Let's talk about that annual tradition
Let's talk about that annual tradition. Now I don't mean Christmas. It's a Rafa Festa 500. Let's cue 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 Row Man Podcast. Roman welcome back to another roadman cycling podcast. Thanks for joining me and as Shane McGowan says it is indeed Christmas Eve. It's the Christmas Eve roadman podcast, the first roadman podcast I have ever recorded on Christmas Eve. So thanks for joining me for it. I'm sure if you're anything like me you're thinking today and if you keep this one brief I still have my training to do of the grocery shopping to do one of all my presents to buy Hopefully I'm in your ear and you're getting one of those things done right now I know the day ahead for me. I'm gonna get in three hours on the bike this morning I'm gonna try and get out the door eight o'clock. I'm looking out the window now and I'm already thinking about what kit I'm gonna wear and then it's three hours on the bike straight into town and and start the Christmas shop and it's not so much of a last-minute panic as it is a bit of a Christmas tradition so I quite look forward to it and soak up the atmosphere although I'm sure the city center is going to be a little bit different this year. Christmas is obviously a nailed-on tradition but what is also becoming pretty much a nailed-on tradition is the Rafa Festive 500 we're in the 11th year of the Rafa Festive 500 if you can imagine that I'm kind of aging myself there. I feel like it was yesterday when they started this Festa 500. The concept is simple if you haven't heard of it before. Between Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve you've got to cover 500 kilometers and log it on Strava. That's the concept. It doesn't matter what terrain you do it on. It doesn't matter if it's indoors, outdoors, if you do it on a unicycle, a tandem, a road bike, a mountain bike, your commuting bike, your granny's bike. It's all the same. 500 kilometers at whatever speed you like. I want to dive in today and give you seven tips. I suppose it's a Raffa Festa 500 survival guide. Seven tips to get you through it. Before I do, folks, it's coming into the Festa period and the podcast is entirely funded by user donations. So if you'd like to buy me the price of a beer coming up to Christmas to say, Anthony, you know what, Christmas Eve, get yourself a point of beer. You can do that in the link down below. It's Anthony, sorry, it's patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore watch and that's much appreciated. It makes me feel warm, gooey and also support this podcast. So as I said, we're in the 11th year of the Rafa Festa 500 and last year we'd 120,000 people signing up and expectations are that it's gonna be above that again. So what do you get if you complete the Rafa Festa 500? Well, you really get nothing. You get the respect of your friends and the guys and girls who you cycle with. Oh no, actually you do get this sort of weird digital trophy on Strava but you need to be a bit soft in the brain to cherish a digital trophy. Any actual trophies I have are very deep in my parents attic with a lere dust. So I can't imagine a digital participatory based trophy is gonna carry much, you know, sentimentality for anyone listening to the podcast. But it's more about just a shared collective experience with your friends and it's a time of year and it's something I hold dear on this podcast because for a long time cycle has been an exclusionary sport elite guys meeting up in car parks in industrial estates, retail parks and running things like criteriums, road races which are all brilliant and I love and that's the history of the sport and I'm so entrenched in that tradition.
Welcome the new folk coming into sport and they're not as competitive…
But I also welcome the new folk coming into sport and they're not as competitive orientated, they're participatory orientated and that's brilliant as well because it's more bombs on bikes, it's healthy and we're all sharing the thing we love, cycling. And this is one of the few participatory events in the year and I'm actually not going to do it myself this year but I haven't said that now, I'm going to go out and I'm going to ride three hours today and if I get three hours today, you know, I get the guts of 100k in, it's not a bad start, but I don't plan on riding the full Rafa Festa 500, but I will keep you posted as the week goes. So you got to think about straightaway, we're into the seven tips here. Now this is even a bonus tip. You got to think about your sort of strategy. So you can ride 62.5 kilometers a day. Quick maths, hopefully that was right. 60, it sounds right. 62.5 kilometers a day. But most people listening are going to take a day off for Christmas day so you need to factor that in. My gut on this is you need to front load it. You need to get a big ride done on Christmas Eve and give yourself that little bit of slip in the room. You don't want to be chasing it and trying to get like a 190 kilometer ride in on New Year's Eve as your fatigue. So try and front load the mileage if you can. Now we'll jump into the seven tips. So we talked tip number one. I talked last podcast was it two podcasts ago or Yeah, I think so. I'm losing track of podcasts about alcohol consumption and Christmas and far be it for me to say you can't enjoy a drink over Christmas. It should factor into your schedule. If you're planning on a heavy night on the drink and you're also planning on riding 190 kilometers the next day, those two are not going to mix well. And at best, it's going to be a very uncomfortable day. At worst, there's some pretty adverse health consequences to it. So have a listen back to that podcast. I think it's titled Alcohol and Christmas. It's just something you really don't want to be doing. Having two or three beers max but when you start getting into a decent noise on the beer it just does not mix well with cycling. So if you're planning a decent night on the beer, plan an easier ride the next day. So now you only have the Christmas Eve, the New Year's Eve to get the 400 kilometers in so So, this better not be a huge drinking period for you. Tip number two, do it in a group. There's a bunch of reasons for doing this. First reason, time goes by so much faster when you're in a group. Conversations flow easier. It's this shared experience and it's communal and it's tribal and it's all these things that we love. You know, when we studied the Blue Zones, these areas in the world, and I talk about them on the podcast quite a bit, the Blue Zones are areas around the world that have the highest density of centurians live. These are people living over the age of 100 years. And one of the commonalities there, it's social connection and it's tribes. And I don't mean that in any sort of feudal sense. More just a connection with a group of like-minded interests. So getting out in the group, chatting, laugh and telling jokes, it's so brilliant. And as that social connection that so many of us are missing as we move into this new virtual Zoom era. Also the time is going to take a boy faster, but also distance is going to take a boy faster because we can share the workload so it's a double-pronged reason to get into that group. Number three, it's planned this around family time. Like have a look at your family's calendar. Cycling should be, we talked about the Rafa Festif 500 is brilliant because it's inclusionary, not exclusionary, but that shouldn't be just inclusionary to you and your group of friends who you cycle with.
Should be inclusionary to your family as well and it's a great way to…
It should be inclusionary to your family as well and it's a great way to go off and and get some of those positive endorphins and come home and you're bringing a better meal at home to hang out with the family rather than you're just gone for the entire day. So don't plan like two, three coffee stops on it. Plan to get it done in quite a compact period of time. You're out the door at seven o'clock in the morning and you're back at eleven, twelve o'clock and you're ready to spend the day with family. A good tip when you get in the door if you want to be, you know, productive and engaging for the rest of the day. As soon as you get in the door, get your shower or your recovery drink. a very short nap, even if it's only 15 to 20 minutes. It'll make a huge difference in your alertness levels for the rest of the day. The next one is, somebody's are so common sense, but you'd be surprised. I'm speaking with clients and a lot of people are hitting me up on Instagram and their Sinemi DMs talking about the Raffa Festa 500 and sharing roots. A lot of people are picking hilly roots. This makes no sense. Especially when we're talking about it's a time of year to prioritize. family are probably gonna have a little bit of alcohol, you want to feel a little bit good. Don't pick a hilly root, you need to cover 500 kilometers between Christmas day and New Year's Eve. Pick a flat root and pick good roads. You don't need the hardship of riding down party-roo-based, oil cobbles or horrible country lanes where you're going to get muck and slurry in your face all day. Pick nice roads with good surfaces where you're going to be able to tip along a 30 plus kilometers an hour without putting a massive effort. Number 5, listen to your body. This Rafa Festa 500 from most listeners here, it's not the be all and end all. It's something nice to do but you all have bigger goals later in the year. Those goals could be just like the goal of the podcast, you cycle as a tool for health, happiness and longevity or it could be event based goals. You want to do an Ironman, you want to complete a century, you want to do the Mallorca tree one two or your eraser. Listen to your body because if you are someone who's time-crunch and you've typically been on 60 to 90 minute trainer rides in the odd weekend ride, now you're finding yourself at all this available train in time and you're going to go out and you're going to crush this Rafa Festa 500. If you're 350km in after four days, which is a massive load and it'll go against all recommendations that a coach or sport scientist will give you for a load increase, even in a super compensation block. Listen to your body if you're starting to pick up saddle sores, if you're starting to feel really really unmotivated getting out of bed or if you're starting to experience pains, knee pains, back pains, wrist pains, it's time to be sensible and not be a soldier and push true because you can end up going into the new year instead of feeling good off the back of this injured and that's a real real problem and you know it's a real problem. I don't need to dig into that. You know what it's a real problem. You don't want to start the year injured. Number six, fuel properly. So so many of us think I'm consuming 10 billion calories on Christmas day. Now I need to go out on Steven's day and almost punish myself in some sort of sadom masochistic way for not having discipline around food yesterday. Part Christmas day, it's fine not to have discipline around food, but when you go on the bike, you need to fuel. If you're going to roll out this many hours on the bike, you want to have minimum 60 grams carbohydrates per hour. And I'd say maximum is the absorption rate is around 100 grams of carbohydrates per hour if you're mixing the fuel sources like you're getting some from true your bottles with a sports drink and you're getting some true very food sources of carbohydrates.
You're going to get 100 maybe up to 120 as we heard Nikki Strobel…
You're going to get 100 maybe up to 120 as we heard Nikki Strobel from Mitchell and Scott. And I had him on the roadman so much and he's the head of nutrition for the world's routine Mitchell and Scott. And he records up to 120 grams of carbs is possible when you vary those sources of sugars coming into the body. But you need to be getting at least 60 grams of carbohydrates per hour that you're right. So look, the quick maths is easy on this one. You're doing a six-hour ride, you need six times, 60 grams, 360 grams of carbohydrates going into your body. You also need to be hydrating properly. So that's one bottle, 500 ml at least every hour. And these two things will catch up with you. You're not eating for today or eating for tomorrow. If you don't eat today, you'll probably get true to ROID because you have stores of glycogen and you have a bit of willpower and you'll push through and you'll come home feeling shit. The next day, it's going to be a problem. The next day, it's going to be a problem. Then immune system is going to get compromised. Then you're going to pick up a bug and it's all bad, bad, bad. So fuel properly including hit up a proper recovery drink after. So you're looking at carbs to protein in a four to one ratio within 15 minutes of finishing it. The last thing, and this is something so, so many people are going to make a mistake on. You're going to get a new piece of kit on Christmas day and on Steven's day, you're going to head out the door with your new shorts, with your new shoes, with your new jacket. Don't use anything new during the Rafa Festif 500. Use something new next time, next week, when you're on the tourbo. You want to test out the new shoes. You're going to do 15 minutes on on the tour ball and you're gonna go out of a cleave position on those is way off and glad I tried them for 15 minutes on the tour ball not when you're heading out the road with 20 guys down the Raffa Festa 500 and now you're stuck wearing them for the next 6 hours and you develop an injury. Guys, it's a great great activity to Raffa Festa 500. It's so much fun. It's something really positive to bookend the year on and I really hope you'll just stay injury free and heed these guidelines because if you do, it's something to look back on. And in 2020 a year that's had so much darkness, it's a little something that you can hang your hat on and go, I finished that well. Now let's take this momentum into 2021. Roadmen, have yourselves an amazing Christmas Eve. And it kind of pains me, but it kind of brings a smile to my face to say this, I'll be back tomorrow on Christmas day for another roadman. cyclin podcast Chatty all then, oh man, whoo If you could see me dancing Chatty tomorrow, oh man 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 you faster and making you leaner. I've created this challenge to take the guess walk out of everything. It's 14 days of training plans, regardless of what your level is. There's Masters, 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 roadmancycling.com forward slash 14 day or check out the link in the bio that roadmancycling.com slash 14 day.