oh, God, no. Maybe I need to leave it another week, maybe I need to leave it another month, another block training, whatever it is. Should have went harder last week. It should have went easier, all this thing. But I think if you're contemplating doing it Everest, you're fittin' off to doing Everest. Because it can't be displayed in no disrespect, anyway. Well, someone who just started cycling yesterday, they're not thinking about nevers. They're probably gonna know what nevers this. So if you're of that fitness level or experienced level that you're talking about doing it, then you're fit enough to do it. But isn't that a great thing for people to take because I know there's so many guys that come out and we've a Saturday morning rise, we need to drag you across to it. And roll my group right on a Saturday. And it's a lot of the guys, it's a very mixed group You could have anyone from a pro, who's coming out to like complete beginners. And I mean, just a couple of sport heaves under their belt. But we're fine then now, a lot of those guys who started sport heaves, maybe just before lockdown. They're getting fitter and fitter on trying to plan to just come and out. And they're at the point now where they're thinking, maybe I'll try an A4 race. Will I try my four-star A4 race? And that's such a great piece of advice for them. If you're thinking about, if you're at the point where you're starting to think about it, just go on there. Yeah. I think your mind is, you know, playing tricks in the afternoon. you're just if you're thinking about just get in do it what's the worst that can happen and the hill will be there go back out of the end if you fail the first time you know all you're going to do is take experience and it's good train a ride it's good fitness so since you're on the podcast now and you're your roadman cycle of famous because you are actually the first ever recipient of a roadman award the first official roadman that's the first and last cycling award I will ever win I wonder is it because this has got me thinking now that you've built this sort of reputation as the Everest dude now, are you going to put another crazy event in your diary and say I'm going to come back to you in six months and I'm going to talk to you about how I... Yeah, I think with all due respect before I get the title as the Everest dude, I probably have to get a big closer to Ron McLaughlin. But I don't know if you do, you know, because it's a different, it's different, you know, because Ron is coming from like what did you write, six, seven years, we're on post where you park a lot of life stuff that you don't during those six, seven years, some that I can speculate wasn't all that healthy. And you know, he's coming as an ex-pro and a temp dinner. And it's very different to a working guy who's starting a cycling journey at temp dinner. I don't think you need to, we don't need to stack a couple of years open up pros in it. My justification, I actually said it to the club made everyone who did never a couple years ago. I told them that our ever-s were harder than moments because ours took longer. So we rode for longer. So that's my just vacation. 100% I'd say is the guys doing like, you'd be out of 40 kilometers on and I'd be in Canada or something. And you know, I might finish it in 50 minutes or something.