1.Welcome and guest intro

Roadman, welcome to the podcast, Fiola Foley. Let's cure that 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 Walsh, and welcome to the Roadman Podcast. Roadman welcome back to another Roadman cycling podcast thanks for joining me it's the Wednesday interview episode I always say but I love the Wednesday interview episode I get to talk with such amazing interest in people that would happily pass me boy in a bar around the street and I never be able to pick our brain but because of the weird wonderance of the internet I get to talk with just these amazing people with amazing stories to tell. If you haven't checked out last week's interview episode with Sami Sari, it's a brilliant one to go back and listen to because she's someone who just inspires adventure in you. If you have an adventure that you're kind of sitting on the fence thinking will I won't I? Sami will hopefully light the spark and this week's guest will hopefully turn that spark into a fire. This This week's guest is Viola Foley. She's represented Ireland in rowing and cycling. She's just had some of the coolest jobs including head of global communications at BMC. She worked at Ron Dennis' 24-hour record. She's director of media relations at the moment for one of my favorite companies at the moment. Camus are like an alternative to Strava, but just way cooler. Tinkwatt Strava could have been before they got wrapped up in all this segments and shit like that. It's just such a cool prospect and it's a company I'm keeping a really close eye on. But as I said, like how Fiona feels on Sami Sami's episode, she's an adventurer, an idol most caller, a lifestyle design expert, having lived an American existence for a good part of her life since leaving her native collorgland for the US on a scholarship at the tender age of 17. Roadman, I am super privileged and honored to welcome to the podcast, Fiona Foley. Hi, and he has a going. Thanks for having me on the show. No problem. I'm looking forward to chatting. We were chatting for a few minutes before I hit record. I feel like we could have chat for an hour before I press record. So it's like a press record fast here. I know. You've an interesting background, which I think we'll get into your cycle and exploits in a little bit. But I think a nice place to start is you're rowing exploits because when I was researching the podcast, I didn't realize prior to, we chatted a few times last week and I hadn't realized you were such a superstar roar. Oh, yes, they were starry. I don't know about that. I don't know. I don't know, what superstar by definition? People around Kerry know your name. Oh, yeah, I was once told I'm the whole same person in Glorthan, but I think they've been knocked off that wrong I'm glad I know because one of the two girls in Clarke and in qualified for the Olympics actually in rowing Monika, Dakar, Skans, Aileen Crowley. So the next generation has come along and outperformed me on the fame level. Do you feel like you've paved the way a little bit for them? The kind of can't see me, can't be me? That's, yeah, it's actually all kind of came home there recently from which I did a going away party for them for the Olympics because we were at the book club And I realized, growing has come so luxurante in Carden because I started when I was 14 in Costa Rowan and that's all that really existed back then was Costa Rowan, big wooden boats, a big wooden oars. And you rode obviously after a rowing off the coast of Ireland. And I, like when I was about 15 or 16, I just started reading some stuff about Stephen Redgrave and Matthew Pinson to be became my heroes. British heavyweight guys that had, you know, won those medals at the Olympics. And I thought, oh, I'd like to start maybe twice in single-sculling. And just to happen to guy in town had a single skull. So I borrowed his boat and I started single-sculling and I really liked it. And then the one of the guys, the son of the guy that had the wrong job had actually rose in the UK a little bit and he knew it a bit about, you know, there's a technique there and single schooling. So there was no club, there's no boaters. I used to wade into the water up to my knees in the freezing cold and winter and I put the boat in myself. Sometimes there would be no one in the water with me and there I was wiggling over down the river really enjoying myself.

2.From rowing scholarship to Olympics

And I started like racing at ragatas and then I guess I was pretty strong anyway from like racing summers in and coast throwing and a bit of basketball and stuff like that. And I started winning races and I was fast-tracked onto the Irish junior team and I just kind of took off from there and then I rode and so it's 25 more or less full-time then after graduation from Boston University. I got a scholarship. Yeah, I've seen that. So you've got a scholarship. So I feel like you lived the life I almost I was like a decent-ish soccer player and I was tossing around the idea. I'd been offered a couple of scholarships and I was tossing around the idea going to the US and then I went to the UCD instead. But I often wonder that crossroads like, would I be sitting in an SUV with the 2.4 children living in the summer? So she got a white ticket fence if I hadn't taken that scholarship. When Bush got elected president for the second time, I knew that my relationship with the states I was literally in my fourth year in college, as a senior, they're called in senior in America. And I remember going, oh my god, Bush's president again. I don't think I can live here. Anyway, I went back to Ireland because the rowing career was falling and stuff. So yeah. And so what was sort of the crowning highlights for the wrong career you look back on? Is it the big achievements or is it smaller? It's like you've been world championships or Olympics. So yeah, it's always so big of a sleeve. Just suppose that level, especially you're wrong. You can come so close. Yeah, you don't quite make it. So I would say probably the best performances I had had were at under 23 level, like I, you know, I came for I close to medals. At the other 20 or a time chips I came forth, it was a bit of an unfair final. They actually re-organized the the seating of the lanes after my race because of the way the wind was going. So I was lucky but I like you there, it felt really good. it was a really good lifetime when I was really performing well and then had quite a few successes at the top level. I think narrowly missing out on the qualification was really tough. When you talk about how good you did in rowing, I was at that level where we were constantly top 10 in the world. Isn't it the nature of the athlete? I chatted to Spencer off a couple of weeks ago on the podcast and he'd won the team time trial with Green Edge in the Jure Natalia, Open Belfast and he'd taken the Maglia Rosa. But it's still, it's like the nature of the athlete is we're almost never happy. We're looking ahead to the next thing, to the next event, how we could have done a little bit better, prepared a little bit better. And we also think those times are going to last forever and we're going to be that athlete forever and you don't realize that there's a limited shelf life on it. Yeah, like I think if you can't say in three words or four words, I was a world champion, you're not going to be happy, right? I mean, it's to have to say, well, in 2005, I was fourth in like this. I mean, you know, I mean, I just actually listened to her podcast last week, an interview with Katie. Oh, I can't remember a second name. She's an Olympic swimmer. She was on the same American team as my results back when you was competing. I just, you know, best. And she won three gold Olympic medals and she was disappointed with that performance. And with that's her perspective, that's her, her she felt with her, because she knew herself and she knew what she was capable of and she thought she could have done better when that was five Olympic medals. No, it was probably not making qualifying for the next Olympics, which she didn't make because she had like a blood clot near her lung. And for me, I think I know that if I had the knowledge and experience that I have now back when I was I would have performed better but I was a bit immature I think and didn't realize that you only have a window of like Really eight years and you can just go for it during those eight years you can put everything to one side and I Probably would have done better. You know, I was a bit maybe blasey about Where was it for us and how good I was the time in kind of my quest to become windswept and interesting I'm reading a lot of Stoic philosophy at the moment. And there's this kind of concept of, it's in Ireland because of the grasses greener on the other side, but the Stoic philosophy around and rolling back to Seneca's time, it's this idea of a hedonic treadmill where you're always looking for the next thing.

3.Stoic gratitude versus athlete ambition

So the trick that Stoics had to defeat this idea of always looking for the next thing, because I have clients who are multi-millionaires, billionaires, and they're still looking for for the next business venture, but the stoic trick is to be happy what you have. And so the daily practice they engage in is tinking at something you have at the moment. So even something as simple as for me, I have a bike. And now imagine what life would be like if I didn't have that bike. And by that way, building gratitude around the things you have rather than always pushing down the line for something you don't have, because it's such a recording team among athletes. I've had guys on of one stages in the Tour de France and they'd win two stages in the and then they're disappointed that it wasn't true or disappointed that they didn't get a green jersey and it's not a happy way to go through life. Yeah, but it's a bit a lot of like what mine's about as well. I mean, when you look at how people are suffering from anxiety and maybe like that the grass is going around the other side is like I'd say it's closely linked to anxiety when you feel like you're not happy with what you have or where you're at at at this moment in time, you tend to project yourself into a different situation or scenario, and social media has a lot to do with that. But if you can be more present in the moment and just stop and think, look, I can't change right now what you have and you should just appreciate what you have. I think we're going to see a lot more. The impact to social media, I think, is just starting to be understood. I think we're going to see more longer-term studies than the impact that's having on people, you know, on their self-confidence, on their even motivation to get up and go on. Because I coached some athletes and it's getting that initial momentum for them to get them started because the people that are following on social media, they feel like they're at the destination and then they look at their own lives and go on so far away from this. Why even start? And I think we're just beginning to learn sort of the dangers of social media. Yeah, there's, I just read some studies like yesterday about the chemical effects of not if not just dopamine there's mother chemicals that are released when you engage with social media that are quite detrimental to your ability to concentrate and it's a little bit like it helps like it would it's a threat to ADD, like you could get ADD from actually spending two more time with someone. Yeah. But it's a huge problem for young riders trying to come true because I'm coaching a number of young kids and you're trying to say to them that log in kilometers, win in races, hit in power targets, these are the metrics we need to chase as athletes. It's not social media shares, likes and followers. They're a different thing and we're starting to conflate them and it's maybe at this point that starts drawn into some of your previous work experience with BMC because I know there's a crossover between social media and Reuters are becoming marketing tools to push bikes and to sell bikes. And there is naturally across our world, how big is social followings, how well engaged is they're following with their qualities on the bike. And we're at the beginning of quite a strange period, I think, in marketing and cycling and sport and just a way of context for listeners. So you worked in BMC, I'm not exactly sure what your title was there, but I do, what was your title in BMC? I was head of Global Communications at BMC. So that basically, that role I was the liaison as well between the brand and the pro cycling teams. So that was the road cycling team track on Enduro mountain bike and cross-country mountain bike. So I had a COVID to do with the providers. And then at the same time, I was coordinating all of the communications and a lot of marketing activities for the different, for the dealers and for the end consumer. So, brighter, it's basically. So were you doing a lot of kind of form and then delivering the message around new bikes? Oh, it was a lot of coordination of translations. But to be honest, there was a lot of the hard graph. So in the production of our catalog and dealer book every year, all the translations, different languages, social media posts, blog on the website, news editors, and then also communication on the successes of the teams. So when Greg and I have Matt would have win a race or Philip Schubert and stuff on a Sunday, it came into me to then post that on the social media channels at PMC and to celebrate this that they had right in BNC bikes.

4.BMC and Swiss design culture

Who came up with the name, the time machine, that must be the coolest name ever for a bike? It was actually for you. It was really difficult to run reports in terms of marketing for that bike because we kept getting a lot of the keywords for Apple time machine. The time machine, well everything was like team machine time machine, you know, road machine. It was brilliant. Yeah, yeah, it's great. Yeah, definitely had some good, like, you know, I mean, it was Swiss brands, like, very centered around design. So you're never gonna get, like, at the source of, I suppose, dynamicism of, like, in a West Coast American company with, like, Gabriel, like, it's very true to, like, being a Swiss company. So it was, it's really, really positive, like, time working there, and have you looked at contacts. And I think it's a really interesting time here there as well, because I know I always think I lived in the States and Canada for a little bit. And I always think in Ireland, we just mimic their cultural changes and habits, but maybe four or five years later. And when I was over there in 2013, 2014, 2015, I remember seeing the amount of people that were on $5,000 plus bikes. It was almost everybody had a group ride. and then you come back to Ireland, then guys are on like Trek 1,000s and you know, real entry level 900 euro bikes. And it seems like we were really slow in Ireland to appreciate a good bike as well. Yeah, appreciate quality craftsmanship and invest in nice equipment. Well, yeah, it's actually a cultural thing to be honest. Swiss are very, I mean Swiss like by the GGP of Switzerland is quite high root when you compare it to a lot of other countries in Europe, so they do have the money just goes with Lincoln. But at the same time there's a huge appreciation for design. And that is part of the Swiss identity like it's Swiss design, they love that mean coffee machine, bikes, cars, whatever it is, you know. Fabio, Consulera. Fabio, Consulera. Yeah, yeah. I know, yeah, I know pretty well. It's pretty much busted. He was made in a lab, I heard. He was genetically engineered in a lab. Like even Roshi Fetter, you're like, how do these guys keep going? I mean, they're like, they're amazing. They're from test tubes. They're from another planet. Yeah. Oh, I know. They're fairly singular in their, their oxygen as well. It's also very Swiss-like thing to be very driven. And they love endurance sports, and it's a passion. It's a hobby. And they spend the money on their hobbies. They also look like zero crack. That's not true. They have different cracks. Irish crack. Yeah. Once you get to know this Swiss-like, you can look at some really good friends from there and stuff. But yeah, integration is definitely more difficult in Switzerland and it is for a lot of other European countries. So are you glad you're out of BMC now with you don't have the job of trying to convince the world that we need disc brakes on road bikes? I thought the team would do that. That was a bit like the topic. The thing with BMC was like we never really needed to do any marketing because you know it was just the best like in the world right and we know people argue against us and if the T1 race is what the job has done, you know, but that's all changed now with the onset of social media and as you were saying with brands working with influencers and ambassadors and bringing the products to the people through like social media and stuff, which is goodness at the same time. So, how frustrating is that for say, you know, the problem with Pinarello, like, because you were in the role who would have had to head on deal with this. So you have the guys on the World Tour team in the Tour de France electing to ride the rim brakes and then you on the other hand are trying to push your marketing campaign around selling these disc brakes. How much of a challenge does that pose? Well, coming from a PR background, you're always, I think you just have to be very authentic and like honest to people and you know in the bike industry everyone knew that the bikes would go and the direction of disc brakes. The reason the pro riders and the teams weren't racing them enough was basically because of a holdup with the UCI. The UCI's technological review was back in the day, happening out in every three or four years. So the bike brands had to wait three or four years before new products could be officially approved by the UCI for the pro peloton. So the whole double layer, the UCI whereas the market was ready for that technology and that happens quite often.

5.Disc brakes and UCI resistance

The market is ready for the technology before you see the pro riders or proteins racing with that technology. So I mean if it was up to like the UC, if the UCI was driving I'd say like the go-to-market strategy so black brands would still be 20 years behind but in terms of technology. If the UCI was doing anything, like their focus is on just the wrong place. Like their focus is on super talks and sock lengths instead of Royal safety and sprint finishes. But I think it's probably a conversation for another day. Yeah, it's just the makeup of their organization and not being able to properly be agile enough to deal with circumstances as they arrive and stuff. Now that they do, they did, they went, it's it's process as well. You know, I guess equipment needs doesn't need to be tested. It does needs to be verified. And they need to be sure that it isn't dangerous. And it went through that those rounds of processing to the point now where people are accepting disc brakes. But isn't that funny human nature in the beginning is also a bit suspicious of new technology. And then once it's had its time, it gets, you know, adopted fairly well. Well, I flick back and forth within two now, because I have disc brakes on my gravel bike. And I ride the gravel bike like 90% of the time, because I ride it on the road, even in group rides and stuff. But when I race, obviously, I'm racing back on my road bike rim brakes and I raced on Monday evening and I've ridden the gravel bike for the previous five days and the first time I was back on the road bike was just a warm up for the race. I was going around corners going, I can't stop. This is ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah. Like, and so I love that though. I love, it's kind of funny. Like I love being caught off guard a little bit when you change bikes and like different types of riding like the graph bike that I have has got very flared handlebars. And I actually really enjoy the position of your you know your hands holding the handlebars at an angle because the hubs of the brakes are just like angled in. I'm just trying to describe this like verbally because people can't see what I'm doing my hands. But like it just and then you go back on a road bike and you're like oh I feel or if you go touring bike and you load up the bike. That is hilarious. I remember going to rink for like a week and going from a loaded gravel bike to a road bike. You feel so jishary. Like yeah, it's good fun, right? Like, I mean, everyone that's raking track and has come on to a road bike after it knows how it feels like to... The transition from track. I'll go you one better because last year, for the last couple of years, with a buddy of mine, we were on the tandem. So we we rode the Worlds and stuff on the tandem last year and gone from a track tandem because a tandem feels like your tone a big long trailer which so even when you go from a tandem to a road bike it feels weird it feels like you're missing a piece on the back or it's loose or something and then you add in the tandem track to the road bike oh it's so bizarre. like an imagine. I've hadn't written like a Tansamara or even a cargo bike. I think that the right feel is fairly different than when you back in a normal bike. So how much are your identity now? And I know it was a buddy of mine, the moment he's just retired from cycling, and I was chatting to him a lot about his identity and how he sees himself. Obviously for a long time, you were the rower. And then you came into cycling. Did you get that full identity shift to now on the side, because it's a crazy event, see if they're on the bike. It's like the Davos 24 before. You've done some really nuts events on the mountain bike. Yeah, it's funny because I think one of the reasons I didn't want to continue at rowing was because I like to do different things. I'm not really, I get bored. I think pretty quickly with one type with anything so then I went doing like multi-sport events so I eventually raced for about three years after I had kind of finished rowing and actually went and lived in Peru for three years so that's a different story and then I don't know if we can just leave that one there what we did for real for three years. I know yeah I went loud I got lost now I didn't say.

6.Discovering cycling in the Alps

I was like I was surfing and I was working as an English teacher. So when I quit rowing in 2005, I think it was, I became a teacher, like an English teacher, and then I ended up working in a international school in Lima in Peru for a few years. I've been traveling there, I made some friends, sliders to go back down there and met a great, like great for years. And then I came back to Europe in 2008 with the view towards doing their masters in education. But I actually ended up doing a post-graduate communications which was, I started working for like a World Cup adventure race, waiting to go back and do my H-State or my master's in education, but changed that completely, started adventuring things, it approached graduate communications, and that led me to eventually to just cycling because I was adventuring, adventurizing, I went to live in Switzerland and I was doing loads of multi-sport events, so I was like running off and down the Alps and swim cycle run. Stuff put in the outs like so the races were like, we often had like five or six thousand meters elevation across like the race. And then after a while, you know, I was actually with all the discounts, like King was my strongest. And I just dabble in a little bit of racing and then I started racing licensed and placing in the top like five, 10 women. And I was like, oh, you know what, I'm just going on with this. And it's kind of what I enjoy to do the most and the weekends I was always out writing my friends anyway. I mean, when we were writing on the weekends and so it's like, it was insane stuff. Like we were doing like, you know, we do writes like, you know, four alpine passes, like 5,000 meters of climbing, like 300 kilometers, like, but just Saturday, like, you know, and this is every weekend or every second weekend, like so. I think at one point, or I don't know if I still am, but I was like in the top, 1% of female climbers and Strava. Oh my gosh. I had like, I was just like pointing towards the mountain and Aron Alp and I just, I go up that path, you know. Well, there's definitely an again first correlation for me between the amount of cycling I'm doing and any sort of achievement in the rest of my life. The rest of my life just falls apart tomorrow so I can't. I know, but it's so true. Like it's just like my life was cycling I was working in the cycling industry. I was just racing or riding every weekend. I was like going to a down under, like working on events in Adelaide and like at the tour de France at the art of the trail finally like in the VIP box. Like it was just, it was great. But it's a straight life for a cycling fan or a cycling fanatic nearly as you were. No, there was good times, you know. And I think it just got to the point though, where I was like, not, I wasn't doing the whole I was this late life, but I felt like I needed to move on in my career. And there weren't the opportunities where there weren't so many in the bike industry in Switzerland. And I was also questioning whether or not this one was going to be the place for me to settle down and after eight or nine years in a place, you kind of go, is this where I really want to live now? And I kind of decided, look, I wanted a life that was a bit more, often a bit more freedom than working in an office, you know, because that is the daily reality, you know. Social media, everything's great. You're flying around the place, it's a great time. The reality of it is you're sitting at a desk from nine to five every day, and you only see your family like once a year. So that's when the opportunity with the committee came up. And I went first because Commune is a fully remote company. I knew that I could live maybe some of the year and somewhere like Portugal or you know I don't know Spain or France or whatever. And then I could live some of the year in Ireland and see my family. So that's my days. I changed in 2017 I think. Well, yes, I've been with Commune now for four years. And it's funny because like for the international listeners, Ireland's not especially big and the cycling community isn't huge in Ireland either. And I've been riding a lot more gravel in the last couple of months. And I was looking for a tool for planning gravel routes and I started using commute because travel is shit for gravel. It's pretty shit for roads.

7.Komoot's Irish potential

It's especially shit for gravel. So I started using commute, but I was asking around and we have some mutual friends in Valotio because we're both brand ambassadors on Valotio. And they're like, well, you notice a girl in Kerry, it's like, I was like, no, trust me, there's not a girl. You're getting Kerry and Zorik makes a little bigger. It's so true. Like there isn't, yeah, that's, I feel like I've been a little hidden in Kerry, like but okay to give put a bit of percol like perspective or give some context there. The first two years I was working for Camusia I was gone out of Ireland most of the year like I come back I'd spend like two or three weeks in curry and then I was gone for like two weeks then we back for a few weeks. So I was on the go quite a lot I didn't really get to like engage much of the Irish scene And then I had a baby and a Christmas time. So for most last year I was pregnant. And there was also a lockdown. So it was very limiting. And like also what you can do in terms of engagement. And now I have a baby. So I'm also not traveling around Ireland to go to events. It would have been like probably around now, I would have been thinking, okay, I'll sign up some gravel events in Ireland, but it's also a bit of a... Have we also already have any? Yeah, well, that's another story here. Like, yeah, I haven't exactly been in Ireland and, like, you know, engaged much in the community here, although I would like to. But it's, yeah, you know, me and the family and stuff now. It's also a matter of trying to find the time and keep it going happy. I'm going to pull you back into it. Because I feel like also Camoot's going to explode in Ireland because it's so like the down our figures, we were talking about monthly active users, camera figures of 20 million monthly active users. It's blowing up around the world but it's just you haven't really pressed the marketing on it in Ireland yet so I feel like once that starts to come, you can't use commute and use Strava and go back to Strava. That's what I've been finding with it. Yeah, so Commotion is really starting to think like people that like to stay active and like to to be active in the outdoors and it doesn't matter how fast you're still you go up or down a hill or over a certain segment it's more about it's all about the experience and how you build outdoor experience into your life so if you go out like if you go out for a ride even you enjoy your ride you log in on commotion as much as you would on strappy you share pictures you share a story and then you'd engage with other people and what they've been doing on a daily or you know a weekly basis and it removes the whole stress of the performance, slide the things that you would have from Strafe over a bike. When you go out, you've always gotten native in the back of your head that's going, oh, I wonder how fast I went over that, you know? You know, as a coach and, you know, even speaking for Eurocoaches in roadman, I can't thank you guys enough for pulling away from this metric of average speed and segments because it's such a disaster coaching athletes who are into this average speed culture. Because what you have is, you know, obviously you've trained for heart rate and stuff, when somebody's going out chasing average speed, they end up riding top of zone trees, sweet spot for their entire ride every single time because they're chasing a 30 kilometers an hour average speed on their loop. And while there's nothing intrinsically wrong with riding in that zone, you just get athletes who are very good at riding in that zone. And that's a disaster for racers, because they can't go slow and they can't go fast. they just go on a middle of the road. So it's such a nice move to see an app moving away from that sort of vanity metrics and back towards cycling and outdoor activity as fun. It's all about, yeah, like, I mean, there's, I think that there's a time and a place for everything in your life. Like if you're preparing for a race or preparing for an event, then that's what you're doing. and you use the tools that can support you in order to reach your goal for that event, whether it's training peaks or even if it's just something simple like, you know, parameters are expensive, heart rate, okay, you use your heart rate, but you don't need to be on it the whole time, right? Because realistically, like, yes, performance can be important to you, it's in some phases, but for a lot of the time in your life, you don't need to be, you're not preparing for a race, you could be just riding and looking up around you and enjoying either your friends that you're riding with or the scenery or the adventure that you planned for yourself, which is going to a new place to ride a different route or a loop that you've not done before and that has that nice coffee stop in a cafe that you've heard about what you haven't gone to.

8.Highlights and crowdsourced route planning

So, I mean cycling or the The outdoors can be enjoyed in so many different ways. And I think it's a shame if people just, you know, see it as a means to an end, like a road that you can use to make yourself face. Like that's only one part to it. And that also comes naturally as well, the more you rise and the more you enjoy your writing. So come here to, I suppose, promote that aspect of life. perspective, life, people's lifestyles. So there's one feature that I'm using just nonstop like I'm doing a gravel route later on this evening. So I'm looking about before I call planning my route. So I literally stuck in my staff point. And then I zoomed into these. I don't know what they're actually called inside community, I just call is a hidden gems. I just highlights. Yeah. So I'm literally looking and going on right boom highlight one highlight to you and I'm joining up highlights from my roots because they're are they crowdsourced or the commute add them in they're crowdsourced but they appear on the map based on how well they've been verified by the community so for anyone listening in commute is kind of like without wanting to compare too much but commute could be seen as like the trip advisor of the outdoor so When you look at the map on the app, you'll see all these red dots and there are highlights that have been left or created by other users in the app that are anything from a nice cafe to stop and have a break to a few points, to even bike shops or a picnic place if you want to stop. if you're camping or something, you can camp there and put a fire down or whatever. So the goal of those is for people to be able to communicate what are highlights in the outdoor area that you're planning a route in. So you can use them then to just plan from to add to your route. So when you know that every 20 or 30 or 40 kilometers, you're just going to be a break for a specific reason or whatever. And that's what really sets us apart from a lot of our competitors as well, like, which just points at interests, which are just... You know, and if you were somewhere, I've kind of been like, I've planned that to root and it's fresh in my mind because I was literally doing it before the call. And I'm like, well, do I want to go east or one to go west here and to say a highlight point on each side, but you can click on the highlight point and it'll bring up a photo if somebody's uploaded one and show you what you kind of have to look for. So I click on it like, That looks a little bit too nearly for the gravel bike. I'm going to go with this one. You can kind of navigate. I know it's just adds a nice extra dimension to it. Yeah, because the highlights can be segments as well. They can be a place or it can be a segment. I've used them a lot for mountain bike planning, route planning. Especially, it's hard to explain how advanced commutias in Europe. Because when you look at highlights in Europe, you might have like, There's some pilots of like two or 300 photos of the place added to the highlight by users, of people that have been there, together with descriptions and the latest information on what the condition of the trail is, or whether it's open or closed based in the time of year. And also in the premium version of Commute You Get Like information about when that highlight is mostly visited, like what time of the year is busiest, what the weather forecast is going like there and even UV index. So that's why I need to get more Irish people on it because it gets stronger the more you use it. So get down low because I need more highlights for my myself. There's no highlights in Kerry because I've added them. So I'm actually planning a trip in a couple of weekends time with four or five friends. We're going to do the Wiggler way and I'm going to split it into two days. So we're going to ride. I guess it's going to be like a six, seven hour day with all our luggage camp and you know fire and stuff and then ride again the next day. So I'm going to plan a bunch of, I'm going to take pictures and plot a bunch of highlights along the wiggle away so people can definitely follow in my footsteps. When you've done that route, yeah you should definitely share with people so they can then, you can just add, if you're on commute and you see some lessons you can just like basically take it into your profile, you can add it to your own profile, you can go out and simply look at it and just ride your route afterwards and within commute.

9.Gravel access and land barriers

So you can navigate with commute as well, but your smartphone, which is kind of handy. In fact, for most of the writing I do now, I don't even bother with the GPS on the bike, like with the computer. I just stick the app on on my phone. Really, I haven't tried that yet, so I feel like I'm the Christopher Columbus of the Wicklow mountains here. I'm trying to plot the gravel routes, but I'm going out a lot of dead ends. So I'm hopeful that if I just upload all my profiles to Commision, other people start the understanding that we're actually going to have a nice tapestry, because there's so many trails, we're blessed to have so many trails right on the Wicklow Mountains. I know you have great trails and carry as well, and it's maybe a little segue into the last thing I want to talk about, because it's... I've only started riding off road a little bit. I know you've much more experience and I do off-roading adventure. One thing that's kind of annoyed me so far with off-road is I don't want to say it's walkers because it's not walkers. It's the segmentation of what's already a small community. Like the outdoor active community is a small community and I feel like we should be all together but it's like some people are like no I'm in this niche in the outdoor active community and you're in Disney should be out to our active community and it's not compatible. Like, yeah, it's very tough in Ireland to be honest. When I came, when I moved back here four years ago, I didn't realize how difficult it would be for me to pursue my passions in terms of cycling, because you just keep on coming up against these, you know, barriers in terms of like land access, and a lot of it is related to the infamous insurance issues that we've had in the country and private property or estate property not being accessible to people that are into the outdoors. In Wicklow, for people living in Dublin, you're in a very, very fortunate position that's created to have looked at the whole area of the Wicklow Mountains, basically, and said, of this is an area that can be reused or offered to the Irish people in terms of recreation. And this is a standalone area pretty much in Ireland where you've got a huge expanse of beautiful forestry that quills that have now said, look, this is a very high value for recreational users. Now it's up to the recreational users to be very, I think, respectful and open to the fact that it's not just for walkers, it's for cyclists, mountain bikers, gravel cyclists, lots of different types of people. Yeah, I feel like even the same way that if someone comes out on a group ride on the road, there's like a set of customs and traditions. And as an experienced rider in a group, it's almost my role within the group to indoctrinate them and show them the ways. I feel like we need the same around, you know, just basic respect for trail, trailer erosion, you know, closing gates after you get stuff like that. Oh, like, wait, there's like, there's such a gap in Irish people's knowledge and education in terms, like with regards to how you behave in the outdoors. And we don't, I don't even know where you would access materials to inform yourself apart from, you know, joining some of the organizations, but even the organizations that the resources to educate people at that was so and especially in the last year and a half there's been such a fantastic increase of people you know taking advantage of what we have in our doorstep but people do lack the education and knowledge and how to what's the code of conduct in the outdoors in Ireland, could you actually list what is the top 10 most important things? I think it should be drilled into kids in school as well you know so. And it's a six-stuff like you know picking up after you like with the big increase in football on the trails. You're saying people think it's Temple Barret's Oak Tunnel Street that someone's coming and picking up after you. Like if you drop plastics on the trails, they could be there for the next 10 years. Yeah, and when it comes to root planning as well, another thing that we have come across quite frequently is people use apps and they think that Oh, the app, like I was able to make a trail with 50 kilometers long in the mountains and I've ridden it. So therefore, because I could create the trail, I was approved. I was allowed to ride that trail. That's not always the case. The altruists also are like, land is a dynamic thing. Sometimes land is being purchased by a private landowner, and therefore the access you're not allowed to go into that land.

10.Respecting landowners and trail etiquette

And it brings up to you as a responsible person in the outdoors to inform yourself about what the access laws are and whether or not you're entitled to be in that place or not. And what the consequences are if you do trust us or how you can work with the landowners on the other side of things. Can you ask the person that owns the land if you can ride across this. In Kerry we see that quite a lot. What's private lands, you know, technically you should not allow to go across that land on this year's permission, but it's just as easy sometimes to knock on a door and say, there's a love in trail going across your farm. Do you mind if I ride it every now and then? And you know what most of them are pretty sound. Like we're organizing at the moment, gravel events in temporary for September and the September date hasn't been confirmed yet, but it's going to be gone across a lot of private lands, but almost every landowner who we approached, they're so happy to have people there to see the land getting used, but it's just not taking that for granted and it's asking them politely like you would for anything else. Yeah, and if everyone, like I said, like this is like this conversation, I was trying to, like, if we're like, you know, almost like, you know, telling people how they should be able to stand men's feet like that, but I think if more people were informed about how you should behave and what's the right way to do things when you are in the outdoors, you know, we wouldn't get tagged with these, you know, we wouldn't be described as though the cyclists that are ruining the trails or, you know, the hikers that are lengthening their dogs run wild across the fields and chasing the sheep. So I think everyone just needs to make more of an effort in Ireland as well, to behave measuring the outdoors and then we'd have more opportunity to use the outdoors as we'd like to. And if people do follow my commute routes, they should be warned you will be waiting through a river scaling off just by the mountains because I get lost so so much. If you appreciate you taking the time to chat to us on the Roadman Cycling Podcast, I'm gonna link up information to you and commucius and my profile and all those bits in the bio down below for people. Well thanks for Chan. Lovely, thanks for being with you. Have a lovely day. Cheers. Hey everybody it's Anthony again. Really quick I want to invite you to join arguably the best thing I've ever put out inside the roadman community. It's a challenge. It's a challenge called a 14-day kickstart challenge. So regardless of where your fitness is at right now, this is going to be the catalyst for making it faster and making you the leaner. I've created this challenge to take the guesswork out of everything. It's 14 days of training plans regardless of what your level is. There's the master's beginner advanced. There's meal plans shopping list and even a video course holding your hand and talking you true 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 roadmancycling.com slash 14 day