All of us got into cycling because at the very, very beginning, it…
All of us got into cycling because at the very, very beginning, it was so much fun back when you started as a kid, but along the way we got lost in a cloud of intervals and wattage. Today, I'm going to talk about how we take the fun back. Before I do, let's cure the team song. 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 Welch and welcome to the Roadman Podcast. Hello Roadman, it's another Roadman Bites short form podcast. I hope everybody's enjoying them. We're coming to the end of week one of the Roadman Bites Podcasts and for everyone who's taken the time to drop me feedback in the form of DMs or Twitter messages. I do thank you for that. It's given me a great little bit of motivation to kick on into next week Today my tangible little tip. Hope you enjoyed yesterday. I'm gonna call it traffic secrets Well today I want to talk about probably the most fun I've had on the bike in I don't know a long long time and it was bike packing and I know there's a lot of caution and nervousness around bike packing because it's the I suppose it's the opposite, it's the antithesis of safety and control and a lot of the things were quite used to it's really going out into the unknown but you can do a little bit of preparation and it makes the experience a lot more enjoyable. So today I want to give you a couple of little mini how-to guide if you're going to set off on your first backpack and bike packing trip. And I would encourage you to try it even if it's only a weekend, even if it's you know you leave on a Saturday, you come back on a Sunday. Amazing, try it for the first time ever. It's unbelievable sense of freedom. But in my experience, and my experience I'm talking about, I went about two weeks ago, I rode from Dublin down to Cork, and I've done it over two days, and I'm going to talk you through my process, we're getting ready for that. I'm also planning a slightly bigger week-long one before the end of the summer around sort of the Royal Atlantic Way here in Ireland, so looking forward to that. But it all started for me the night before. You're looking at packing clothes, you got to pack really likes but you're packing for your destination. So you need to be checking the weather where you're going and packing for your destination. For me it was just thrown in and said at denim shorts, denim shorts, there's no blind boy podcast and Michael Fassbender wrote in a poem and it was about Elon. This is a crazy poem about going to the moon in a rocket ship with Elon Musk. But in that poem he talks about, mean Elon, we bought ore denim shorts, but both of us are both too cool and important and don't have time to say the full word denim shorts. So we just bought, bought called them, Jorts. So Jorts is stuck around my house, the term Jorts. So I drew a pair of Jorts, some sandals, a T-shirt and one of those micro fleece jackets into my saddlebag, also true in some power bank chargers and USB cable so I could keep my phone charged and keep my GPS computer charged. And off I went.
Now I am going to go slightly on a tangent here for one second…
Now I am going to go slightly on a tangent here for one second because I spoke in the last podcast about I'm trying to answer the question that I get every single podcast, what wheels are you using, what frame are you using, what bike are you using, what recovery boots are you using. I know I'm going to get a million questions about this. Like, what GPS you want to use, what software to use for planning it. This is all part of the wider resources section that I'm building. I've flat out, honestly, I was like 10 hours working on it today. It's only one page, but it takes ages to make sure I'm happy with the recommendations that I'm giving you guys because I want this to be a really cool reference list that's going to grow week after week. So where you're going to find this is roadmanresources.com. How fresh is that URL? I just bought it today, roadmanresources.com. It's not up and running yet, so if you're listening to this podcast like the day after it's released, you won't be able to go to that. But if you're listening to it past the weekend, head to roadmanresources.com and I'm going to link to the saddlebag that I'm using, I'll link to the GPS unit, it was the Wahoo Rome that I used, I linked to the software that I used to plan, it was Camusch, it was called. I encourage you to get commute, free download, it's class. I used commute to plan the route. The reason I used commute and not Strava. So I put in Dublin day one to Torlas. It was about 185 kilometer, roid. But when you put it in and commute, it crowdsources the route and people sort of along the way that have previously ridden the route. Comment and tag and go, oh, that castle over there is fair of noise, you should definitely go and check that out. So you end up just clicking on the castle and it deviates the route for you and you build this route which builds in a load of cool little sort. Like that's super important because I know back when I was raised some full time in the States, pro. Like I remember being 5k I think from the Grand Canyon and I didn't go and see it and that's a massive regret for me. I was that close to it. I didn't realise I was that close to it but if I had something like Kameut I would definitely have avoided that. When you're planning your route you need to think about this is not about getting the average speed up. Like you're carrying heavy bags, you're not pinning it all day, 300 watts for the day. You want to leave plenty of time. You want to leave plenty of time so you're not rushed out with a coffee shop halfway. If someone engages you in a bit of a chat, you know, an interesting character in a local village, you don't want to be thinking to yourself, oh, the garment has stopped. I need to get going again. I'm fighting daylight here. Leave yourself plenty of time. If it's a 100k trip, you don't plan a 22k an hour average. be super conservative and plan an hour for coffee stop, plan a 45 minute for a second coffee stop, give yourself the day to do it. So what I would say to dip the feet in the water here is plan a two day trip but plan it in one direction. So I went Dublin to Kinsell. So I rode day one Dublin to Turles 170, 180k then Turles to Kinsell day two and then I got the train back and getting the train back like that it means you're exploring new roads all the time and you're not just doing and out and back because that kind of feels like a weekend ride.
Noter tip, I would say, have accommodation booked on the fire end
Noter tip, I would say, have accommodation booked on the fire end. There's nothing worse than wandering around the town after seven, eight errors on the bike of haul and luggage on the back of your bike and you're trying to go around knocking on doors going, oh, any rooms tonight, lads? Let us in. You're like a character out of the boy looking for a bit of accommodation for the night. It's not nice and you'll have fuck all patients after that long a day so get on the Airbnb app, have your accommodation booked. And a lot of my lessons are learned by hard trial and error and this one definitely was, if you're going to go exploring folks, do the exploration, by this I mean you're going off your GPX file that you've taken from your commuting downloaded to your Wahoo. Do the exploring off beat stuff near the start of the trip, not the end. I took the road from Cork into Kinsel. I got there and I knew the road. And I was like, I'll do a little bit of exploring. I end up going on some shockingly rough boring, some steep climbs that I didn't need. The legs were already sapped at that stage of the day. And I just kind of took the phone out of it a little bit. I think now is a great time to go and do this sort of thing where a lot of us are on international travel bans. And, you know, a lot of us are very quick to go exploring. These iconic places up the west, Jirona, Tuskny, but we've neglected to explore on our own door. And I know for me, living in Ireland, I've guillotied this for years, and Ireland has some of the most beautiful roads in the world. So wherever you are, jump on those apps, get on your commute on Strava, see where the cool segments are, see where the cool climbs are, and go explore and see what's on your doorstep because you'll have so, so much fun. Roadman, that is it for another Roadman Boyce Podcasts. Thank you for listening. I'm gonna go back to working on that resource directory for you, I'm still up here to up to that roadmanresources.com. It's gonna be legendary. If you're enjoying these daily tips from the Roadman podcast, I would ask you to take one second and head over to patreon.com forward slash Anthony under skull watch that's the place you can go and you can say I'm getting a lot out of these tips Anthony's bringing me I'm getting really actionable tangible points that are bringing me from where I am closer to my destination every day and I'd like to buy my beer I'd like to buy my coffee to say thanks for that patreon is the place you can do it it might seem like a small little gesture for you but for me it does two things it gives me vindication it gives me feedback that were on the right road that were heading the right direction that the content is valuable to you and it helps sustain this podcast. It helps me bring you this podcast every single weekday. Thank you all, man. And I'm going to talk to you again tomorrow.