Cormac McGeough is an American based Irish Professional cyclist with ambitions to step onto the World's biggest stage
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Today I'm gonna talk with Irish professional cyclist, Cormac McKeo. Let's cue that intro! The big question is this. How do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness and our long-chevages? That is the question on this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Welch and welcome to the Roadman Podcast. Roadman! Welcome back to another Roadman Cycling Podcast and I'm super excited today to bring you Cormac Macchio. Cormac is an Irish professional cyclist for a wildlife generation pro cycling and as you might have guessed from the name Cormac does indeed hail from Ireland. His parents are from County Monin and pro cycling stats and himself both identify him as an Irishman, despite the fact you're here a slight American twang in his accent. He's only 24 years old, but he's already pulled out some impressive results and wrote for some pretty big teams. He's with Jelly Belly on to Evo Pro and now this year on to Jelly Belly's new incarnation, which is wildlife. He's been on the podium at a stage at Torahila and as recent as last week, he was open to break in the Queen's stage, the one where we see in our previous guest, J. vine showing true at the end of the stage. Karmic was in the break of the day there all day and gave a very good representation of himself and this team. He's a super interesting guy. Hopefully we're going to catch up on ongoing throughout the season and then just check in and see how he's getting on. But today it's a chat with Karmic. Before we dive into that, let me remind you about Patreon because Patreon is how we fund the podcast guys. So it's over on patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore waltch. It's the price of a beer once a month. And it's just really to tip your cap and say, thanks, if you're getting some value, if you're enjoying the interviews from the likes of Cormac, just buy a beer to show the gratitude. It keeps the podcast going, covers the costs and, you know, it helps me get drunk once a month. Folks, I'm going to bring you the interview with Cormac without further delay. So here we go. Welcome to the roadman podcast, Mr. Cormac Bikyo. Cormac, welcome to the Roadman Cycling Podcast. Hi, Anthony. Happy to be here. Nice to have you, mate. How are you? Fantastic. Yeah, just up here in Arceus, Mount Arceus in Turkey. It's the near town, Caisseria. We're training here at Altitude, getting ready for tour of Rwanda. So how are you feeling after tour of Turkey? Pretty whipped, to be honest. It's a pretty hard race. like 33 hours of motor pacing. I see you got into the break on the coinstretch. Yeah, I did. I was super happy about that ride. It was a pretty big fight to get into the break that day. And it was, but it was perfect for me basically because in the early part of the stage, it was like kind of rolling, rolling highway climbs and stuff. So that's kind of like my territory. So talk to us about that getting into the break at the very start, because a lot of people listening to this, they probably haven't done these races and the coverage normally only starts on Euro Sport or wherever people get their cycling after the break is settled down. And it kind of looks like, oh, the lads just rolled off into the break. Talk to us about how you get into the break. Yeah, well, sometimes it's like that where people do just roll off into the break, but especially in big races. But in this race, it wasn't like that. any single day. It was a big fight. You know, I think one day it took even 100k for the break to go. But that one day I was like super, super hard up these climbs. I have a YouTube video, actually a GoPro video and like I have my GoPro mounted behind my saddle and going up those climbs in the beginning of that stage. There's a lot of grimacing faces and it's really good. You must send that video on a link it up for people so I can check it out. Yeah, for sure. But yeah, it was a big fight. I had to bridge up to it. It took me a few minutes to get up there, but yeah, that's happy to make it in there with a few other teams. What's our power you average on a day like that in the break? Sadly, my power meter was not working. for the whole tour. It's really unfortunate. But I mean, probably upwards of 300 at least. Yeah, that is a rough day. A little more. Yeah, that's not a day. So one of the guys in the break, which I can't remember his name, was the Israel Star Art Open Nation. There was an Israel guy from Austria. I can't remember his name either. What's the difference when you're in a group like that between, can you notice the world or legs? Yeah, well, in that situation, the world to a writer, he was kind of like yelling out, like, oh, we don't need to go hard here.
We're like, we should go hard here. He's kind of like, he was definitely directing. It's quarterbacon. It's a break a little bit, yeah, which is funny that you mentioned that, because yeah, he definitely was kind of in charge of it. Is it just experience or is there a noticeable strength difference as well with the World All through our guys. I mean, that's what's cool about these races, right? Like, and being able to go in them is because, you know, you definitely, there's not as much difference as you think, you know, when it comes down to it. When you're all there together, riding right next to each other, right? Like, obviously, like, Cavendish has like, you know, his whole team is really strong, right? And they're really strong as a team. And I'm not a sprinter. I'm not saying I am a sprinter at all. But like, I don't know, it's just cool to be there and cool to be competing right next to those guys because I think by the end of that week, our team, wildlife generation, we definitely showed that we were capable of being there and competing against those guys. Did you see the tweets that Willy Smith's BH Borgos put out last week? No, I did. Willy's dude who's been on the podcast and so he's a you know I like Willie a lot. He's funny is YouTube videos are funny as well But yeah, I like this video out talking about or sorry a tweets sequence a tweet out Talking about the lack of respect that world or writers show lower level writers And he's talking about he didn't name anyone actually he didn't name so when he named Valverde and said you would never guess the shit that he gets off lesser World War Reuters from a Reuters class as Valverde but he didn't name who the Reuters were like he said guys were telling the fuck off get out with a lead out trying back to where you belong that type thing is that something you're experiencing in the palaton is it something people are talking about yeah I mean you definitely see that like a lot of guys they kind of get on their high horse a little bit and like they just because they're wearing a different jersey than you, you know, they... Is there like a... is there a team that's a particular body fender? Is there a person you want to call out as a particular body fender? I mean, well, I wouldn't want to call anybody out individually, but like there was one situation, I'll give you an example, like where, like one rider was... He's dropping like a stone after doing his job, you know? He's dropping like a stone down the back of a climb, basically. He's like, he's going like half the speed of the bunch and I'm like about to get pinched by him. So I just barely push him. He's like, always it's wildlife, always. He turns around at me. It's like, all right, man, whatever. Whenever you see that, whenever you see people doing that, it's just kind of like, in my opinion, it's like a state of desperation. Like, oh, I'm hurting and you're here and you're a Conti rider and I'm a world tour rider. I, you shouldn't be here. Yeah, it's, it's a, it's a funny sort of power paradigm between the two. Jay Voyne was actually on the podcast from Albus and Vennox. He was on the podcast, you know, like two days before a tour of Turkey Starches. Uh, we're gonna, gonna get him back on. He's dealing sort of a life of it. Neo pro segment with us. Like we're gonna drop in, I don't know, once every four weeks or six weeks or something. But it was cool seeing Jay right at the front of the race. because he's someone who's just stepped up to World Tour. So chat to a lot of World Tour guys and most of them are amazing. But there's always, there's a little bit of extra ego with the World Tour lads that Jay definitely doesn't have yet. He's just such a normal down to Errat Lotto already. So it was super cool to see him up there mixing it on the Queen's stage. Do you see much of him? I agree for sure. Yeah, yeah, I didn't chat to him at all. But I saw him around and he definitely It looks good and they did some impressive stuff too, like with stage seven, you know, just out of nowhere in these nasty crosswinds like Alpason, they kind of like pull a fast one on Delco who was in the lead. They just came around at the last moment with the little train and just boom got like some bonus seconds and brought the lead down to the lead of the Delco guy down to only one second. Just like kind of crafty stuff like that. It was nice to see. And he was riding well on crosswinds and everything even so. Shout out to Zwift. He can ride for sure. He's not just strong. It was cool to see. I think everybody was waiting to see how he'd go.
It was a cool event for everybody to watch. Yeah, I think the older end of that was going to be when racing resumes back in Ireland. We're going to have a load of A4s who have only been 12 months on swim. have to hank around corners and there's going to be the biggest crashes you have in your life. Like if you taught racing at the frontlands. Fuck. So again, if you taught racing was dangerous like 12 months ago or 14 months ago, it's going to be a whole new level. Yeah. Yeah. Get your upgrade lads. Like obviously you've had, you know, your only early stages in your career and you've had great roads in Torre, Hela and someone I still feel coverable. When I look at your palm areas, you definitely have one stand out result there. That's the mead ground pray. Didn't you win the mead ground pray when you were back home? Yeah, yeah, I did. Yeah, I'm happy about that. Ray says good. That's tough, right? I was having a hard time. I had a hard time in the Ross that year because it was like a, it was my baptism of fire really. Who'd you ride the Ross with? First big raise. Ulster. Okay. Why? What year was that? 2017. Yeah, I think I was actually called Blue that year. Yeah. And the Ross is so chaotic compared to some of the races you're probably used to now where you have the five man teams and the sort of internal rivalry for County Ryder and then even the internal rivalry again for that first one guy who wants to race through a village because he's from that village. It's just, how do you kind of rate the Ross compared to the races you're doing now? Well, yeah, I mean the Ross is just hard all day, isn't it? Like, it's kind of just nuts. Like, you know, I can only remember one day, I've only done it that one time, but I can only remember one day where like really slowed down and you're able to have a chat with the guy next to you, you know. So I think there's definitely more of that in the big races, But when the big races are on, like at the end, it's just like, it's just, it's very sharp and it's very, very intense at the end. Whereas the Ross is maybe kind of more like, just hard all day on the pedals, you know, and moves going constantly and it's a bit of luck too, right? Yeah, you got the place, you know, right? Yeah, 100%. You can have the best legs in the world in the Ross and you can't follow every move. You've got to get a little bit of luck as well. Tour of Wanda will be like that too, I think, a little bit, because it's the same story. It's five man teams, and there's a lot of African teams, and maybe there'll be that local kind of knowledge or that local, like the things going on behind the scenes that maybe you don't realize are happening, but that kind of throw a span in the mix. So is your team this year, what do you be right in saying? This is effectively a rebrand, the Jelly Bell team. Yeah, yeah, it started out as, because of what a one sponsor wanted, they started out as like a U-25 team. Back in 2019 it was, I think. And then basically we've, they've ditched that and now we're just about like, it doesn't matter who we're just about winning races, just like Jelly Belly. So yeah, a lot of guys from the Jelly Belly Days, like Ulysses, Castillo, our Mexican National Champion and Segei Svetkov are Romanian rocket. What's your calendar like this year? Well, it's been great so far. We raced six one days in Turkey in February, down in Alanya on the coast. And then we did a smaller stage race in Turkey, also in a town called Konya, two of them at Lana. It's a 2.2, four day, 2.2. and then week rest and then straight into tour Turkey. And then we've been here at altitude for about nine days now. And tomorrow we're heading to Rwanda, and we've got the tour of Wanda. And then after that, it's kind of foggy. It's hard to predict what'll happen. Just there's a lot up in the air this year, right? As you know, as everybody knows, and hopefully we'll be doing CBU tour in Romania. And after that, it's kind of all up in the air. But that's a very international programme for US country team, you know, because I gave a year with a Stellus oncology out in the US. And we didn't have a lot of, we came across, we rode the Ross and a couple of blocks in Europe, but we were mainly raiding like rice and national criterium calendar, national road calendar, you know, kind of tour Quebec, balls, tour de Hela, that type of stuff. Think you'll get the race in Ireland this year? Yeah, we'll see about that. I definitely want to come up for nationals, but just with the current quarantine situation and everything might be tricky.
So hopefully if things change, if things change, I hopefully will see myself there. Or would you get your boys across next year for the Ross? Yeah, hopefully. Yeah, that'd be grand. Yeah, I'll send you a message off air and see can we make that happen? That'll be cool. Yeah, wonderful. So, I call it, we talked about in Tori-Torki, we started this race where it's the county levels, pro-county, and the world, or there's definitely, we spoke about the difference in maybe the fitness of the world, or guys I've already experienced, but is there a difference in equipment, access to resources like team buses, one-year, or things like that? Yeah, well, it's nice to erase Turkey because there's a lot of the playing field is a bit more even because a lot of the support is provided by the race organization. And because of the big teams, they don't drive their big buses over down to Turkey, the 30 hour drive or whatever it would be, unlike Romanian highways. But there definitely exists that disparity in little things. We had some very cold days in Turkey, like racing in temperatures of like zero to like three degrees. So you see it there, but also with our bikes, I think we have the best bikes because we ride simple bikes. We have a specialized tarmac SL6s with rim brakes. And I'd take that over like a big arrow gate any day really. I'm kind of more of a simple. Yeah, I think the disc brakes are getting, you know, it was kind of fashionable for a while. And then it seems to be since Froome came out and said he didn't love them. Now everyone's coming out with a woodwork and they just, they're fucking to watch the cycle across worlds this year. And I nearly have to turn the volume down on the TV. Like every corner that came into it's like, like they're squeaky in their shit. I don't want the deal is with them. Yeah, it's the same story in the road races too, just like every corner you hear that. And then, or a guy's coming up next to you, even on Quick Step and stuff, you know. It's just like, Jesus, I could not live with that. I think it's just, most people should buy back. It's just simpler and easier. It would just crack me because, you know, if you're in a bad day, I like to look down and go, right, at least my breaks aren't rubbing. And I kind of opened the caliber or something if I'm coming into a sprint or something, but I just, and especially Irish roles because you're picking up like a little bit of dirt all the time if it's raining and they're getting kind of caught on your rim and it's nice to be able to look down and see a bit of air between the rim and the part, but with the disc brakes, it just seems like they're rubbing all day long. long. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the biggest things too, especially for like a if you're a young guy getting into racing, you know, or a young girl, whatever, and you're in foreign countries and you're like breaking wheels and stuff like it's just it's a little easier if you have a rim brake bike because then you can you can kind of fix fix the issue or like get a get a spare wheel or something if you flat from like neutral service like if you're in freaking, you know, like tour of Elania or sorry, not tour of Elania, GP Elania, like all these one day races we did down there. You know, the neutral service is just like a guy driving around and like a, it's not like Shimano full on neutral support. It's like a guy riding around in a puzio like heels from the local club like in the back like it's not like, you know, you don't have the top tier support. So you kind of got to accept what you can get, but if you have some fancy disc bike, and you got your specific spacing and the proper rotor size isn't the same or something, it's just like more problems. So comic, you're right at continental level at a moment. So for listeners that aren't too familiar when you get to pro cycling, it's basically divided into three divisions where we have our world tour, the top division, pro-county, and then-county. So I would assume the aspiration is for you at some point to step up and try and secure Pro-Contee world tour contracts? Yeah, definitely. I'm, as you said, I mean, and I feel the same way. I feel like I'm still in the early parts of my career and I've only been racing really for like four years, four or five years. I had a late start in cycling. I didn't start racing until I was like 19 racing road. So yeah, I definitely have aspirations to move up and I definitely feel like I'm just getting started as well. And I'm definitely, I'm enjoying the sport and if one day I'm not enjoying it, like I'll stop but for now I'm still getting a lot out of it.
How do you find your edge, Karmik? Because when I talk to world tour guys and notably I was talking to Mike Woods on the podcast a while ago and I raced Mike in a tour of box like a 2.2. He was explaining it to me as like, member to her boss where there was like five guys, six guys who were putting the pain on. You know, there's a lot of good writers, but there's five, six guys who are making the race. You know, Philip Dijgden, Mansebo, Mike Golds, they were making the race. And he's like, when you get the world to order, all that level, they're all the dudes who can make the race. He's like, everybody's trying to hurt, everybody's sacrificing, everybody's working on their diet. Like, how do you find the edge now to step up to that? because it's just become so increasingly professional at the top ranks. Yeah, it's funny you mentioned that. Yeah, like it's definitely something you noticed, noticed in Turret, Turkey, like just with the level of competition was extremely high, right? Just with the way people were riding and like the risks people were willing to make and this kind of thing. So obviously they're making risks in the race and they're working hard in the races to do their best, but also, yeah, like you said, off the bike. And I feel like just have to keep shipping away at it. And I definitely enjoy thinking about my diet and thinking about training. And I'm not the kind of guy where I'm not, it's not a burden really to have my life revolve around it. So I'm hopeful. So are you looking for edges, obviously, legal edges, wherever you can get them, like when it comes to sleep, recovery, et cetera? Yes, definitely. Yeah, I mean, like you said, sleep, it's huge, nutrition, it's huge, I do a bit of experimenting with nutrition and I'm always looking for that, yeah. You tried ketones, yeah? I haven't tried ketones now. I've been thinking about it though, yeah. I've been playing around with them for the last couple of months now, they're interesting. They're balls expensive, but they're interesting. Exactly, yeah, that's kind of, I guess that's what's holding me back. Yeah, there's definitely a lot of research and a lot of, I know a lot of people use them. So yeah, I'm using the Prove at the moment. I'll pop a link for people in the description down below. I had a romance so much I called it just before Christmas and I tried to get 30 different experts from, you know, 30 different angles inside the world or whether it's like nutritionists, mechanics, whatever, and got to talk to a bunch of sports scientists, physiologists, dudes who've worked with, you know, your saggans, free homes, the biggest names in the sport, but they were telling me about ketones when they came in and the price on them back in the day was insane. You were looking at like 350, 400 euro a sache at the very beginning. And like they are still expensive. They're a lot more affordable. I think the ones I'm I'm using it a moment, around $200 a month. It's hard to know. I'd love to see, I'd love to try and get you hooked up with someone and see what you think, because for me, I'm just not trying and hard enough or disciplining the order areas of my life to notice the marriage on different k-tounds. You know what I mean? If I haven't like four beers at night, does it really matter if I'm having k-tounds in the morning? Yeah, right, exactly. It's hard to notice when little things are making a difference when like your routine isn't consistent. Yeah. I think that's a big mistake I see with amateur riders where they spend too much time focusing on like these small 1% gains or even different same rim breaks and disc breaks. It's like, hold on, like your 5 kilograms overweight. Yeah, for sure. I agree on percent. It's definitely not as complicated as you think. You think. I mean, a lot of people, like it's just, it's a lot easier to go by, you know, ketones than it is to go train, you know, so it's kind of like, oh, this is making me faster, but like, the quality. Stop eating fucking biscuits. Like, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Like, you have a cup of tea without different biscuits until it. Exactly. Here's a rumor going around the Ireland for a while that if you had dipped your biscuit into your tea, the calories didn't count, that once you had moistened up the biscuit, It's no calories. Yeah, like your metabolism, like handled it better or something like that. I've chanched through the podcast with some amazing people around diet and sleep. And there's some cool stuff around sleep that, you know, again, I'd be cool seeing you trying some of this stuff. Like there's one that I might use called the chili pad. Have you heard of this? No, I haven't. It's awesome. It's like basically this she's that goes under your she.
So it's transportable. you could bring around with you. And it pumps cold water underneath your sheet. The idea is recovery is optimized and sleep is better when your body is a couple of degrees colder than room temperature. So like if you measure it using a woop or a ring or any of these, you can see noisable difference in sleep quality, not just duration, but like the type of sleep you're getting, like the distribution across different sleep phases. Usner is an awesome piece of kit. Interesting. Okay. Yeah, I'd be curious to look at that. But yeah, there's loads of cool little hacks and tricks like that that I almost wish I knew when I was raised on full time. The biggest hack I think for sleep is just go to sleep early. Yeah. Mind the end by time just do it, stop scrolling on your phone. Yeah, the phone, you hit that one like, but I get this with clients all the time, like I can't sleep and you're like, they're watching like a TV in their bedroom, they're on laptop on phone. Like our body's not designed to process that amount of light after the sun goes down. The sun is like a prehistoric mechanism for our body to start releasing serotonin, the go to sleep hormone and make us sleepy. And then you turn on the iPod and it wax all those hormones out of the kilter. Yeah, right. Yeah, and also just, I think caffeine at night is a big one too, just staying away from caffeine. I don't drink any coffee or anything at all because of that partly, but yeah, just staying away from the extra cup of tea at night or even that afternoon coffee will do you well. Because at night, you know, like a lot like with the scrolling or like with, you know, like you're better off just being asleep than just like, you know, scrolling reels or on Instagram or whatever, you know. Have you played around with supplements? No, I don't really take a lot of supplements. I just take a B12 supplement. That's about it. Yeah, I think there's definitely some interesting gains and supplements as well, but it's I think for listeners It's one of those things again where it's it's marginal compared to the stuff you were talking about which is just sleep and clean living Yeah, right. I mean do those things first and then kind of When you have the time to read about what you should be taking right like obviously not just like taking other people's word for it and like Do do the research, you know like it takes a lot of time I guess so yeah Yeah, it does. I think you can short circuit and it's going to lead to my next question. I was going to ask you about a mentor. But there's definitely people I've got to know through the podcast because kind of the tag line for the podcast is how do we use cycling as a tool for health, happiness and longevity. So I've got to know some like really cool scientists and stuff through the podcast who'll send me what's up and go, Oh, hey, check out these new blue light blocking glasses. And then I can kind of go, well, I don't need to go and do all the research for blue light blocking glasses because I trust this guy has done the research. So I check out, you know, or an optics on using now and super cheap, but they're, you know, in the tests, they just stand up so well against the blue light blockers. But is there anyone in your life in the, sort of, it doesn't have to be the biohacking area in the training, just general life advice? Anyone who you look up to as a mentor? Yeah, well, my mentor since the beginning of my career has been John Sheehan. He's a X Irish racing pro from he raced he's active in like the 80s and 90s he lives in the US now he's been my mentor since the start basically got me into the sport so yeah he's a big one for me does he coach? no not anymore he's uh he used to coach me but you just i just kind of outgrew his knowledge I guess. But yeah, he's more like an agent kind of now, agent mentor type. Old school, old school sort of cycling. I suppose it's changed so much since parameters, heart rate monitors. I do some motor pacing with, I know I got you stayed with Tush Lavery. Oh yeah, nice. Tush is wild, great crack. He's the maniac. I motor paced with him a little bit and he's still so old school. He talks about sprockets like he's like, you know, knock it down as Brock, lift it up as Brock at Rotterton Watts, but it works like. Yeah, yeah, I'd tosh to the list to, you know, an honorable mention mentor. Yeah, he he geared me up, got me ready for the Ross. Like, I think the first thing he I stayed with him actually when I when did the Ross before, you know, I did a few races and stuff.
But I think the first thing he said me is like in the car or whatever after getting me from the airport. He's like, so you're ready for the Ross or whatever. I'm like, yeah man, it'll be fun. And he's like, it'll be fun. The fuck did you just say? Like, just like what ensued was like a 30 minute long rant about like, damn console fucking, like, they don't have no fucking mercy on you. Like, oh, you know, it's just like, okay. Like an inch from my face while he's driving. It's like, gosh, look at the fucking road. He's a madman. He's one of the great characters in our cycling. Cycling here runs off those characters. We lost the great one two years ago. Gabriel Howard, he ran a lot of races in the Mullen area. There's only a handful of guys like that in our cycling and they're the backbone of it. Without them, the races don't run because they're not commercial activities. These guys love cycling. They love the buzz of it. The Rosspetermises that because It's the great, you know, night stage culture. And I remember I went there once, I've only won once on a night stage. It was after stage seven. I think it was like what I've done seven or eight races now. So it was like 2000, 13, 2014 or something. And I went out on stage seven and I had probably five, six points. My fuck I struggled the next day. So long over. Jesus. Yeah, I have not an experience like that, unfortunately. But the JLT Condor boys went out in 2017-2018, they had the jersey, they went out last night, like stage seven, they went out on a heavy, heavy session of foil and iron and the end of the jersey the next day. They all got dropped on their own categorised climb apart from the jersey after like 10k and they got back on for the cars and sobered up as they went on. Yeah, good. Just, when I start a get before I let you go, because I'm one of you, I respectfully your time, just giving people a little bit of insight into what it's like for you at the moment, sort of living this, like life as a pro athlete, but also trying to step up to the next level of pro where it's more of a career than a short-term pursuit. Yeah, yeah. Well, I definitely am full-time, right? Like I spend, I don't have any other job or anything else that I'm doing right now, but, and it's a lot of hours on the road as well. Just not living in Europe, I am living in the US right now. So we've had quite a long stint on the road right now, just living in a hotel basically for the last five weeks, and three weeks at home and between that and then five weeks before as well, just hotel living. So yeah, you gotta make a lot of sacrifices, but I'm happy to have a lot of people behind me. My girlfriend is down with it. A blessed heart and a family and mentors and it's a great sport though because that people really appreciate hard work. they appreciate people who are willing to put it all on the line. So I've had a lot of support. You have years. Are you able to cover expenses with your salary at moments? Tell me to fuck off if you want or ask me to join bank. Yeah, well, my salary isn't much. I'll say that much. But the bonus, at least, of being on the road so much is that the team also covers a lot of those expenses. So basically, especially in Turkey, it's class, because the last like five or the last two trips I basically just covered with prize money, right? Like I'm in a hotel and I'm getting fed and then anything else I want, you know, I'm getting enough prize money that I can kind of live a bit of life here. Get groceries on flakes. It's part of your apprenticeship, isn't it? Yeah, exactly, yeah. It's not glamorous. I'll tell you that much. And I think that's the big takeaway for a lot of people. Listen to this. I think they think it's glamorous. They watch behind the scenes at the Wolfpack on YouTube and they assume that that's the life you're living. But it's a much more humble life and it's a paycheck to paycheck, meal to meal style life. Yeah, even for the big guys it is. It's a pretty humble life. Yeah, that's kind of what I've been trying to show too. I've got a YouTube channel that I've started up in the last few weeks, actually, basically. I've just been trying to show more insight into that it is just a pretty simple life and it's not anything glamorous, but that's kind of what's cool about it, right? That's kind of like the... It's just this kind of like, like you're a monk or something. You've just kind of like chosen to take this humble pursuit, but like there's a lot of glory at the end Yeah, I like that analogy If you weren't a cyclist, what would you be doing right now?
Wow, that's a really hard question. Oh man, I Don't know about that one probably I'd probably be a different pro athlete honestly I've always kind of wanted to be a pro athlete and I used to ski a lot going up So yeah, if you press gear in some or ski bum. Nice. You know, you could do the reverse rug with you on it. That's what we're going to call it, where you go from. Yeah. Then hover to skiing. Yeah. It may be maybe after my time in cycling is done, you know, get a van and I'll go work as a lifty. Or what a lot of people do in the US is they work as firemen in the summer and then they go and go and ski all winter. I'm working on a van at the moment. Oh class yeah, but if I bike live in the van style project and go tipping around watch Tour de France pull the bike outright some climbs sleep in the van bit of a bum. I love it like that one pro editor. I talk up Yeah Last question that finish up on this one What's the best piece of advice you've got in your journey? That's helped you out the most Best piece of advice I've got. Best piece of advice I've got is to have a consistent routine and to not have a routine that's overly complicated because when you're moving from hotel to hotel, or even like the hotel, even if you're an amateur rider and you only go stay in a hotel once a week or whatever, like basically you're routine, if it's overly complicated, you're gonna leave things out and you're gonna like, you know, forget to do things, and, or it's just gonna be too much mental energy or you're not gonna have enough time to figure things out when you're in a hotel. So, and, but also having that routine, but also like as soon as you set foot somewhere new, like making sure that like, boom, all right, like what's the thing I would normally do at like eight o'clock at night, you know, like just getting right back into it and like, Yeah, just not straying away from that routine. Do you have any home comforts I used to bring, like comfort in inverted commas here? I used to bring a piece of rope, and I'd set that up in the bathroom, and that'd be my clothes line, and I'd have my arrow press. And they were like my two that made a feel, like that's my room, this is my home. Yeah, I think mostly with nutrition, like I don't have anything in particular, Like I'm looking around my suitcase and I'm like trying to think like what I have. But I think nutrition is the biggest thing for me that kind of takes me home. Like the first thing I do when I go somewhere new is I, I go to the grocery store and I buy like, you know, I get my cereals, I get my like, you know, bit of like bit of sugar or whatever bit of jam, you know, just like things like that that I always have with me. Cinnamon, cinnamon, I'll go with cinnamon. That'll be my comfort wherever I am in the world. You're not the traditional art cyclist travels around with T-Bikes. Ha ha, no. Remember no caffeine. I got caffeine pills if I need it. Class class. Karmic, thanks for chatting and we might catch up again later in the year and see how we're getting up. Yeah, beautiful Anthony. Thanks for the opportunity. You have a great channel with a lot of great content and I'm happy to be a part of that and hopefully be a good presence on the channel. Cheers, buddy. Thanks for joining. 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 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 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's roadmansoycling.com slash 14 day.
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