SILK ROAD CHANGED MY LIFE | SOFIANE SEHILI

1.Becoming a full-time ultra cyclist

My punishment for whatever sin I've committed would be to just push my bike uphill in the snow for all eternity sofien welcome to the romance cycle podcast Anthony thanks for having me on the show every time I chat to somebody who is an ultra endurance cyclist they just are beautifully crisply sometimes it's one of like the occupational hazards of being an ultra endurance cyclist yeah uh can you see the return on my hand it's nicely nicely layered it is yeah you can't just in September for October it's October now you catch us in October for sure we're gonna have a nice nice Center I just I just uh finished a tour of uh Corsica Sardinia and Sicily so yeah lots of sun in the in the last last few weeks was that a race or was that like a self-supported adventure basically my job at my job is riding my bike and my vacation is where I'm riding my bike as well so how did you make the transition to being uh you know in gravel they call them like privateers you know it's not someone that's contracted to Roy for a team but someone who rides their bike full time for a living so I'm not sure if there's a different Ultra world than privateer yeah we don't really have that word in uh an ultra we don't really actually have any word uh there's really few people that write Ultra cycling and that are professionals um there's a problem I don't know a handful like maybe 10 or 12. so we don't really have a special word that we use uh to describe uh what we do what who we are you need to come up with a kill French word for it yeah I love the way French just have these terms that are just so difficult to translate into English and one of the ones my old director my French team used to just constantly buying into me was limitier like all the time I'm trying to be like but it just seemed like to be the answer for anything and I don't even know what the English translation is is it like hard work dedication to a craft or I'm not sure what English translation is it's it's yeah not even it I would translate it I would say that it's it's um all of the little things that you learn while doing a job and that you can only learn while doing it and you cannot learn um like in any other way and that is what they they called the mitches like when you say it's when you you're actually applying yourself at a craft and by you know uh doing it you have that experience I would say yeah it's it's something like experience it's such a good award it's one of the stuck with me and it's just it instantly when I hear it it transports me back to being in a tiny little town in France having no money just sore legs all day long and it's amazing the power of just one word to transport you back to a moment in time yeah yeah definitely and um happens also to me with uh with the music like some uh some songs when I hear them I just get like really transported back to like one one place one moment it's like it's uh or some smells also it's a it's a funny way that the memory works like you're like some things are just imprinted in your brain you're like 16 at the Disco Tech again just throwing it down yeah just press that little button and it's just like time travel how did you get into Ultra cycling because it seems like you know most kids especially French kids cycling are so popular culture over there but the vision or the goal I would assume for most French kids is the Tour de France and so Ultra cycling teams uh strange offshoot of that Vision what was yours or intro to what our first exposure to it yeah I would say like as a typical French kid I would spend my my month of July watching the Tour de France for sure but I grew up in a quite a poor family and we couldn't really afford uh um having me you know ride expensive bikes and so I never so I mean I knew that cycling was a sport but for me it always turned out to be just uh a means of transportation and um I never I mean I rode bikes uh pretty much all my all my life and as a kid like all the kids like riding bikes anyway but like I was um I was doing actually I was swimming I was a swimmer at the at that time because I had back problems and and the doctor told my mom that I needed to to have a stronger back like more muscly and then the swimming would be the the right the right thing to do and um yeah so I just saw my bike I just uh uh I mean to go from point eight point B and uh and then what happened is that uh in um 2010 uh I went on a trip a backpacking trip in Asia and after like a week of traveling I I kind of felt that something was missing uh that it was not the adventure that I had uh dreamed and um and then I needed to to change the way that I was traveling and I bought like a second hand mountain bike in a in a rental shop and then I started you know bike touring all over southeast Asia and this is how everything happened and everything changed and um the way that I got to ultra cycling is actually uh through bike touring um and it was quite a late something that happened late in my life I am 40 now um will soon be 41 and yeah I came to also cycling like six years ago and the first time that I raced um in Ultra cycling was actually the first time that I raced period for oh it's amazing I had assumed you were you know coming up to the French system racing division nationale and Dan made the transition across scoring and then it didn't really change the the nature of of the bike the bike was still at that time um just the mean of transportation and a way to get from one place to another um and then there was another defining moment is uh after several bike long bike tours like months long by tours I got back to Paris and then you did the job and I couldn't I find it I couldn't uh get um I can spend more time in an office job that it would really it was really just too hard for me after spending so much time uh outside on my bike it was too hard for me just to be like in an office and not seeing this guy and having the sky above me that was too hard so that's when I became a bike messenger and by becoming a bike messenger um I met other Keen cyclists obviously and then I I found out that I had um I would say above average abilities as as far as cycling goes and then yeah when I heard about these crazy races that last four thousands of kilometers I was like it's it's still going from point A to point B it's like bike touring pushed to to the max to like uh this this limit and and then I was like I know I'm a good cyclist I know I'm fast I know I have the endurance and I kind of wanted to to figure out what I would be able to do um in in one of these races and I started with probably what was at that time the hardest race and I did well because I finished third and then I was hooked I was like yeah this is what I want to do but I can totally hear when you're talking about the transition from you know doing these big bike packing Adventures to go back into the office uh last week or the week before I was over in Spain uh so I know about Badlands and then after Badlands myself and a body decided to ride North from Granada all the way through Spain to birritz had a night and beer it and then we rode across to Girona so we'd like just shy of two thousand kilometers on the ride and so we're away for you know two and a half three weeks biking almost every day you know figuring out where to sleep on the Fly and then I came home and it's it's difficult to explain to somebody who hasn't bike packed but it's like the volume is turned down on the rest of your life it's like you're used to Adventures you're used to stimulation you're used to the open air and the Sunshine and then I'm coming back into my normal routine of recording podcasts in a small little studio with artificial lights and that transition is difficult it's I don't think it's a nice transition I I struggled with it for the week I came home and you know all suffer from hit but I know that a lot of of people that race Ultra they like they do the race and I would say for two weeks maybe a month after they have a form of depression you know because for that that period of time the bike is all you have it's all you do and it's very meaningful I feel that when you're out whether it's racing or bike packing it's very meaningful and all of them you know not very all of the meaning meaningless things that you usually have any like all of the you know tiny decisions that you have to make every day um they're not there you know when you wake up it's like what am I gonna do today I'm gonna run my bike what am I gonna wear well you're gonna wear your your Chamois in New Jersey and I mean if you're like me you just you just have one so the decision is all made you have one outfit for writing and one outfit for nut writing and it's pretty much yeah everything is is physically easy because you're riding your bike all the time which is hard but it's it's it's mentally very easy because all of the decisions are are made uh uh when the day starts like you you wake up you get your breakfast you get you get dressed you get on your bike and you have this mission for the day and this mission is to get from point eight point B and obviously When You Reach point B you're quite proud of yourself because uh yeah that was quite foreign did it by your your own power and you do this for a period of time and it becomes your life and then you have to make that transition to okay now uh I'm doing something else it might not be as meaningful it might not seem as important whereas if you're out there say that you you're bike packing and you've you've uh um plan on getting to that space that that town where you can resupply where you can sleep and before that there's nothing well you have to do it otherwise you're not going to be able to resp why you know you're going to be out there without any food any water so it's it's actually quite important that you reach the goal that you set in the morning and there's no and for me it was also uh kind of it was a weird way of shining the light on some of my own habits and Society at largest habits like we're in this materialistic game of consumption where we need a new couch we need a bigger TV we need a nicer car and when you start bike packing it's the exact opposite mentality because I started out the trip with a set of flip-flops I lost them after 10 kilometers and I was like okay well there goes the flip-flops you realize life is a game of having less not a game of having more and it's seeing how you can strip down your material possessions not how you can add to the material possessions I didn't go to the next town and buy flip-flops or Runners I was like okay I guess I'm without flip-flops now I'm gonna have to wear my bike shoes in the evening going to the bar and it's a beautiful lens to view the world through yeah it's very true it's very true that all of this world where they're always trying to sell us stuff and we're a lot of people are trying to um feel more complete by buying them um whereas when you're on when you're on the bike well everything that you carry you're gonna have to carry up all the passes that you're gonna cycle so you don't want to carry anything that is like not necessary and so you learn how to be a minimalist you learn how to just know okay like is it nice like what I I look at my my uh uh at uh all my jerseys yeah I like them I like to like all all tabs different colors and different styles and it's in a way it's nice but am I gonna carry all of them when I when I like I'm gonna have like seven eight jerseys when I cycle no I'm not gonna do that I'm gonna have one two tops and it's it's enough and you find out that yeah it's enough and actually maybe when you put on your your nice New Jersey that one time in the morning you're like oh yeah it's nice uh to word for the first time or all like you like the color but actually yeah then you go out on your bike do you think of your nice Jersey all the time no you just think of you know all the stuff that you you think of when you're when you're cycling in your and then what that's what happens when you go on on a bike horn you go bike packing you find out that you don't need that much actually in a date yeah you just need to close on your back and uh obviously you need your bike to otherwise you're not going to go far but yeah this is just just a a lot of stuff and it's the same for the bike you're riding you know like I'm I'm I'm a cyclist so I'm like all cyclist which she's I'm you know fascinated by all and and really attracted by all the the new stuff and the and the and the you know lighter faster and it's all the new technology every time there's something else uh something new comes out I I read about it and I'm like yeah this this is very interesting but but also bike packing seems to have its own like sector of tech and I was totally unaware of this before I went into Badlands because I ended up making life harder for myself because I went in with like battery-powered lights and then on the first day I see one of my friends and he's like running a Dynamo and I'm like what this is like you can run a Dynamo this is I haven't seen these since like 1990s my dad used to build bikes I'm like these exist and people were using solar powered garments like I'm running around with a 20 000 amp hour battery that's like carrying you know a house brick up the climbs and you guys just have this you know the subsection of tech for Ultra endurance dialed and I don't think Roadies or gravel Riders are as plugged into those Tech advancements yeah it's a it's um it's interesting actually to to to look at all the things people do in in bike packing it's like there's backpacking is about problem solving it's you're gonna be on your bike for you know 18 hours a day and so you're gonna face some challenges that you know just conventional uh Road cyclists are not gonna face and it's very interesting and also it's it's it's it's a very niche part of cycling right now so you have to you have to sometimes solve these problems yourself I mean you're looking at all the tech but sometimes the tech is not enough and you need to come up with your own Solutions and what's I think is fascinating uh about my packing it's like there's not one solution to every problem and then and if you look at all the setups at Badlands some people will have better life some people will have Dynamo some people you talked about the solar garment some people have um for example I don't even use the same setup the uh for two races like some some races I'm gonna use my Dynamo other ones I'm gonna use a battery light and power Banks and just about adapting um the bike that you have and the gear that you have it's about you know trying to to find what's going to work best for the event that you're racing um and it's always have you had bad Mechanicals on the road I uh always managed to finish all of my races um but yeah this one time I had uh uh a problem with my wheel where the the wheel has been rebuilt because there had been a a a problem with the with the Hub at the at the at the start and um the guy that rebuilt the wheel and used the same spoke despite the fact that it was a different Hub and uh I actually the spokes were two mil uh too short and after a bit more than a thousand k um the the nipples started breaking and about myself somewhere in Kyrgyzstan enough to close to 4 000 meters at night uh having to deal with the uh uh rear wheel that was missing uh five nipples so five spokes and uh how do you fix that problem on the go I so basically I could can hear the the nipples breaking like one two three four and when the fifth one broke the Wilkin uh turn anymore because it was rubbing on them it was roaming in the frame and so what I did so all the um all the nipples were breaking on the on the drive side so what I did is that I unlaced a couple spokes that were on the non-drive side and listened to the to the to the drive side and then I was able to keep writing a little bit and then I managed to find a a taxi to the nearest town and in the nearest nearest town I went to um to hardware store and I was lucky that they had spoke nipples and so I replaced I really completely released the wheel and replaced all the nipples and then I was good to go uh you've got to be a pretty proficient bike mechanic for bike pack and our ultra distance yes definitely and like if I had no Notions of well-being at all it would have been that you know my race would have been over uh and yeah it's uh it's it's uh competence there is is really useful to have like if you're able to do pretty much I do pretty much everything on my bike um there's probably yeah I know I never go to the bike shop actually I do everything um and yeah it's it's uh it can save you in a race like if you're if you know your your bike in and out if you're able to to to first off knowing what's wrong and then fixing it then it's just something that is going to help you somewhere down the road because at some point you're gonna have Mechanicals it happens to everyone and if you're able to to fix it you mentioned Kyrgyzstan and your you won Silk Road Mountain race congratulations uh for anyone who doesn't know it's like what's it 1900 kilometers 37 000 meters of climbing yeah the videos of it just look wild like they look like from a different Universe what's it like to to kind of stand on the start line and know that you're facing into such a mama task um I mean I saw erased it twice last year and this year and I won it twice um standing on the start line it was exciting actually uh I knew I knew that it would be a really hard racing probably the hardest one um but it's just for sure it's a mammoth task but that's why we do it you know Ultra cyclist we want the the ultimate Challenge we want to be um in the most remote place possible and climb the highest mountains and it's like if you don't have a taste or challenging yourself to to you know what is the hardest possible thing that you can do you're probably not gonna go into Ultra cycling and so what was your win in time for Silk Road Mountain race uh and this year it was uh just a little bit over seven days and how much sleep are you getting across those seven days uh so this year I slept uh I didn't sleep for I think like three nights like the first night because we started at midnight so if you sure didn't sleep the first night uh nobody nobody did actually then I slept uh another three nights and then I needed to I needed to place like what would be an attack you know and um so I cut out three hours of sleep and just slept for an hour um and then the last night I was kind of in the Sprint finish with uh James Hayden and so I didn't sleep either so that's um yeah two complete sleepless nights and one night there was just one hour and does your mind go to a strange place when you're going without sleep or does your decision making falter or have you noticed any sort of ill effects of it um if you I mean on other races I've pushed uh sleep deprivation much much further than this and uh the worst that happened to me was going in sort of delirium uh happened to me twice it happened to me in Italy it happened to me uh in Switzerland on shorter races and on shorter races I tend to real I tend well maybe I wouldn't do it anymore but uh I I I killed back and sleep like really really a lot not sleeping at all for several days like three or four days and yeah you can go into a sort of delirium and I I talked about that with uh a friend of mine that is a national cyclist as well and we had that same experience where we thought we were dead that's not good I guess but like I was I remember I was thinking I was in Italy and I was and I was pushing my it was it was beginning of May or end of April I'm like second or third of May or something like that and I was pushing my bike in the snow up that pass and it was snowing in that time and I didn't I hadn't slept for several days and I had no idea what I was doing I had no idea where I was going and I started to think well it's I don't think it's possible that it snows in Italy in spring so something is really odd something is really wrong there and then I was like I'm probably dead actually and I started to think yeah it makes sense that I would be dead and that this would be hell and that my punishment for whatever sin I've committed would be to just push my bike uphill in the snow for all eternity and I had this real debate going on where one part of me was really convinced that I was dead and the other part was like it's kind of weird because looks like I'm dead but I'm getting messages on Whatsapp uh so yeah that was that was weird so uh but yeah it happens after like yeah you know four days of probation so is it like a total Out of Body Experience almost like you're like you've drank a lot and you're in a nightclub and you you know what's going on but you also can't really replace yourself there and you're not sure you know how you fit into this scenario and you're like are they my hands I can see them yeah I mean I was I was kind of you know it was it was different from other experiences that I had because I was I was aware of um where I was of my surroundings and I was aware of what I was doing but I had another one in Switzerland where I wasn't aware of anything just nothing I was just following the line on my GPS and I had no idea what this line was and I kind of felt like I was cycling you know I was pedaling but I kind of felt I had no idea why why my legs were moving but what kind of movement they were making I was kind of like am I running or something like that my legs are moving I don't know what's happening and then I had a again a debate in my head where you know part of my brain was like you should really try and stop now you shouldn't really stop now whatever you are doing because it's there is no point in doing it and then there would the other part of my brain that was like there is this line and it was the line on my GPS but I was not even aware that it was a line on my GPS I was just aware that there was a line and that was supposed to stay on this line and I was supposed to keep doing whatever it was that I was doing but it was like the minimum like yeah the minimum that you can you can actually be aware of and what keep keeping your own cycling in the right direction it's a royal sport like I don't know if there's any sports that bring people to that level I looked at the I look look at the data afterwards because I was curious when I you know you know the race ended I got some sleep but I remember that part of the race of like what happened and I went back and I looked at the data and I think I was I was averaging like five kilometers per hour or something like that because I was oh that's rough I was just yeah I was I had just no idea what I was doing I just knew okay stay on the line and whatever your the movement that your legs are doing keep doing it and that was all like the very nature of the Adventure Race and bike packing you're trying to find that line between safety and danger between adventure and something that's curated and manicured so at times you're gonna step across that line to a point that it's like oh I've actually gone way too far into the danger zone here I've put myself in real physical Jeopardy have you had those moments where you're like I'm in I'm in trouble here I'm in real trouble yeah it happened to me once where I actually feared for my life and actually the one time that it happened it's the only time that I dropped out of race I was um in USA I was in Colorado and uh I was climbing this pass and for me it was you know it was I was just obsessed by Ford movement as I was I was in first position but there was a guy that was like right behind me like probably 10 or 10 or 20K right behind me and someone was like I need to keep moving otherwise he's gonna catch me and I started climbing that pass and the bottom of the past was okay but then it was um as I got close to I would say probably 2500 meters it was covered in snow and so I had to get off the bike and I started walking in the snow uh post holding in that snow and then I got close to the top of the pass it was dark I I forgot to mention it was dark and I get to the top of that pass and it was completely white out like for the whole time I could find my way because there was trees on my right and on my left I was like all right I just need to I just need to stay behind the trees and I also forget to mention that the the GPS track that we were giving for the race was um not super accurate you know uh some some of the tracks he you follow them they're you know they have you know that number of points that means they're extremely accurate and they're really follow this one was not extremely easy to follow it was not super accurate and then I found myself at the top of the climb trying to follow that line on my GPS it's completely it's like a small Plateau it's completely white out and also a spark and I have no idea where I'm going I'm I stopped following it all on my GPS and then I end up in the trees in a place where obviously I can't keep going and so I was up there 3000 meters of altitude it was snowing it was dark and I had no idea where to go couldn't find that couldn't find the the trail at all and temperature was minus five but then it was windy so I would say it was more like -10 and I was wet obviously from all the walking that's a tough that's a tough tough spot to be in yeah yeah risk it which is like pick a direction and get in that direction because if I get lost here if I have no idea where I'm going it's it's just too dangerous you know to be completely lost in that snow in that it's not in that snowstorm it's just too dangerous I can't do that so I need to wait um for uh Dawn when it's gonna be light and maybe I can see the trail and so I got in my sleeping bag um with an emergency blanket and I stayed there for like I don't know a couple of hours but I was shivering there was no way that I could get any sleep and my temperature my body temperature was dropping and after a couple of hours of sharing my slipping I was like I was like I can't do that it's just too risky just stay there it's getting colder and colder and I had no idea where the trail is and I decided that you know the safest thing to do was I took to backtrack the the the I had my my own tracks that I could follow so I know would not get lost and I knew that I could get back to safety uh and then I was like okay I I grew up I'm a city boy I grew up in Paris I'm not used to the kind of of you know extreme weather and hostile environment and I'm not sure that I'm gonna do what's right to survive so better to pull the plug and you know backtrack and get back to some place where I know it's safe and uh and once it's even interesting the idea of pulling the plug because if you pull the plug in a road race you get picked up by the car behind you pull the plug in an ultra endurance race you've still got a lot of survival to do yeah exactly yeah yeah it's uh and sometimes it's actually what you don't pull the plug is because you you can't even do it it's like when I had my mechanical on on the Silk Road last year um so when you have a problem on this race you can actually send a message to to the organization in your organization organizes a taxi that's going to come and pick you up it will take several hours because it's uh it's a big country with just very very bad roads and and very bad cars as well but at some point you know if you're patient enough a taxi is going to pick you up but there were last year and every year actually there's parts of the race where it's not possible just because a car cannot physically get to where you are and when I had my mechanical I was in one of the two spots where it was impossible to get picked up by a taxi uh and then I was like yeah I don't even have that option of pulling the plug I don't even have that option of dropping out because if I drop out nothing's gonna happen I'm just I just need I whatever I do I need to move forward and find a solution by myself because no one's going to find a solution for me but again like Ultra is just so full of amazing metaphors for life like isn't that such a cool one like you need to move forward and find Solutions I come from bike touring and I started bike touring with uh very little money and so I had secondhand bikes and you know secondhand bikes that you buy in in Laos they're gonna break at some point and you know whatever happened during this bike tours that I always got faced with these challenges of having to find solutions to to keep on moving forward and so it's a it's a spirit it's a mentality that I have always had on the bike that um you've had these uh you've had some epic results like you know winning Silk Road Mountain race when I tour the voids you know I think you're a top five of Badlands Atlas mountain race another Victory there is there one performance it doesn't necessarily have to be a race that you want but is there a performance you're proud of stuff um I would say that Atlas mountain race uh that I won in 2020 I was I was super proud of it uh because I had this game plan and I implemented it and I had the strategy any any quote tab perfectly and I ended up you know I showed up at the start line feeling like I could win this I knew I knew it would be um a really really tough race with some really strong competition I was like I think I can do it I have this game plan invite if I implement it and if anything's everything goes well I think you can I can finish first and it worked out and I was I was really happy because it was my biggest victory at that time there was some really really strong guys like James Hayden uh J Peter very there was also some former pro Racers like matiato maraki and Christian mayor and it was a really really strong field and for me just to be able to to win um on on this course that was really hard with such a strong field um that was a huge huge uh accomplishment and at that time I was I was pretty much unknown and this is one I I I kind of burst onto the scene and people will you know started noticing me they're like oh okay there's this guy anyone in one Atlas mountain race and it was it was packed with a lot of real really strong racer and I think it was like was that the race that allowed you to do this full time after that race I started getting sponsors and then I kept you know kept racing kept winning and then the the uh so it was in 2020 and then 2021 I uh I managed to to get enough sponsors to quit my job as a buy Courier and um and um my second year as a professional you know Backpacker Ultra endurance whatever yeah we still haven't figured out the word for what's the French word for Privateer that could be a kill word for uh I think it's Cosell his private chair like I think privateers are are uh Pirates right I think so I think that's where it comes from yeah I think they are they are like contracted by actual governments and I think that the the French the French term is Corsair which is a cool word what's amazing it's a real cool world I'm gonna start using it now and but what's so amazing at the moment in cycling is it there used to be a hard verticals hard lines between Road cycling mountain bike and cyclocross gravel bike tauren these lions are all getting very blurry you're getting Road cyclists coming in and doing gravel races gravel guys starting to bike pack bike Packers doing Ultra insurance and it's brilliant because it's it's still a niche sport you know it feels like the world to me and it feels like the world to you but it's not soccer it's not American football it's a small Sport and it's great to see this cycling Community breaking down those walls of division and starting to become just one homogenous community yeah and and definitely it's a lifestyle to you um and I know that once you get into into cycling it's it's um it's a sport that you have to use a bike to and the bike is a fascinating object and you know what I often tell is that the bike is my life because as I told you earlier in the show it's it's uh how I make my living and how I've made my living for a long time now because uh also I was a bike messenger before um it's also my vacation and it's been my vacation for the last 10 years like every time I go on a on a trip for me any vacation is going to have cycling in it and I'm also just just passionate about the object I love just you know taking care of my bike and and taking care taking care of the of my girlfriend's bike and just you know spending an entire afternoon just uh you know you change your cassette your chain you just uh change all the cables and stuff like that that I love that I love doing that and it's just it's just I feel it's much more yeah it's a sport but it's much more than a sport I mean it can it can actually become your your whole life to the point that at some time was like isn't it too much you know it's a it's a lot when you when you spend all your time just either riding your bike or taking care of your bikes at some as someone was like isn't it isn't life shouldn't life be about you know more than this one thing and then I figured well for a lot of people life isn't about anything you know for a lot of people that don't have any passion so having that passion even if it fills up your life well it's I'm gonna say why not it's it's actually really cool to have that one thing that you love that you love so much and I think this is why um people are starting to you know to cross these lines that you were talking about because they they find out that sure you're racing on road that's great but you can also you can also you know do that same thing on gravel and it's gonna be similar but different and then you can you know try it on a mountain bike and it's going to be you know even more different and you can use you know the gravel at kind of a bridge between you know Road and mountain biking and you're gonna find that and I love all of them you know I can like keep to one discipline I couldn't be like all right from now on I'm just gonna do just mountain biking or from now on I'm just gonna do Road cycling I need I need them all I need you know the gravel the road the mountain bike they all offer their own thing that is unique and and you know I was I was on a on a road biking tour like one week and then sometimes I would see this gravel Trail in the distance I would be like wow yeah chicken back here with my with my gravel bike and it's just like or even to build on how all-encompassing you see the boy cars in your life I've also I've spent a lot of time you know talking through the podcast is like terrific sessions for me at times you know I totally forget other people listen to this for me this is just you and me having a conversation about cycling when I when I started thinking more about it it's like the bike it's such a simple solution to some of the most complex problems we have in the world like with some of the smartest Minds in the world trying to figure out traffic congestion Elon musk's digging tunnels under La the bike fixes that to reduce obesity the bike figures that we pharmaceutical companies talking about how do we you know improve happiness levels through pills like serotonin well the bike largely fixes a lot of that too that's like such a simple simple tool but it has such amazing applications across the whole of society yeah it's it is it is so true it is so true and you just need to look at cyclists and and even I'd I'd like people that used to be non-cyclists and that became cyclists and you have a lot of them in in Paris because Paris used to be awful the cycle because there was no cycling path there was a lot of traffic and drivers would not would not be careful and it changed because there was a this political uh um will to change that and they started to build bike lanes and at first the bike lanes were empty but soon enough you know if you have the infrastructure people are gonna use it you know it was it was it was a fun time it was like you had all of these motorists that were really mad at the mayor because they could see the bike lanes and blacklands were empty and all the cycle was like just wait just wait and you're gonna see what's going to happen and now all of the black things are just full because you need you just need a little bit of time you have infrastructure the cyclists are going to come and now just Paris has changed so much and it's becoming a cycling town which is absolutely awesome and yeah I mean it's just true that it fixes a lot of problems and people that used to be in like in the metro in the subway they couldn't go back there anymore it's just like they used to commute you know underground in that train where everybody's unhappy everybody's aggressive and now they're on the surface they have the they have the the sun the sky and the just you know exercising and they get to they get to their office faster and happier and I mean I know it you know it and we just wish that you know everybody knew it but it's gonna take it's gonna take some time but I feel it's happening I mean you just look at the boom that the bike industry is has experienced last last year and then and this year and obviously more and more people cycle and more and more people are gonna cycle and it's it's important that we keep developing this not even just the sport but the yeah as I mean the transportation and and we keep the you know the kids interested in in cycling and it's just gonna make earth a better place you know the more cyclists that you have and the and the better it is it's okay now just to finish up final question so we're talking about that sort of uh erosion from one to the order so actually I'm kind of asking this as a selfish question so my experience has been rode into gravel dipping the toe in Ultra stuff at Badlands if I'm choosing a next race or someone similar to me is choosing a next event like what would you recommend the Silk Road Mountain Bike Race Tour de void Atlas mountain race which of those is the next entry point foreign if you if you come from from Badlands um I would say Atlas mountain race uh because I mean obviously it is possible to just complete Silk Road Mountain race without any old previous Ultra cycling experience uh people have done it but I would say if you want to follow like a logical Evolution and and go at it step by step um at last would be the next logical step because it's um 12 000 K so it's long it's definitely longer than that than that lens but it's going to be yeah probably twice as long as as uh the time that you needed to complete that lens and it's gonna offer some of the challenges that you're gonna find in in Silk Road for example but it's not gonna offer all of the challenges I mean the weather is not going to be as extreme the the altitude is not going to be you know a problem because you're not going to go as high it's it's remote but it's not like crazy remote like in Silk Road Mountain race you can have like 200k without anything no chance of resupplying whereas and Morocco was wrong it's more going to be like a hundred Maybe 120k so it's gonna be plenty challenging for sure Atlas is hard um but it's I I would say Badlands is a great way to dip your toe into Ultra cycling and then yeah I feel like if you do it and if you like it then you can you know be you can you know follow that path with Atlas mountain race and be like yeah okay I feel like I'm ready to do something that is longer that is harder uh but it's it's not going to be as Extreme as silk road where Silk Road is amazing Silk Road is just a a beautiful rewarding Adventure but it's also extremely hard and it's also gonna face you with pretty much all of the challenges that Ultra cycling offers and so if you want to go at it like step by step uh probably wait put on the two-year plan yeah yeah definitely I would say that and then you go thank you very much for chatting uh I don't think I've laughed as hard on the podcast in a long time as I have about your story about like wrestling with the idea of am I alive or am I dead with this no that was brilliant thanks for chatting cheers buddy that was really good I enjoyed chatting so much yeah that was nice it was it was very different from the from the podcast that I usually do and there was a nice change actually thanks yeah it's super easy informal chapter the podcast is like blown up lasts you know seven eight months or over a hundred thousand people listening to it now uh so it's kind of like your transition points win an Atlas mountain race I'm like almost making that transition point to the podcast is like the only thing that I'm doing at the moment so uh kind of my my goal is to go and do cool races like Atlas mountain bike race and talk about it on the podcast and then like talk about where preparation do the race and then come back and talk about how the race went and give kind of that insight into the race like rather because I'm not a journalist I'm just like a bike rider with a podcast so how did balance go I actually went uh because my ti2 busted so I didn't finish so I was on team category and di2 Busters and Rhoda for a few more errors and then it was like nah this walking with a carrying the boy called pills ago I'm gonna be walking for seven days here so I gotta go back out do Badlands next year as well yeah it was a bit faster this year yeah I think it was yeah they took out some of the the harder hiker bike sections uh so actually a quick one for you before I go my body that uh done Badlands with me because we're in the team category uh what we're almost a month finish now he still has numb fingers from it do you ever experience that yeah yeah that's very common it takes uh yeah you can take uh up to two three months to go away usually for me it goes away if I don't do anything it goes away for after like a month or or so but it can be yeah you can take a bit more time with it but it's very common uh yeah it's a weird one I guess it's just from reduced circulation on the handlebars and it it conducts the the feeling in your in your fingers and so when it gets compressed that that's when you lose the the feeling of the tip of your fingers and usually starts with the little one and then uh you don't really lose it on your thumb but you know it feels like this interesting interesting and I gotta I'll hit you up I think I'm following you already on Instagram if I'm not I'll follow you now uh but definitely stay in touch and if you're doing any cool races you know jump back on the podcast talk about your how your prep has gone talk about you know your hopes for them so you're welcome back anytime it was a great laugh I love chat