1.Hello and welcome you beautiful cycling fans

Hello and welcome you beautiful cycling fans. It's the Vuelta podcast. Here we go again. It's another breakaway stage. Epic drama today, probably as a neutral one of the most enjoyable stages. So far drama right until the finish line. A busy busy show as always and a lot to cram in in our short little condensed 15 minute window. So let's jump right in. getting started out, I want to just give honourable mention to our show sponsor Missing Peace. They've been with us for the entire of Welter and they will be with us for the remainder of the Welter. Missing peace, they make custom beast bulk gifts, they're based in Dunne Hall, they're a family-run business and I've been rabbit-nonty about all the good reasons you go and check them out and guys and girls I'm humbled and it really means a lot to me to see it so many of you have gone to check it out. I got a couple of messages today with people that have bought gifts for Christmas, they've bought gifts for holidays. And it means a lot that, you know, even though it's Christmas is, you know, a good bit despite the fact that Brown Thomas Dublin's put on its Christmas decorations up to Christmas is a long way off. It's a great endorsement of the podcast and it'll help us attract future sponsors that so many of you guys have responded and are shown interest and making your purchase. So thanks very much for that. I'm going to pop the link as always for missing peace into the show notes and description. And if you haven't checked them out yet, I I encourage you to do so. Today's stage, we call it yesterday, it was stage 11, dominated by the breakaway, the escape, some fast racing to get started, but the yumba of his my boys. You know, they're new to this game of winning grants for worst, they've obviously had the jersey for a while in the year old, but they were disciplined, they knew who to let go, and when they did let the group go, it was a big group that was of no stress. People that were sort of interested in the group went on to Bethesda were Bidehausen Lastre Kavagnya who pulled him the S in the TT from Quicksdap. I'm not sure if I said that one right. And we'd lost some Craddock up there. We had Michaela Turo up there from Escati Basque and yeah it was an interesting escape and if fragmented and came back together and fragmented. The action really kicked off from a viewer perspective. If you haven't watched it yet, well, we're watching the last 10K, even though I am totally gonna spoil it for you, but it's still worth watching it. Even for the dynamics of a breakaway and how sometimes the underdog does win. There was an uncategorized climb about 10 kilometers from the finish. But when I say an uncategorized climb, an uncategorized climb in the house, Sorry, and on categories climb in the Vuelta is, holds my local climb. I don't know, I'm just brainwashed because I rolled up with today. The oncategorized climb in the Vuelta is a difficult climb. It's not oncategorized climb in, you know, the tour of Britain, which is more of like, which is there next week, which is more of like a bridge. And on categories climb in the Vuelta is to be respected and it was tough, like it split the break. And we had one guy rolling the dice just before that and getting out and his name was Michael Atura. Probably a writer a lot of us don't know. I didn't actually know him either. He's from the BASK team, the SQD BASK team, which are incidentally folding at the end of the season. So what an opportunity for the lab to get out and showcase himself and I'm sure that's all he was thinking when he initially struck for home. You know what, I showcase myself that the writers have been told they can go and look for a new team, new employment for next season, short notice in a very competitive job market for a pro cyclist at the moment. We always closer to home with a bunch of British teams following them. We've wiggens gone, Madison Genesis gone, so a lot of good pro-roiders at the county level are going to be stuck without a team. Even Evil Pro in Orlando, I'm not sure I haven't heard of their continuing yet, but I've heard rumors that possibly they're finding it difficult to secure a sponsor, so hopefully that works itself out but difficult environment for pro teams at the moment. So what a chance for a jury to get out and showcase himself and put himself on the jobs market and that's what he's done. But what he also did was it's something we've spoke about in the past when the dynamic of the chasing group initially their goal is the same goal. They want to escape from the peloton very collaborative. When it becomes obvious that the winner is going to come out of this group, the atmosphere within that group changes. It's not like a light switch, it's not binary, it doesn't change at a given moment.

2.People start to play their own unique game, their own hand of poker…

People start to play their own unique game, their own hand of poker and play the cards that are best suited to them. So people, they start to save energy earlier than some others, they start to sit on the climbs, The relationship changes from that cooperative, we're all in this together, let's get to the finish-lads environment, to how do I get an edge on these guys I'm with? How do I, trowdy's guys, figuratively rather than metaphorically under the boss or off the cliff? That's what's going on through people's head. They start looking around, they start assessing the strengths and weaknesses of other riders in the group, they start assessing, they have two riders, does one team have two two Reuters in the group, as in the case of Kharoual. So if they do and one of those two Reuters gets up the road, the other Reuters is gonna sit on, he's obviously gonna play that card and not chase his teammate. And it's a very nuanced and complex and layered dynamic that goes on in that group. But what happened today, Itchura, he banked on a group of personalities that he got a sense that weren't particularly cohesive together, there was not a lot of collegiality collective will to work among them. So he was the force to strike for home and he knew that like if he gets a 10 second gap people are gonna be a pop across it. You know you've strong riders in there lost in credit for EF education. They're gonna pop across it. But once he gets a gap and goes out of sight the 25-30 second gap then people are reluctant to pop across it because when somebody gambles and goes across, tries to go across it, they're gonna give a free ride to somebody else. And that close to the finish, when you give a free ride to somebody else, you're effectively nullifying your own chances of winning. So we have this game of cat and mouse of a game of almost, it is like a game of poker, but it's almost the first person to blink because they want to leave it later and later and later and you want to bluff and just stay in this hand as long as you can. And if you're the one who doesn't blink first. You get to save that energy if someone else goes to go across, you get your free ride across. He loses his chance of winning the stage and you're still in the game. Then there's another attack. Someone else panics, goes to close it, they lose their chance of winning, you're still in the game. So this complex game unfolds for as we call it, the final of the stages and upfront, while that's happening and this dynamics happening, they're attacking, they're stopping, their attacking. Echora is just head down hasn't looked back once and at one point probably he didn't even know there were five seconds off the back of Kachnum, with about a kilometer and a half to go. Luckily he crested the top of a little ramp, torn into a tailwind and then he extended that five seconds out to about ten seconds but it was an epic ride from the lad. The belief that he didn't even look back once was for me it was a real, it was a real sign of somebody that at some point then the attack became more than a television attack. We seen Teoguegan hurt, TV attack there in the enormous day of the shoot-a-day. It was never gone anywhere. He's looking around and he's not fully committed. This was a man fully committed. He was going to die on the sword. He wasn't hedging and going to muck at second or toward. He's like, I'm going to win this or I'm going to come last out of the group. It was brilliant to see. Like, what does that mean for a guy like that? He's never had a professional victory. His team are folding at the end of the season. It's so, so powerful. There's tournament points in careers and there's the finding moments in careers. The finding moments could come as a career is ending and it might necessarily be a springboard to something else but this for me is a tournament point like he was probably going to be a guy who was without a contract for next year. Very, very hard to see of well to stage when they're not picking up a contract at least with one of the Uros Spanish teams, a second to your team. So it means so much to them. It means so much to the sponsor who has been brilliant like Escurae Basque has been a great sponsor and so I can for a number of years so for them to go out on their final year in one of their final races in their home tour. Although could we call it their home tour Spain Basque. I don't know if I'm going into the political debate but I'm sure it's not toward Basque Country but it's a relatively home tour for them. There's got to be immense pride for what they've done and what they've achieved there.

3.Amazing to see it unfold today on front of our eyes

So amazing to see it unfold today on front of our eyes. While that was all happening we had the bunch took a day off so not much to report back there they decided to cruise in, no one in the break of any trip they let it go out to 15 minutes and the Yumbo boys the age was cruised like 15 minutes or something it was. In the end Bo-Gee-C is unchanged with Roglich called in the Red Jersey Valverde at 152. Low Pesser 211, Quintana, 3 minutes and Poggaker, whose name no one can pronounce, but I'm rigidly sticking to that till I told otherwise a trio of five. So we had today's stage winner Michael Achura, he's Escuré Basque. We had Last Strat who was my pick out of the break from Cajaroal's second and we lost and Craddock who did look very strong for me, F education toward. And Lawson Craddock was speaking after the race, I heard him. He seems a quite like a bagoi, as I do a lot of the EF guys. He said it was a lot of frustration in the break. No one wanted to commit to close the gap. If you do close the gap you lose your chance to win. He touched on really what we were talking about. But it's interesting like where we had Atura winning today. We've lost and Craddock with a world toward him and Lawson Craddock never actually won a race. I didn't realise that. So he said he was hoping to do something Utah again and he's hoping for something here. He wrote a good TT and he was good again today on the podium. So yeah, we might see something tomorrow's another chance for him. So we will keep an eye on that. Tough to do with two days in a row fatigue, obviously both. And I haven't looked too far ahead. I know we're heading into the mountains after that, but I don't know how many more chances for the break-wider is. Chances to win Vuelta stages don't come around that often you need to grab them with boat hands. Another word for an honorable sponsor of ours, it's our other sponsor who's not just with us for the Vuelta but is also with us with us for the Vuelta and that is ClickFunnels. ClickFunnels are an amazing amazing company. They're a company that I know a number of years ago I built an Apocacoch and trying to navigate the I use wonderful very loosely to not mean not wonderful world of venture capital is something that's stressful and not a particularly nice place to be playing. ClickFunnels aren't a company that's scaled without any venture capital. They're a company that's fully organic growth so that tells you how happy the customers are and how many customers they attracted in a very short space of time to check out their product and it's phenomenal. It's amazing. a game changer and I think they will scale slightly slower than the companies to take on the big hash but you will see them being around for a long long time because they're having this kind of growth from the inside out a lot of a lot of a lot of business and a lot of micro influencers like podcasts endorsing them because they truly believe in them. So I would encourage you to go and check out ClickFunnels for your look at the build websites at American Strategy's email accounts. If you're a small business owner or you know a small business owner, if you don't have an email list. It's mental and if you're paying huge fees from MailChimp and AWeber that they're very inefficient systems, it's equally mental. So go and check them out. The good people at ClickFunnels hope to support a 14-day free trial for all our customers or all our listeners. So I also will pop a link to that in the show notes. We have Roglage on the Breakaway today after for a non-European listeners the Breakaway is a show. The Vuelta Let's tell the voice of the Eurospart over here and the breakaways show after the race. It's a little bit of post-race analysis. They have the former GCN presenter Matt Stevens on it. They have the girl at the Royal Lattemarsher, her surname. She's actually quite a good host. Bradley Wiggins makes occasional appearance on there. We've Brian Smith, who's a former director for Dimension Dara. I don't know if he was ever world terrible. He's done a couple of pro-racists back in the day. He's a bit of a bad land boy. takes all sorts. It's very interesting but they had the great access to riders, that's why I mainly watched it. I actually really enjoyed Matt Stevens in Orland, Wiggan's when he's on it as well, but they had Roglic on today. And like they're debating and talking about how Roglic, you know, he's very shy and introverted and you know he's not the darling in media. I just think Roglic just to do it. Like if you look at him following on Instagram, he's a dude, if you're seeing warming up on you know, and the cool shades and he's just a bit about him.

4.He seems very well liked by his team

He seems very well liked by his team. He just doesn't play that media game. And I don't blame him. It's like, he's not from the UK. He's Slovenian. Like maybe he's off having the crack with the Slovenian TV channels. You know, do you want to do five, six, seven, ten interviews where you're asked the same question every single time. It's very understandable that he doesn't come across with a lot of charisma. You've had a long stage and you're expected to talk to these people that you don't know. You have no allegiance to it. And then they make a judgement on your character based on that. It seems a little bit shallow and it seems a little bit short-sight. Another thing that struck me watching it was how small he is. Like the pro-sight is they really are like jockeys. Like he was standing beside like Matt's name until I wasn't the thought it was a big guy. He would have never struck me as a big guy. Like I've seen Matt's even standing beside, you know, other guys who are ex-pro-sauteless and he looks, you know, quite smart. You put Roglic beside him, not just in terms of height, but in terms of just even posturally muscular upper body. He's very, very small and slight and that's, it's this generation of GC guys, they're almost like jockeys, it's incredible. One of the reasons Roglic has really endeared himself to me as well, it's, you know, he seems to be traveling around the world to his family. He's a young child and his wife and he's having a lot of crack with them and yeah he just seems like an interesting guy, even though, look what he's doing not what he's saying, especially to TV cameras that he probably doesn't like. So we are halfway through the Vuelta, over halfway through the Vuelta now, and I am over halfway through the Vuelta podcast, so I do hope all you guys and girls are enjoying the Vuelta podcast. I've actually had a long day on the microphone today, it's coming into cyclocross season in Europe at the moment so we're bringing out a new cyclocross plan which it's a plan cyclocross plan and it's an eight-week plan six of them built already but I think it's going to go out to eight and video series with you know we're talking about I'm actually working with ex-national champion current lienster cyclocross champion paul o'royley recording a lot of the content with me today for the members area really cool stuff like how do you dismount properly, how do you shoulder properly, how do you re-mount properly. I picked up some of my tips, like I don't raise cycle cross but so many tips for just gaining a few seconds here and there talking about tower choices, tower pressures, how to assess lions, his warm-up strategies, brilliant stuff, really looking forward to it. Hopefully the Vuelta podcast is hard, those take a chunk out of the day between research and the recording and editing and all that work. So I'll hopefully get the, I'm not committing to an announcement on the cyclocross product yet I'm aiming to get it out early next week because I am time sensitive and I know in Europe a lot of the cyclocross season starts at the end of this month so I want to get this product into your hands as soon as you can because it's going to be a game changer for cyclocross guys. So we are on to stage 12 tomorrow and we're staying in Basque Country and we're heading to Bilbao. looks like another stage for the breakaway, it's for category tree climbs, it's actually starting in a motocircut, so look for Yoro Yumbovisma to do more to say a bit of policing early, some frantic racing until the break gets stacked and then we will see I would imagine a large break fragmented to a smaller break on them climbs and possibly a lone rider or a sprint from a small group contest in the finish so it'll be an interesting stage again and I'm looking forward to it before I sign off from you guys. I'm also going to pop a link for our training camp in the description down below and that's as I said if you're a regular listener you'd be bored listening to it it's the 9th to the 15th of November in Cambrill's in Spain checking out a lot of cool roads but it routes into a bus country mixture of flat roads and climbs and real kind of so you can holiday feel to it. You'll get what you want out of it if you want to go on so you can holiday in a couple of beers in the evening. It's for you but if you want to go and get some serious training done it's also for you. So that would be a lot of fun looking forward to that and I'm also looking forward to chatting to you all tomorrow for stage 12. So until then enjoy your day.