Rowman, today I want to talk to you about the longest climb in the…
Rowman, today I want to talk to you about the longest climb in the world. Alto de Lettras. 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 on this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh and welcome to the Rowman Podcast. Go man, welcome back. Hola, kamaste! Yes, I am indeed in Colombia, if you didn't catch yesterday's podcast, it is an absolute dream come true for any cyclist to get to ride in Colombia and feel for us Europeans, this is a path that's just a little less trodden. But a mark of how amazing this area is in Medellin alone at the moment, there's four world tour teams doing their pre-season training camps at the moment. There's a reason. It's the altitude, it's the terrain, it's the heave, it's the people, it's the beauty of the landscape. It truly is an absolutely untapped gem and it's an absolute honour to be out here riding the bike. Today I want to talk to you about the longest climb in the world. It's called Alto the Let's Rass. And I'm tackling it. I'm tackling it a couple of days from now and I'm going to keep you posted as to how I get on on it but today I want to talk to you about the climb I want to talk to you about my preparations for the climb and yeah I'm half excited and half depressed at the prospect of having to ride 81 kilometers uphill. Before I dive in to tell you all about this amazing climb all told the let us let me ask you to pause this podcast and head across to patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore watch. Patreon is how you make a contribution to this podcast, it's how you keep the podcast on the road. You subscribe to Netflix, you subscribe to Spotify, all those huge companies that don't even need your money, but the small independent creators do need your money and we're one of those small independent podcasts. So please consider buying me the price of a beer once a month to support this podcast. To do that, you can do it at patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore Walsh. The link is in in the bio down below. So have I lost my mind? Why would anyone want to ride 81 km uphill? Well I suppose for me it's a bucket list climb and earlier this year I put out a podcast and it was about the greatest climbs in the world and I'd listed Rocca Colba in Jirona, I listed Alp where I listed the Stelvio and on this I had Alto de L'Ettras. It's an iconic climb for the longest in the world but it's also iconic because of the riders that Columbia is produced and producing. Like current, somewhere to top it, a game, Quintana, Rigoberto O'Ran and Tour de France winner, obviously Egan Bernal, all called Columbia home. And now we have this influx of like world tour teams like I mentioned in the intro and they're all out here riding their bikes in Colombia. There's a sort of mitt and magic to Colombia and the compounding effect then have I been the home of coffee and coffee being so inextricably linked with Saigland. It just adds to this or a romantic notion of this region and this climb is the it's the pinnacle of this region it's the highest point and it's gonna bring me some serious hardship. So let me talk to you a little bit about this climb. It starts in a town called Marquetta and and that's only at 460 meters above sea level. Now, I say only because that's a mountain where I'm from. That's, if I get to 460 meters, there's a lot of climb and it's taking place. And so I'm starting at 460 meters and the summit is tree-tales and 363 meters. Anyone who hasn't ridden that altitude before, altitude is miserable. Altitude is like holding your head underwater and gasping for air. Your lungs are burning but nothing has gone in. I've ridden Mount Hadeh and Tenorif and I think that's up at nearly 3,000 meters altitude and it is miserable near the top.
Air just feels like you can't get anything in
The air just feels like you can't get anything in. You don't have done like a one minute full gas effort and you can't breathe at the end of it. That's the sensation of trying to breathe at altitude even when you're riding along in zone two zone three. It is massively de-habilitating and especially if you haven't acclimated to it, which I won't have when I get there. So that's going to be interesting how I deal with that. Also, you've got the fact that the climb is so long. I'm going to start it in pretty tropical 30 plus degrees weather in Marchetta, but by the time I get to the summit, it's likely the temperature is going to be down below maybe 10, 15 degrees and likely to have rain at the top as well, which is going to be pretty, pretty miserable. This is in the coffee region, Marchetta, just if you want to figure out in your head where it's located, it's about two hours from Medellin, which is kind of the epicenter. It's the, when you hear Medellin, think the Jirona of Colombia, this is the epicenter of cycling in Colombia. So Marchetta is about two hours from that and it's the sordren tip in this famous coffee triangle in Colombia. And in this whole region, there's absolutely mountains everywhere. This just happens to be the most famous, but I'll hopefully get a chance over the next week to ride some of these other climbs that don't have the same note or royalty as all told deletras, but I'm sure they're gonna have similar severity and similar beauty, so I absolutely cannot wait to check that out. The key for me on this is, it's just pacing. Like I'm not going for a Strava record on it, it's the first out of Christmas. I'm roughly 80 kilograms, 80 kilogram riders don't go up 80 kilometer long climb super fast. So I'm not looking to blow the gates off this one. I remember going to Alp De Weiz and riding it the first time and I'd say it was my first year possibly starting my second year on the bike going over to France with some friends for training camp and riding Alp De Weiz full gas into the base of it. and up the way I think, offhand, I think it's a 13 kilometer climb and you know, 3 kilometers in with 10k remaining. I was light out, fast forward to the top of it. I'm cramping, salt coming through, my jersey, I'm swinging off the bike so I don't want a repeat of that. So I'm going to be taking a pretty handy gone up this. I'm going to be trying to take in the culture, take in the scenery, take in the climb and just really enjoy the moment. I'm gonna focus a lot, we're looking at 80km, it's gonna be the guts of a 4 hour climb, if not a little bit more. So I'm gonna focus on feeding, I'm gonna focus on drinking on the way up. I'm not sure if I'm gonna have a support car with me or if I'm gonna stop on the side of the road and feed with their stalls with fruit and stuff on the side of the road from the looks of the recon I've done. I'm gonna have the camera with me, so I'll try and create a little bit of footage on the way up and get it across onto the YouTube channel, which I will link in the description in one of the later podcasts when I actually have something to link to. So the guy who has the record at the moment, his name is DDO Shapiro. He's a Columbian pro and he's only 54 kilograms so that tells you the importance of weight on this climb. We all know power to weight and how important the metric that is when you're going uphill. It took him three hours in four minutes. Now to put that into context, Phil Game and he was no slouch. He was a decent and slash failed World Tour rider. Treetwainty. Look, it's a decent time, it's a respectable time, and you can see that Treetwainty is the fastest time. Phil Gaiman's done it in Treetwainty. He's a skinny dude, and he's still able to put down some power.
Santiago Baterro has the true record of two hours and 50 minutes
But Santiago Baterro has the true record of two hours and 50 minutes. This is before Strava and all that nonsense. But a true roadman, and he raised it in the Vuelta Columbia that day, two hours, 50 minutes. And incidentally, Santiago Baterro was the first Colombian ever to win a Grand Tour, winning the Vuelta as Spanya. So he definitely had some horsepower there. I will not be attempting. For the crack, I'd love to do a video going out at 2R50 pace and see how long I could hold it because it would be an absolute funeral to hold that pace. And you gotta remember, when you hear his time of 2R50 minutes, it's in the Vuelta Columbia. I don't know how the tactics played out that day because I only seen the article about his time, but it's likely that he had teammates riding into the base of the climb, full gas, so he sheltered behind them. It's likely that he had the mystiques, arrivals, set in pace, halfway up the climb. It's likely that he had team cars supporting him with food. So there's a lot of factors going to that time which make it almost untouchable for guys like DDA Shapiro on that three hours and four minutes in Philgame on 3.20 so you can look at it and say you know he's 30 minutes faster than Phil game but there's a lot of external kind of factors I've played there so in the brief time I've been in Colombia I've absolutely fallen in love with the country already. It's the people, the scenery, the weather, the park horse for cycling, the cycling culture and I'm only here a few days so I definitely need to brush up on my Spanish because I have zero, zero Spanish. And it's my fourth trip over here but it definitely won't be my last. Raul meant I'm back tomorrow with our full-length interview. I'm speaking with Claire Walsh which is absolutely amazing. She's a free diver talks about breeding techniques and how to maximize that energy, how to maximize energy in your, sorry, how to maximize oxygen in your blood so your hyper oxygenated. It's almost breeding techniques to naturally charge you with EPO and it's a super interesting how these freedivers are using breeding as it's nearly a combination of the art and science of breeding. Clear watch is fascinating. I've buttered what she does and how she does it but tomorrow she explains it brilliantly articulately and eloquently and you're really gonna enjoy that interview. Until then, roadman. I will keep you tuned, poke that on tors day as the hell alto the lecheras got on. If you don't ever hear from me again, just assume I didn't make the top of it. Assume the altitude got me. Roadman, take care and I'll chat to you tomorrow. Before you go anywhere. Our first ever roadman summit had aired back in December. I brought together 30 experts and they shared with me their secrets on how to biohack your physiology, her melt away body fat and smash her cycling goals, whatever that was. Since airing that back in December, I've just been in on days of my Instagram DM's Twitter direct messages with requests to get access to this material. I hadn't locked up in the vault, but I've decided to open access to this material for you, the podcast listeners at the Roadman Podcast. So to get access to this, it's a one-time payment of €47 and you're going to have all the interviews, all those secrets forever. You're going to have the videos and the MP-TRAIS. In there I've got interviews with world-time mechanics, nutritionists, sports psychologists, bike fit experts, and some of the legends at a sport like Tyler Hamilton and Pete Sten. Over 30 hours of content in this members area that I've created for you guys. So if you want to get access to that, to wait to do it, it's the head on over to this URL. www.roadmansomit.com forward slash 2021. I'll give you that again. It's www.roadmansomit.com forward slash 2021. That's numerical. The link to that is in the bio. Get it, check it out, learn it, take it in, because this is sure to set you on the right path for 2021.