1.Rowman, it's stage 5 of the Hero Ditalia

Rowman, it's stage 5 of the Hero Ditalia! 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 long changes? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh, and welcome to the Rowman Podcast. Roadman, welcome back to another roadman cycling podcast. It is stage 5 of the Juro d'Italia, 177 kilometers from Medina to Catalecia. And today was a pretty boring stage if you were to sit on front of the TV and watch it all day. But if you were to and tactically stick it on a mute in the background, and then with 15 kilometers to go unmuted, you caught basically all the drama, not bragging, but that's exactly what I did today. Well, maybe before I dive in and unpack somebody action in a stage that saw us losing one of the GC favorites, guttingly, let me remind you about Patreon. There's a minestr sort of back room cost to get in a podcast out every single day. There's hosting fees. There's various other things to go into just getting out the door and keeping this on the road, keeping the show on the road. And, you know, we don't take on show sponsors. The reason is we want to stay in partial. We want to be able to reach out to any world tour guests in the peloton and bring them on without fear of a conflict. Also, we just want to have honest conversations. As soon as I start telling you that it's on bullshit chamois cream or some crappy shampoo is the key to everlasting life and sticking 150 watts on your threshold. Are you really gonna believe anything I say anymore? Are you gonna believe my opinions? So my promise is I will never share a product that I don't use myself. Now there's a couple of good products that I do recommend that I use myself and you'll hear them every now and then. But the way we keep this show on the road is it's patreon. It's patreon.com forward slash Antony, under score welch, as always a stick to link in the bio and please do buy me a beer for the Jirotitalia and support the podcast. So today was I said 177km, little chance of wind, no categorised climbs meaning there's no points on offer, basically this means that no one in the peloton has any interest in going in the break. You also got to consider that yesterday was a poor and wet miserable day so morale is a lot lower for some people. But the main reason is you no chance of getting points on categorized climbs and you have virtually no chance of staying to the finish. So really what you're doing is what we call a television attack and we did see a TV attack. We saw two locals getting up the road, two Italian riders and the peloton at one point sped up fearing that there might be some crosswinds which never materialized and they brought them back. But almost instantly as soon as they brought them back we seen another TV attack with two different writers from the same two local teams and they were joined by an asheid duzerra writer. It really was a very non-tretting and break that never got very much time and it was well under control and it was always coming back for the sprint so we're not going to herb her too much on that point. They were out there, they got some air time on the TV, they're not even getting a mention of their names or their sponsors on this podcast because we don't like TV attacks, this is podcast. The drama started when Sivikov from Sky hit a hedge, Inios' co-team leader, and just milled himself in a hedge. A moment of inattentiveness got squeezed. Bike handling and ground tours is more important than one day races. There's so much on the line, and at the point I'm going to hit home in a minute on the second crash of one analyse, but there's so much on the line for so many of these teams. There's so much pressure to be at the front of the race. the roads are only so wide. Bike handling weaknesses are exposed as you move up every level and cycling. If you move from sporty-fried into A4, it's a huge jump when you move from A4 to A3 to A1. It's worlds apart and then you do your first UCI race. Worlds apart again. And then if you get a chance to ride with guys who are a world tour, even as when you're a bottom tier UCI rider, It's like holy shit on the worst rider in the pack again, and I've never had a chance to ride a grand tour But I believe it's the same step again guys who ride one day races Moving to these grand tours and they're like oh my god I can't believe the fight for position.

2.There's no space on the road and civic off We've seen him last year…

There's no space on the road and civic off We've seen him last year in the fourth stage It's sort of France milling himself and ruining his GC chances We're seeing the exact same thing again in the first week as you're old this year I'm not saying he's a ship boy handler, but he's a completely ship boy handler. Tell me, what's that meme? Tell me he's a ship boy handler without telling me he's a ship boy handler. Well, you just show a picture of him upside down in a hedge today. So, a big problem we have is on stages like this, we have the tree kilometer cutoff mark, which means that if you crash outside tree kilometers, you're going to inherit the misfortune of a bad time. So what we have is the GC Reuters lining up trains and the Sprint teams lining up trains and it's just it's nasty and around 8k to go is a really miserable time I find 10 to 8k to go around that mark because the Sprint teams are lined up the GC teams are lined up but nobody's taken it up yet so it's still quite bunched up and it's dangerous And it stays like this until a team commits and takes it up. But 8 to 10k is too early to commit because you don't have enough firepower to bring it to the finish with a bit of gusto. So I always find that Mark has a really, really dangerous one. And the Sivikov crash today and then a really nasty crash just outside the 3k, around 4k to go. We had one of the race favorites. And yesterday's Anna Major from Bahrain, Marita Miguel Landa hitting a policeman who was pointing out some road furniture and yesterday's stage winner, Jodham Brodsky, going down as well. They took out the signal guy, they took out the island. I don't know how it happened. It's seen, right, there's two points. The road furniture and all this stuff is unnecessary. You know, we see the UCO and we've had podcasts on this before and the absurdity of the stuff that they spend their time and focus on, on eliminating aero tucks out of the bunch on, on stupid littering rules, on not being able to roid which are your forearms on the handlebars. These sort of stupid things. And then we see Kamikazee's style finishes with road furniture like we seen today. I just don't get where their focus is. And I know littering is a different thing to roid or safety, but it's like where is your energy because where your energy goes, attention flows and their attention and energy is just in the wrong spot. So with this sleeping policeman, and Thomas DeGant from Lotto Sedal in a post-race interview said, his director warned him about 10-15 times that this obstruction was coming up and he said he assumes everyone else in the bunch also knew about the obstruction. I'm not sure if it's just Landis director didn't pass it on, Tom Broskie's director didn't pass it on, or more likely the fog of war at the end that it's 4K to go, and you're just doing everything you can to stay in position and move up and somebody flicks out at the last minute, wheels overlap and boom, down you go, before you know it, you're smashing a policeman, you're into a traffic island. Land that is out of the Boygrace and that is really, really tragic news for us, that Land is out of the Boygrace and we'd such a sad image of the Bahrain, we'd read a team coming in at the end as a full team, having waited for their leader and then their leader climbed into the ambulance and abandoned and they're coming in and it's just, it's a tragic end to the stage and the grand tour for them. I know they have other riders who could challenge, but you know, Peo Basca is, you know, meant to be going quite well. But look, Michelanda was their star and there's so much investment goes into a rider like that. But a team, individual leader, so much sacrifice goes in as preparation that training camp's equipment, aerodynamics, support staff around it. Also, as a fan, that's all wasted to now for Bahrain, Merida, but also as a fan of the sport, I want to see the best Reuters in the world animate the toughest stages. I want to see them race in the difficult mountain passes and these crazy stupid furniture finishes. The robots of that and I seem very new easily at the end suggest maybe we have a 10k rule where after with 10k to go, Reuters get to sit up and GC Reuters can sit up and you'll get the same time.

3.Pulling the 3k rule out to 10k

So pulling the 3k rule out to 10k. But look, I don't know because I don't know if we had that crash of 4k today. I don't know if you pull it out to 10k, you know, you start seeing the hustle and bustle at 11k. I don't know how to deal with it, but it's, there's no one has an interest in seeing a rider like Mika Land that lives today. There's very little drama added to today's stage. Honestly, I would have not been stomach watching that run in today. Anyone else have a knot in their stomach? I felt like I was racing myself. In the end when we navigated all the shoe canes in the road furniture we had Timmy Lake having a problem in the sprints the points leader looked like he dropped the chain. Fastest man boy a country mile married to a cork woman Caleb Yeon and you can't both feel sorry for Jack on the Zolo or European champion. He was second again today. This is his 11th second place in his year of the Talya. Another Italian Viviani rounds out the podium with Saigon coming in fourth. Saigon's super consistent but you can't help but wonder what Saigon just hampered by Milano from UAE. I don't know what Milano was doing. He's the lead out man and he realizes his sprinter is not with him and he, I don't know even know what he done. It was just stupid. He just sat up and he obstructed Saigon and he committed to it. He made a fucking mess of the whole thing. So after today's drama we've one small change in the GC. We still have the Marche flying the flag high for Italy and great to see Israel start up nation. They are leading the GC still with a 42 second lead over Varbaki from Albus and Fenix and he's new up once but because Joe Dombrowski was second on GC but after today's crash with Michelanda, he falls down out of the reckoning on GC and then we have Nelson Olivera rounding out the GC podium at the moment of 48 seconds from movie star but honestly you can like that GC is pointless at the moment. Tomorrow we might see a small little GC mix up or stage 6, it's 160 kilometers from Graso D. frasassé to Acone PCNO and we have 3400 meters of climbing tomorrow so it should be a spicy stage and then we have I think it's an excess 15 kilometer climb to the summit tomorrow but looking at the gradient the first half of it looks pretty mild so if we're gonna see any GC action it'll be on the second half there's a couple of climbs scattered throughout the day so expect tomorrow to be maybe a small group, makes it to the lion and contests it. And you know maybe someone for a smashing grab on a few GC seconds. We'll see today the overarching tone for me is just frustration, frustration that we've been robbed by stupidity from the UCI, the race organizers of one of the brightest stars in this year's race, Miquelanda has abandoned the Jiro d'Italia. Folks, I'm gonna chat to you again tomorrow. 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 gonna be the catalyst for making you faster and making you the leaner. I've created this challenge to take the guesswork out of everything. It's 14 days, 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 roadmansoidglings.com forward slash 14 day, or check out the link in the bio. That's roadmansoidglings.com slash 14 day.