Wicklow Way and Week Ahead
Let's talk about the Olympics. Cute out of intro! The big question is this. How do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness, and our long-term? That is the question, this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh, and welcome to the Roadman Podcast. Roadman! Welcome back to another Roman cycling podcast. It's time for the Olympics and you might be wondering, did I survive or is this Anthony's doppelganger? I survived the Wycliffe Way. If you listen back to the last podcast episode, I wasn't barking on and I've always wanted to use this word. An intrepid adventure. Can I now call myself an intrepid explorer? The The Wicklow Way was absolutely epic from Trojan True Fields, hike a bike, foraging for you know water and streams. I don't know if you can forage for water, but I'm going to do a full episode on it tomorrow. I want to talk about the Olympics today because we had Machiavanderpog on in the mountain bike race today and what I was away over the last few days. We had the men's road race as well. So I wanted to just recap all of that before I put that to bed. talk about the Wicklow way tomorrow and then the amazing guest again with one of the key people in tracking app I'm using a lot of the moment called commute. They're a rival to Strava, more for adventure race adventures and planning things like the Wicklow way and it's actually how I plan my tributes and commute. I'm going to talk with them on Wednesday. So we've been an exciting action packed weekend coming up where we're going to kick it off. Monday is my f... I love... I love Wednesday because it's interview day but I do love Monday because there's such fresh possibilities on a Monday. The week is just a blank canvas and I have this mad enthusiasm for everything I can accomplish for the week. So I'm excited to kick this one off and I'm encountering a massive frustration with the Olympics at the moment and I tweeted about this earlier and it's like a recording team for me now. I wake up, I knew the Mountain Boy Grace was on but I have a bunch of stuff recorded on my Sky Player of Trudy Night. So I'm like okay what time was the Mountain Boy Grace on at so I can start to see what recording is relevant. So I go online to figure out what time the Mountain Boy Grace was recorded and then I see a picture of the winner of the Mountain Boy Grace which just totally spoils the fucking Mountain Boy Grace I've literally been waiting 6 months for and this is what's happened to me in so many Olympic events but that's a solid note of just frustrating. come up with a solution to that and you're going to be a rich, wealthy person. So we'd match a Vanderpauge on the Mountain Boy grace today and we'd mad drama because Vanderpauld smashed himself on lap one of the Mountain Boy grace. Very, very uncharacteristic error for him. And at the time I was like, how is that possible? Nerves. He went over a jump section and instead of getting his weight back, he had his weight forward. So as he went over the jump he just barreled head over heels and it turns out afterwards we have macho van der pol coming out and talking about how he didn't know the jump was there he thought there was going to be a board there and his teammates found this sort of strange but van der pol took to social media and he put a picture of it and he's saying like everyone that knows me knows how bad I want this how hard I worked for it and the board was there in practice, the board was there in reconnaissance and he wasn't told that the board wouldn't be there on race day. So he came over the top of the jump expecting the board to roll down and it was gone. His teammate Vadar was a little baffled, he came out after and said, it's hard to say, we did talk about this over lunch today. Machu said, gosh, everyone jumps there. Oi asked, won't you then? He said no, I'll roll off the plank. Then I said to him, but they had removed the plank in the test event competition in 2009.
Mountain Bike Plank Controversy
I was not aware of it. The Planck was there during the reconnaissance, and I only heard it being removed for the test event, didn't know it was removed for the main event. So we just see it as mass confusion, and in an area where we expect everything to be controlled, where we're, nutrition is controlled, the tapers are controlled, the environment is controlled, we've heard about pick-cock sleeping in a heat chamber before. So many of the million variables in a boy craze are now controllable. Did something as simple as this, you know, a basic communication error, understanding and knowing the course that that on those one of the best boy curators in the world, it's a little bit tragic and I feel doubly robbed, robbed because they didn't get to watch the race without knowing the winner, and robbed because we never got this pick-cock Vanderpaul showdown which we were all hoping for and to be fair to pick-cock he's 7-8 day show of his 22nd birthday and he pulled off the gold which is absolutely great from Flukinger from Switzerland beating by 20 seconds and Davide Valero claimed bronze from Spain. There wasn't that much drama in the race although it's worth watching if you haven't seen it already just for the feat of engineering and construction from the Tokyo Olympic Committee. The mountain bike race is entirely man-made and from bridges to forests and it's brilliant, it's spectacular. So go check that out. We won't leave the topic of Olympics just yes just when you talk this podcast might be running out of steam I want to talk about the road race and what we can kind of learn from the road race because we're seeing the snake winning carapas this snake and he won and you know I've talked about what I don't like carapas I think a man is as word as his bond and he went to the shook the hands of his movie star teammates and manager and said he'd be there for one more year at a time when he had an in the house contract in his back pocket. You do not come back from that. Not on this podcast. This podcast, it's a life sentence for that. And you are a carapaz, the snake forevermore. But we learned a couple of things from it. Definitely that the strongest rider in the race doesn't always win. Carapaz, whatever my opinions about him being a snake and dishonorable, he knows how to ride his bike. He's aggressive. He's attacking. He knows he's not the strongest in the race. But he's a good good little all around her, he can TT when he gets away solo on the road, he can climb well enough just off the back of the podium on the Tour de France to pull off a gold medal. It's astonishing and he should be very proud of that and no doubt he is, but Pogacha and Wout Van Erte are kind of what I want to talk about because they almost cancelled each other out in a lot of ways. We'd seen Pogacha and he seemed disappointed in the post-race press I feel like he thinks he should be able to just ride away every time there's an incline and he wasn't able to ride away because Mike Woods was able to go with him and Brandon McNulty was able to go with him and it was over the top when a plateaued and welt fan air dragged everyone else back up, the carapas got away again and opportunistic attack with McNulty so it just shows you that time and beats absolute power. Obviously you need a certain amount of power, that's your entry requirement in today's type of moves, but you do need that coil and that smarts as well. And when everyone is watching you likes happening in Pogacha and Woutfanaert, it can be difficult to get separation because you know there's a big effect of being in somebody's draft. And Woutfanaert struck me as a man, as the Pogacha, a man who wanted this too much. Woutfanaert was willing to take on a crazy amount of work and it ultimately didn't pay for him that he walked away or a silver medal in his back pocket which is not a bad result, a competitor like he went there for gold. One of the big takeaways we can get from this road race is Brandon McNulty. He rode brilliant for Pogacha, his trade team mate in the Tour de France, the fact that he was able to recover away in the decisive move of Carapaz, blew up a little bit, but still hold on and get sixth.
Road Race Takeaways and Irish Pride
It just forced the illustrates how close he was to a medal, but it really bodes well for a US finally having a grand tour contender and Tinktoyler Hamilton almost the last US rider to win in Olympic gold. McNulty was close. No cigar. He's not going to do it in the TT. He's not that sort of rider. But the next games, he's still super young. Could the US finally have a GC contender? He looks a very, very complete rider. The best we've seen coming out with the US in years, maybe since TJ Van Gardren showed that early promise going to win in stages, toward California. And you know, other takeaways. Roman Ireland wrote, great and super proud of the boys. Eddie Dunbar, Dan Martin and Nicholas Roch, and they rode like a real team. And often we're kind of used to Irish teams going and being, you know, GBs poorer relation and having a very substandard team. But not the case at all. We had three of the best boy-griders in the world and, you know, test them into Nicko Roch for sticking his hand up and working for the lads with no ego about him. This is Fort Olympics. And I've had him on the podcast a couple of times. It's Fort Olympics and he's happy to carry bottles the cantwork man, Dunbar, who got away in a super promising move with Remko Evanpall, and Nibali went along to do a little bit of babysitting for the two younger lads, he just couldn't trust him on his own, little pesky whippets. Went really well, ultimately Dan just didn't have the legs at the Voiltime, missed the split, I think he ended up 16th or something like that, Keir on Power and Dan Martin still have Orleans best result, shout out to Keir on Power, a legend of a man, I think it was 13th in a Calanta, which was equalled by Dan Martin in Rio. And spare a tot for Garan Thomas because he is a man who should not boy a lottery ticket. If there's a crash to be had, you'll find Garan Thomas at the bottom of it. I don't have a soy sauce going, if his luck is going, whatever it is. He picked himself up off the ground and he had the luck of a man who was broke, who was empty, who was dejected and who just needed to call a day on this season, walk the fuck going holidays with his misses, re-charge and figure what he wants out of Saldiclan because it's such a frustrating end to the season for him. He grey-formed the Dolph and A and Torres Swiss to go into the Tour de France and then just constantly hit the deck and then the Olympics again and you know that's Horton, the former Tour de France winner. It has to be and it's a streak of massive unluckiness or else there's something going wrong with Grand Thomas. Rodman, I'm gonna wrap it up here for the Olympic roundup. We still have TT to come. I'm gonna be back tomorrow and I'm gonna talk about the Wicklow way and my trials and tribulations of I think 2,200 meters plus a climb and 16 hours, 17 hours nearly in the saddle over two days, 30 plus degrees, trying to find water in streams, hike a bike and all the other adventures in between. Rodman, I'll be back tomorrow, ride safe, chat then. Hey everybody, it's Anthony again. Really quick, I want to invite you to join arguably the best thing I've ever put out inside the roadman community. It's a challenge. It's a challenge called a 14-day Kickstarter challenge. So regardless of where your fitness is at right now, this is going to be the catalyst for making you faster and making you leaner. I've created this challenge to take the guess work out of everything. It's 14 days of training plans regardless of what your level is. There's There's Masters, Beginner, Advanced, there's Mail Plans, Shopping List and even a video course holding your hand and talking you through at all. So what I recommend you do right now is just stop everything, press pause on this audio and go to roadmansoycling.com forward slash 14 day or check out the link in the bio. That's roadmansoycling.com slash 14 day.