1.Welcome and Patreon pitch

Today I'm gonna talk with Spaintoft. 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 long-chevages? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh and welcome to the Roadman Podcast. Roadman, I have a super exciting guest on today's podcast. I have none other than multiple Canadian champion Maglia Rose-Aware and toward a France stage winning, born to be wild, bare fighting, wolf fighting, man of the cold, legend, that is, Sfaintoft. I'm super excited to bring you this podcast before I do, guys and girls, just a quick reminder about Patreon. It's Pause this now, head on over to patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore watch guys, patreon is how I fund this work like any, you know, artist, it's difficult to get paid for your work. And patreon is your way where you have a chance to pay me for my work. If you're on hard time to do, then you don't have a job, you can keep listening to this podcast because we have kind of model of soundness. I'm relying on reciprocity. If you're getting good value from this podcast, consider paying me for the work because I am a full-time podcaster these days. So, folks, it's over on patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore watch. This is one of my favorite interviews I've done since I've started a podcast. It is the legend, sphaintoft. Sphaintoft, welcome to the roadman's cycling podcast. Oh, thanks for having me, mate. My pleasure. I'm really looking forward to this one because we've been planning this one for a little while and things didn't really sync up on my end or your end. So it's nice to finally get that time and actually chat. Yeah, for sure. Busy times. Hey, everyone's getting back to life here, especially in Canada. I don't know how it has been in in Ireland, but this June 15th date is coming and everyone's getting pretty pumped to get back at it. So obviously everything starts ramping up full gas. Yeah, you know, it's pretty weird traveling at the moment. I was in Jirona in Spain a couple of weeks ago, a place you know very well. Obviously, you haven't been based there for so long. And everything is open in Jirona. Like you can go in and you can chill out on your laptop and work in the cafe, go out for dinner. Bowers are even open. And then I come back to Ireland and everything is still kind of the politicians here have this idea of an outdoor summer. But the practicality of that is like a pisses rain most days in Ireland. So the practicality that is, load lads, huddled around the pointy Guinness in the west of Ireland somewhere, as they're getting absolutely soaked with, it's just disastrous. Oh, yeah, sounds a bit like the west coast sometimes here in BC, where we have similar weather patterns, I think. So I suppose for the six people listening that actually don't know who you are, it's maybe just doing a quick sort of recap on exactly who you are. So, Maglia Rosa were in 2014 and that was here in Dublin, so I definitely want to get in and chat about that toward a France stage winner. A professional career that spanned over a decade with Garmin, Orca Green Edge and Canadian Champion more times than I can count. So I suppose on a career that's come to an end now, firstly, congratulations and well done. Thanks, man. Yeah, it was a funny journey for sure. I never planned to go as long as I did, but yeah, looking back, no regrets, what a crazy, great experience. That's all I can say. I suppose the first time you ever really came to my attention, I was out in Canada. I was riding for a Canadian team and it would have been 2011. I was riding for a Canadian team. Actually, you might have known them. I was riding for a Canadian team called Jeff fuel. Oh, wow. You're a Jeff fuel guy. Yeah, I went out to Jeff fuel. You know, it was pretty cool. Well actually it was so exciting, it's you know that early stage when you're just getting started in cycling and everything is kind of a possibility. I had a Canadian girlfriend at the time and I was racing locally and I'd done well and I think I won a couple of crits locally and Jeff Yolasme to come to ride Milwaukee Super Week with them. Three weeks of criteriums down in Milwaukee and you know it was just such a fun interest in time. But I remember it was a round then that I first hired this urban legend about you about this sort of wild man who tozes trailer with his dog across the country, you know, rides to proper bike races like tour of boats, rides there with the dog, wild camping along the way, then gets off and crushes guys and wins the race. It was wild. Yeah, yeah, I mean, those stories always get embellished, but for sure, the drag in the dog around in a trailer that I welded up myself, that definitely happened. and I did that for many years before I really got into the bike racing. It was just something that things just happened in a way that I never had any plan for that to happen, but it is funny how life is. 10 years later, you find yourself over in Europe going like, what the hell happened? How did I get here? But I don't know if that story is great. It was like you were a coyzer, so say, of bike racing. Well, I think being like introverted and pretty quiet too, like most of the time, that probably helped just build those stories, you know, because no one actually really knew. And I probably didn't talk about it that much. So yeah, I think things just got out of hand.

2.Romanticism vs the clinical WorldTour

Yeah, I was like the mystique of it. I think it was 2011. I went to watch the Canadian Nationals. He served me, he was in Burlington, Ontario, and you won it that year if I remember. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, 2011. And I remember just the crowds that day and people chatting and I was kind of over here in them as you were going past and they were kind of whispering saying, you know what, that's the dude that got on the road across the tour of Bose and he was boiled camping along the way and then he just pure ripped legs off every home when he got there. So I wish that was the case. I wish you could still bike race and tour around and do all the cool stuff in between. But as you know, as the level of bike racing goes up, the more kind of lame the rest of your life because you got to like lock down and do all the crazy stuff, you know? You don't have to necessarily, there's ways around a lot of that stuff as I started to learn as I got older. But yeah, when you're trying to find your way and survive, you just got to get into that train and recovery kind of mode. And that's not always the most in my books, it's not always the most exciting. Because you've always struck me from a distance as somebody who enjoys the simple life. And that's actually a team that I have kind of running through this podcast and something I want to explore with you today, because I think you're a great person to explore this with. The idea that life, it's not about addition, it's about subtraction, it's about getting back to our ancestral route, it's about not necessarily rejecting materialistic stuff, but definitely not chasing after it. When I look at the world tour, it kind of lies in stark contrast to that. It's very much pushed boundaries, pushed limits, materialistic. Do you know what I mean? Oh, for sure. There's no question about that. I mean, it's the biggest dichotomy there is. I think gear. The problem was was that I just love that whole aspect of pushing yourself and that challenge that professional cycling offers. I mean, it's one of the more challenging sports I can think of on the planet. And it offered just so much of the things that drove me. Coming from that towing background, it was weird. I had this evolution of at first, you're just trying to get through the days. If you could ride 80k, that was massive. Then before you know it, you're doing 150. And like everything, when your mind is kind of switched on that way, you're looking for the next kind of challenge. Like how can you push yourself a bit more? And before you know it, I was getting that kind of road cyclist mentality just by being out on the road. So here I am doing this simplistic thing, this really beautiful thing that for that part of my life, was the best thing ever. I looked back so fondly on those years, but it was kind of building my mind into that of a road cyclist, which, yeah, it's a strange beast because I don't like to complicate life. And as you said, a lot of that stuff in the world tours about addition, constantly addition to make things better, quick fixes to solve problems. And No one's looking at the long term. It's just like, how can I smash myself and get this result now so I can just make it another year, right? And you're just killing your body with that mentality. And so I had to try and find a different way to go about that. And like I said in the early years, you're just looking at the people around you and kind of using them as the template of how to go about that. And that's not always the healthiest. So I went on a pretty long path because there's many times I wanted to quit. A lot of the things about the sport cracked me, especially back in the earlier years, traveling and living like that was just not, it was just not up my alley, you know, I struggled with just that lifestyle. But then once I came back, because I quit for a year, I just decided that you don't get this chance, you're not gonna come back when you're 40 years old and try and become a professional again. So you've spent this much time trying to get good at the sport. And now it's time to really just go forward and try and enjoy it and look at the positive aspects of that life and what it brings you. And this, as you know, the lifestyle of a cyclist is, it's pretty awesome if you're able to enjoy it. And that's kind of one of the things I see now is that these young guys, they don't look to enjoy it a lot to me. They look pretty under the pump. You know what I see it all the time? behind the podcast there is the coaching company and so through the years I've worked with various types of riders but there was one guy I coached a few years ago and he was on that journey to try and make it as professional as well and you just knew that regardless of if he made it as a professional or didn't make it this was just someone who'd fallen in love with the process, someone who'd fallen in love with the sport like you'd give him a three and a half hour session to do and his GPX foil he would finish three and a half hours from his house and then foil it in and and you're like ringing them going, bro, like how did you get home from there? You were like 110 kilometers from home. Like, you know, you're out like seven hours today, but he just didn't want to put up a foil shown a seven-hour foil because it deviated from.

3.Reconciling balance after retirement

So he was fighting with that love of the sport versus what he was told to do. And then on the other hand, you have the guys and you give them, you know, a 90-minute session and they'll do 90 minutes, not 91 minutes, not 89 minutes. They'll be indoors, they'll be on this with virtual avatars out the wazoo and it's it feels like those guys were moving away from a sport steeped in romanticism and history over towards something which is a little bit more clinical that's more results orientated and not about this beautiful process that we've fallen in love with. Yeah I couldn't agree more couldn't agree more. What strikes me about pro cycle and the journey up is it's this constant game of month on month year on year. How can we change things? How can we tweak things? How can we sacrifice a little bit more this month than we did last month? How can we be a little bit leaner this year than last year? And it's this journey and constantly striving towards being the best version of our athletic selves regardless of anything else. But now that you're retired and you're not trying to be the best version, you're trying to achieve this balance, how do you reconcile that as an X pro athlete? Yeah, so I had to come to that kind of conclusion at a certain point where I was looking, you know, I had some good years, you know, you hit that peak in your 30s, you know, like late 20s, 30s, and right when you start hitting that peak and having some success, it's pretty addictive, right and you're trying to figure out the next thing and you're just going down all these crazy rabbit holes trying to figure out how to keep that form, how to get a little bit better climbing this and that. And then after a few years, I had some really good periods in there. And I started to feel the effect though of that mentality I was talking about just a little bit earlier. It's kind of like, let's just bury ourselves now, we'll worry about recovery and and looking after ourselves later, we want to get to this result. And I realized that process was so damaging in the sense of what it's doing to your body. And so you're trading this short-term gain for a real long-term downside effect where you're really going to pay the bills later. And I just thought, I love cycling. I love the life that bike racing provides for me. And I like many aspects of not all of them, but many aspects of bike races. But it's not worth it to trade it all for a lifetime on the back end, totally buckled to be a little bit better bike racer than I was, you know. I wasn't great. I had to work really hard for the results that I had, and I'm proud of that career. Very, very proud. But I came to a point where I was just like the trade of that crazy extra 1%, 1% that I know guys are living and at a very young age they're starting that. I was lucky I started much later. It just wasn't worth the trade off for me because I wanted to have a life where I was happy and loving what I was doing most of the time. And so I started to change my module for training in the sense of I still have to enjoy this. And the big one that really stuck out for me was right around 2014, 2015. I started chucking in big, long, touring, bikepacking and just going back and forth through the Pyrenees over to the Bass Country. And I tell you, that just changed everything for me because no matter what happened, I was so content with my life because that's what I loved. So I was able to mix those two things and really have that balance you speak of. Is that kind of when you know it's time to hang up the sightland boots so to speak when that risk to reward just doesn't make any more sense. I know risk to reward is something that was always kind of the forefront of my mind and I can even remember the race where it changed for me and it was actually a race in your home country, Canada, a tour of boats. It's a beautiful, brilliant race and I was on the last stage of that race and it was west, it was fast, it was technical, I was at the back of the bunch and I had to take crazy chances to move up and I remember at that point just thinking you know what, the risk to reward just doesn't make sense for me anymore. It's that last stage is just so hard. I think that's actually a stage you've worn, am I right? Yeah, yeah, I've had, you know. In that stage, I was just like, I'm having to take super crazy risks to even just move up a few places here and to get a bunch finished today. I was getting pinned at the back and I'm having the dive bomb corners like 55, 60k an hour to move up a few places and it was just at that point where I was like, you know what, I'm earning fucking peanuts at the moment and I'm not likely to progress to a world tour type writer. This just isn't making sense for me anymore. I could be badly injured in this. Is that kind of the point you need to get at where you call time on a world tour career where you're starting to wonder about that risk's reward? The balance and the against risk. It definitely starts to creep in, especially when you have kids and that part of your life is becoming far more important. But just like you said, when we're younger in your 20s and you're trying to find your way, that risk, it's a much like you're willing to take much higher risks for the game.

4.Risk-taking in the peloton

Because you just don't know, you haven't crashed enough, you hadn't had a bunch of injuries, you just don't know. So you keep pushing. And that's what I see, saw a lot like as I got older, it's like man. And I'm trying to remember how I was. I just did stupid risk because you have to. You don't gain anything by not taking these risks. But I'm looking at these young guys going like fuck man, just settle it down. You know, like you're going to get there. You don't have to come up under the corner through the gravel patch, you know, like you just, you know, work your way, take your time. But you start to see more and more of that. And And it's not that people are malicious or they're out to cause accidents. It's just that the nature of the sport is so fucking hard that if you aren't taking those constant risks, you're back in the motos again. You're back with the caravan. You know, and that's the world tour peloton. And just like you said, you hit up, you hit an age where you start to go. No, this just isn't worth it for me to be at the front at that corner by running in hot 65k an hour and nearly crashing 20 people. That's not what I want to do with my life. Like you said, even at a point where if you are making a good salary and all that stuff, you really start to weigh those things. If you've had a big long career, you don't want to end it in some horrible, stupid crash, right? And I think once those things start coming in to your mind, it's time to really pull the pin because you cannot be an effective bike racer. You have to be kind of in that previous mode. I was talking that kind of guy who's just tunnel vision, trying to get to the front, trying to help his teammate, trying to make the move, whatever that is. It's like, is the risk going up? I was in Columbia over New Year's and I got to travel around Columbia and it's a culture that's just so immersed in the romanticism around Saikland, off the back of Success at Quintana and now Bernal and even Santiago back in the day. But it seems like there's more incentive for these guys. The risk for the war ratio is different. more upside for them and it seems like in a lot of ways they have less to lose. Oh no doubt. Yeah, no doubt and that's the same for some of the early on. I remember in my career, I was thinking of some of the Eastern Bloc guys coming from the Ukraine and these different parts of Russia. They're coming from such a different world, right? And I remember one of my first total avenues every while it was just I'd never done like a professional race and this was back in the day when total avenue was 25 and under professional team. So basically guys who had done the tour are now racing the total avenue and I'd never done anything outside of Canada to this point and I just got thrown in with the national team. So basically I'm getting my head kicked in every day, crashing three, four times a day, just a nightmare. But I remember riding with this Ukrainian fella and we just get spat out every time there was a climb or crash or whatever. And it was just me and him, you know, two up TT all the way to the finish. Most of the time we'd be coming in, they'd be packing up the barriers and the stands, know they would have already done the winner ceremony and all that stuff. And this guy, he was, you know, he would just put his head down and like he looked like he was going to make it no matter what. But I remember his bike was bent. So his front wheel actually didn't track with the rear wheel. So I'd be like on his wheel and it was just like always kind of stepped off to the left, you know, like he was countersteering his bike and this tough bastard made it through that fucking race, you know, and it's just, it's a different mentality, right? Just like you said, these young guys, they have to make it and coming from those parts of the world, just to get a couple of years on a, on a world tour team. Well, they've, they've made it, right? Yeah, I still dabble and race a little bit. Category one here in Ireland and, you know, I'll be out on a Friday night before a Saturday or Sunday race. I'll be having dinner in a restaurant, my girlfriend, I maybe have a couple of glasses of wine and a dessert and I'll be in the race and my mind I cast back to not even my competitors but what I used to do when I was trying to make it back when I was living in France, living off your 50 euro a week, you go out for a six hour training ride and you come back in and you don't even have any hot water in the apartment cold water shower after a six hour ride and this just seems normal. Yeah it's a different world now that's for sure. It's not for the soft cut. So then throughout your career, there's a lot of terms around now, like biohacking, gravel racing, grounding. And throughout your career, I've kind of had a passing interest, I suppose, in your career, and I followed it a little bit closer than I would in order a random world tour rider that I had met. And it's just because I was living out in Canada and there wasn't many professional Canadian So I took a keen interest in the Canadian professional, so I guess you and Rudder Houshdal. But I've noticed through your career, you've been doing these things like grounding, like fasting, like cold, herby exposure, and writing and gravel all through your career before there was these formal tags like gravel racing and biohacking on them.

5.Nature as the simplest recovery

You know you're right, that a lot of that stuff has become pretty popular and mainstream. I think it's good, you know, like I think the problem always is is that there's people who are trying to make money off of it. So it's always like gadgets and crazy techniques people are trying to sell. But what I found was that it was always had to be the most simple way to do those things. So I didn't want to again going back to that edition world. I didn't want to have a bunch of crap dragging around with me. I wanted to keep it as simple as possible. So, you know, it was really around 2010, 2011 that I started looking into those kind of alternative ways of looking at training and recovery and all that stuff. And, you know, he reads so much and you, you, you, I don't know, people's trying to sell you things and all that. And in the end, it just came down to this simple fact that nature has everything right there it's just about making the effort to immerse yourself in it on a regular basis. And so for me that just came down to grounding, blight, so sunlight, morning, evening, and trying to be out in nature as much as possible, especially in a crazy job like professional cycling. And when I could get in the cold water, so creeks and you know when we used to race up from the Alps or Dolomites and that kind of stuff. I used to love to just go on a walk after the stage and go get in one of those cold mountain creeks. And yeah, you know, it's like there's so many little tricks and techniques, but I just found that what the body like the most was the most simple ones. And they were again, coming back to that thing, it's like the most sustainable way, right? If you have all this crap and protocols and all this, it just becomes too annoying and too much addition to your day that's already full of, you know, in a bike race at a grand tour, you don't have time for a lot of extra crap, right? So you just, you got to keep it really simple. And I found that was the best strategy for myself. And I have so many, some of my best memories are like, I think back to would have been zero 2016 or 17. And we're in Sardinia. And every, every place we stayed, we, We were close to the beach and I remember going down to these private little, little coasts, beautiful Mediterranean water and you're just there at seven in the morning, right? You know, waiting for that sunrise or whatever. And you're just thinking, geez, I'm getting paid for this, you know, like this is essentially a vacation. Sure enough, you have a big day up on tap, but I just found that those things really reset me. And it was also about a mindset of, of looking at your day and, thinking about how you're going to go about it, right? And you don't, if you're just like sitting there in the hotel looking at your phone for fucking every other hour that you're not by gracing, you're never having those moments of reflection and kind of understanding of where you stand and what your goal is. And I just found those moments so important in that crazy, crazy lifestyle. When you were a mercenary yourself in this biohacking for one of the better word, style, therapies, how much of it were you led by science? Take hold for example, where you dig into what cold hermogenesis is, the power of changing, white fats to brown fats, or were you led more by instinct? This feels good, so it is good. That's such a great point. There's so much data and studies out there. And that is my interest. I love reading about that stuff. But what interests me even more is how it applies to you and trying to delve out some of the, like you read the scientific aspect and it's always relate this a lot to sport scientists within cycling, right? They have all these great ideas, but they've never actually ridden a fucking bike to know how that is gonna work out, right? So, you know, you'll be doing some crazy team time trial workouts and you're just like, no, this is not good for anyone, you know, and that's coming from the riders who have the sensation. And so I understood very early on that, yeah, it's great to read and understand all that stuff. But if you're not feeling the effect, it's really kind of pointless, you know, like, and I'm also a big believer in the placebo effect. So you know as well, anything you think is working awesome for you, generally is working awesome for you just because that fucking mind is so, so strong. And we're in this age with Saigalen where we've moved towards big data and this idea that we can somehow get the answers to everything by looking at what works for the objective. Does it work for 999 people? But it doesn't matter if it works for 999 people, it's that one person that counts. If it doesn't work for me, it's pointless. So it's that move from the objective to the subject of that really matters. Right. Yep. 100%. Noting cracks me more than you're like 9k into stage six on a race and you're in a line out and it's piss and rain and you glance down at your german and german's you know internal recovery protocol, flicks it up and it tells you a recovery score today. Very poor. Thanks, german. That's not helpful. Helping me not get to that. Yeah, I always wonder how they come to that based off of how many years they have and how different we all are and just the different levels. It is funny to me that that whole thing popping up telling you your recovery.

6.The placebo of shiny new protocols

I've had the Mitchell Scott Physio Scott Morphe on the podcast a bunch of times. I'm not sure if he was up Mitchell Scott when you were there. Oh yeah, great guy. Yeah, great guy. I love Scott. a couple of times and if you're listening it's got big shout out and last time he was on we were talking about recovery protocols and you know you can have these optimized big data recovery protocols where you know you're into the compression boots and then you're into the ice cryo chamber for a certain amount of time or into the ice bats and then massage or god knows fucking maybe whispering sweet nuttings in somebody's ear works but ultimately what he was saying to me is all that matters is the recovery protocol that the Reuters engaging in does that make them feel like they're more recovered? How does it make them feel to move from the objective to the subjective? Yeah, you know what I started to notice is that the trick to training a ton of world tour athletes is to constantly be changing the protocol and making it seem like it's the most special latest grade. It can be absolute horseshit. But if you can try to convince them that someone heard that this is what Inios is doing right now and no one even knows about it But we we figured it out, you know it's like they're constantly changing the mold of what that training is and And it's not like anyone's malicious or or up to sneaky stuff It's just that in order to keep those guys interested and motivated they need a constant stimulus And it really doesn't matter what the stimulus is, you know like I always think with training it's like For for a lot of like the very best guys they just need to go out and train and race They don't need anything fancy But for the guys who are like always have to be pushing to get to that level They need a constant stimulus a constant change in their training approach And I found that was the same with a lot of sports scientists stuff. They were just Just dangling new things right new flashy shiny things for the guys to get excited And it's just it taps into the power of that mind if those guys think they're having the latest greatest in their head of the curve. They actually will be ahead of the curve, in my opinion. Yeah, I don't know if a ghost based on experience level or if it's personality level, but I know, like I work with a bunch of clients in the coaching company and some guys love that kind of call it the Netflix effect training where they need 62 different changes in their cadence across the session. They need little micro-borsed here, cadence changes there, you know, super threshold bits here, and this session is just so, so complicated. But then I cast my mind back to the years I was full-time. Mike Alberi from Toronto was riding for Team Sky at the time and he was coaching me. And Mike's training was so simple. Even though he was with Team Sky, he didn't use training pixer today as planned or anything like that. He used to just send me an email and be like, today, four hours look over the hedge, five hours look over the hedge, six hours look over the hedge. And then I text him and be like, oh Mike, I'm getting pretty tired here. four or five, six hours looking over the hedge, he'd be like, cool, just do an hour and look over some hedges. Well, I mean, who nowadays wants to see that kind of a training plan, right? That just doesn't sound like anything fancy. Yeah, no one's paying for that. Yeah. It's brilliant. We've touched on this idea that you were kind of a almost a pioneering biohacker. And these are some of the strategies that I find just works so well with, especially our clients listeners to the podcast who are busy people and they're balancing multiple things but one of those super effective strategies and something I utilized myself a lot, it's fasting, just going long periods, be it intermittent fast and our order was, long periods without eating. I know we have a mutual friend Barry Murray who you've worked with and he's been on the podcast a bunch of times and a good friend of mine but he was just so pivotal and my understanding of food and really changing how I viewed food and how necessary it is as part of my day. Yeah, yeah, good old Barry. Yeah, we we we've spent a lot of time together just shooting the shit and and yeah, we're very much on the same page on on many things and you know, it's like you said, I think probably one of the biggest things fasting is, I just always believed that there would have been many times historically that we went without food. And I just feel like nowadays you just never go without food. It's every time like three, four meals a day just always smashing the food in you. And I don't think the body was equipped to always have this constant excess nutrients and calories. And I think we always needed that period of autophagy to kind of give the body a break of digesting and all that stuff. And it's just, it's really something that we just don't, we're just never hungry anymore. And I just don't think historically we've, we've ever had that in our, in our lives. So I think it's, you know, we can go into all the scientific benefits of fasting and, and all that. reality is experiment with it, see how it feels, and just be hungry every now and then. Because I'm telling you, you will notice the effect. It's like all of these other things we talk about supplements and training timing and all this other crap.

7.Lose the weight, not the grams

This will be one of the biggest things you can do. It's back to less is more. Exactly. And this, I talked to many different cyclists around here, right? And I'll say so many things like that to them. And it's just not exciting enough, right? They're telling you about power meters and this wheel they're going to buy that's super light and you're looking at them and you're going, and I'm just like, I don't want to get into weight stuff with anyone. But I'm like, saving 50 grams on your wheel set. That's, I mean, it's going to be way cheaper to just take off the 20 pounds around your midsection. And you're you're going to haul ass up that climb. It doesn't matter what we'll say right now. And that's not a mean joke or anything. That's just the reality. But people don't want to look at the hard yards, right? We want, we're just humans. That's human nature. We want the easiest way. We're designed that way to find the easiest path. Isn't a lot of this circling back to the beginning? We're getting too comfortable. circling back to hardship, doing hard things, getting cold, getting uncomfortable. We're not designed to be sitting in a well-lit room with moderate temperature and have fucking 600 TV channels readily available at our fingertips and a fridge full of food. I look at the way like especially things have gone in the last little while with lockdowns and all this stuff. We're falling apart. People are getting softer and softer and softer and I mean, I'm not that guy out there like, oh, you need to do this and do that. But we just have no hardships. And I'm talking about the westernized parts of the world, in third world countries, people walk everywhere and still have to hold their water and all that stuff. But I do believe that's our history, right? Our history was about just surviving day to day. And now we've just filled our lives with all these things that basically take away that hardship, that struggle. And I think, you know, that's why a lot of us do these cycling events and do this training and all that stuff. Because there's a piece that's missing in our lives. And we need to tap into that. I know for myself, I need to struggle. You know, there's a day can't go by where like I'm content with doing nothing. I haven't like struggled a little bit. And if that just means I go and swing some kettlebells for 20 minutes, well, that's enough a lot of the times. But it just helps with everything else. I can actually enjoy things from that point on, you know, and I just, I think we're hardwired that way. And I think as soon as we deny that, we, it starts to erode pretty quickly, right, to the point where you don't want to do anything else. You don't want to, Yeah, take on any challenges. And I just think, wow, you're missing out on so much of life. When we do this difficult stuff, it's almost like there's a primal reward mechanism that kicks in and just makes us feel unbelievable. Like I live beside the RC. And I'll try and get in as often as I can. And even actually recently on my gravel bike, what I've started doing on the frame bag is trying to tell in there on a pair of trunks and on the way home from a ride, I'll just jump in. But it's been days in November where I've jumped in. It's five degrees of water and people are looking at me going like, what the fuck is this guy doing? Jumping into the sea in the middle of winter. But when you get out, you're shivering and it feels crappy to start. But when you fight that and when you get out afterwards, oh my God, you're giddy like a school boy going home. Yeah, isn't that amazing? Like I love that story because it makes me think of same bloody thing. When we lived up in Andor, We had this creek up behind the house and I just made a policy one winter every morning, going to run up there, hop in the creek. And you know, you start melting the fall, all good. And then as the winters rolling around, you have a morning, it's like minus six, minus seven. It's snow on the ground and my policy was always to run in shorts and a t-shirt. And you go running up there and you're just like, what the hell am I doing? And the idea of getting into that creek that's now like, God, you know, ice, icicles hanging off the side of the branches and it's snowing and you're just like, this is ridiculous. And just like you said, you kind of fight past that and you hop in, do your time and you're just buzzing on your way home. And from this point of like the start where you're just like, Nah, fuck, let's just skip today. Let's not do today. This is too much this morning. And now you're coming home and you're just on a high. And I think that's a big part of what life was prior to this kind of modern existence that we have everything at our fingertips. Papayas in December up in the northern hemisphere, you know? I'm not sure if you have this similar experience. I have this weird schizophrenic dialogue that happens to me every time I'm going to get into the cold water or even if I can't make it down to the RC. It's a cold shower at home. It'll be 8am on a dark, cold, wet looking day outside. It's time for me to get into the cold shower and this schizophrenic, that soft voice, it kicks in. It's like, that's okay bro, you don't need to do this today. You're going to be the sniffles, you should maybe skip today or you're going riding later on, it's cold, you get a haircut.

8.When the bitch voice kicks in

And then as soon as that voice kicks in, my other schizophrenic one starts having this conversation and was like, shut the fuck up, you'll do exactly what you're told. I'm in charge, get into the shower. But I know as soon as this dialogue happens, it's almost like, I don't know how that saying goes, it's something along the lines of as soon as there's any indecision, there is no decision. Like as soon as you're starting to have that dialogue, you have to do that thing. It's a great point. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. If that dialogue's happening, get after it because you're exactly right, that little bitch voice is just trying to, you know, talking to go and having snacks on the Chesterfield and putting the legs up. So, you know, our motivational speaker, ultra distance runner, David Goggins, I was listening to his audio book, which is actually pretty cool to listen to by the way. So I'd note, but I was listening to his audio book. And he has this strategy anytime you're procrastinating about going to do a training session, just open your voice recorder on your phone and record all the reasons why you're thinking of not training and playing and back to yourself and he's like, I got news for you. You're a straight up bitch because all the all the excuses you have are like, I can't find my shoes. I don't know where my leg warmers are. They're pathetic. That's a great strategy actually to listen back to that. You're just like listening to yourself making up all these excuses that's not a proper excuse. Right. That's awesome. We spoke about you kind of pioneering somebody's these boil hacking strategies, but also with gravel. I feel like you've been roiding gravel about 20 years before they put this inverted comma's term gravel on it and start building a whole industry around it. Here in Canada, especially when you go up north, you don't have a choice to try and find gravel. That was just the nature of the beast. get on, there's a few roads, I remember heading up to Alaska my first time. Cassio Highway runs right through central BC right up to the Yukon border. And it was just basically 1,000 kilometer long forestry road. And now it's paved in those days, it was just gravel. And yeah, it was definitely way before it was cool. But you know, it's funny, I just didn't know any better at that time. I just had a mountain bike and like I said, trailer with my dog and just went for it. And that was before any kind of GPS devices or anything. You just had a paper map and hope for the best and no real plan. Just however long it takes, that's how long it's going to take. It seems like a lot of ways the world has come full circle back to you. This idea we started out at hardship and then we went on this journey trying to see comfort and now we're circling back to hardship, Beadat, Boyle Hackens stuff or Beadat, Gravel and you live in Elton Canada now. It's such a beautiful, amazing country but it's also a little bit wild and a little be fucking dangerous. Like I've definitely been on training roads in Canada. And I've talked to myself, if I puncture here, I could definitely die. You just don't really get that in Europe. Yeah, you're so right. Like, that's one of the things I really missed in the Pyrenees. You know, I spent a lot of time in the Pyrenees. I absolutely love it. There's so much access roads and trails going to those mountains. And it's just an amazing part of the world. But you are exactly that missing that wildness and we still have that here in Canada. Just yesterday I was doing a recon of this route and I was going over this pass, climbing pretty slow, pretty steep climb and I come around this bend and there's just this massive black bear just standing there looking at me. It was just that reminder like, oh fuck yeah, I'm back here in the wild country where anything can happen. there's no cell service. Probably the next town was a good 100k away and you truly are out there. It's the wild land. I remember when I was trying to sort of north Toronto, I had this area and I used to call it the Kill Zone and it was far enough away from where I was living that I knew I'd no cell phone reception and that if I did have a problem I was just dead. There was no coming back from it. I was flat out gonna die. Oh yeah because there's no one's driving along, you know, no one's coming along to pick you out. Yeah, you're not contacting anyone. I remember I meant an amazing guy in Toronto and he was so influential on this, just hardening me to fuck up. And I was trying in Toronto through the winter and I talked to some people and everyone's like, now basically we don't ride through the winter. We stop riding in about October, mid-October, and we don't get started riding again until April or so in the snow toss and I was like, well, this is shit. And then I met Pete Morse who was a teammate of mine at Jeff Hill and Pete's like, no, fuck that. We ride all winter. I'm going to show you how. And he just had all these strategies, like almost a cross between like survival strategies and cyclone strategies. Like, he was hard as fuck, but he was also very smart. Nice. Yeah, there's definitely a strategy to it, right? And that's one of the things I'm loving about the bike bags nowadays, being so light and, you know, many different sizes, you can do exactly that, pack along what you need. And that's, as you know, as you saw right there, being able to change out some undershirts and other top layer.

9.Tuft Tours and BC wilderness

That's everything. So I know you have tough tours now. This is kind of your new ventures. This the plan going forward? Are you going to take the doughy westerners and shape them in the oils of Canada? Yeah, I mean we're starting out. We're growing everything just slowly but surely as things open up here in BC But that's my goal to get people out into the into the real wilderness and We have so much stuff to see here so many awesome trips so many great loops I want to design just a ton of trips that basically everyone can do, you know, from the guys who want a 250k massive hit out, like just all day epic ride to people who are just after a sweet 50k loop. And then obviously start getting into the multi-day tours because that really opens up a lot of, of, you know, for example, to head from the coast in the interior, you can, you can experience like three different climate, like climates and tree species. And it's basically like you're going into the desert from the rain forest. There's just so much fantastic stuff as you, you start to explore this province. So I feel like it's, it's never ending. And, And we really want to get into getting people out into the woods. Oh, that sounds awesome, mate. I can't wait till they kick off, especially the multi-day ones, Pencil Me and I am there. I suppose we spent a good chunk of the podcast talking about probably less, more out there topics than you're probably used to usually answering on podcasts. We've hardly touched on some of your career holly lights. I think I'd be roasted by the Irish audience if I didn't bring this podcast back for a circle to a road cycling hoylose and you know arguably I would say to hoylike your career take me back to Belfast team time trial 2014 what did it mean to where to Maglia Rosa oh wow yeah I mean that was a life changing event for me and many people would think because the jersey and all that stuff, but it was more for me being part of this beautiful team. And a big thanks to Wadi, who made the call along with the rest of the administration. We thought they were totally nuts when we're sitting down in our pre-race plan, and we're discussing the team time trial there in Belfast, and they're saying, boys, we know we're going to to be on a good one. If, you know, coming down to the finish line, we want Swain to go over the line first. And I'm just sitting there like, Oh, fuck off. You know, let's just focus on the race. Because, you know, with team time trials, as you might know, you start thinking about different strategies and things like planning stuff. And my experience has always been that just gets thrown right out the window, right? So I didn't like to clutter it up with too many plans. Let's just go and fucking rip it, you know? And sure enough, we had a day like, you know, it's funny in bike racing. You have, you speak to all those guys are all very close friends. And it's something we talk about to this day is like in the moment you think that that life is just gonna continue on at that level. You're gonna keep having that kind of success and all that kind of stuff, right? But a lot of us didn't realize that at that moment that was one of the best cycling moments we were ever gonna experience in our careers. And that's just the nature of it. And yeah, it was just, I mean, such an amazing day there in Belfast and the crowds were just incredible. Like even, you know, it was kind of a gray, dark, you know, raining here and there kind of day, and people were out in droves and just, yeah, so positive. We have such good memories of being up there in Ireland. And yeah, it was, for me, it just stands out as a day where it was great yet to pull off the wind and all that stuff, but it was just more a reminder of how lucky I was in my career to be part of such a fantastic group. And, you know, not only green edge, but all the teams that I was involved in. I just, I was really fortunate to be surrounded by people who I think, if I just speak on that term, it's like people who understood me and then allowed me to be who I was. Cause if I was maybe put on an Italian team or a French team, they'd just be like, why is this guy's problem? You know, like they would not get it, you know? Um, so I was just, yeah, I think more than anything, stands out for me how lucky I was to be part of that group. That's just a straight out fan of the sport as well and you know I had Matt White on the podcast and I was talking to him about this very thing and I know he has such fun memories of you crossing the line and taking the jersey that day but as a straight out fan of the sport there was just a few things that lined up to this just beautiful romantic picture that built that day. I think firstly you have the team time trial which is just such a beautiful romantic notion in itself and it's in my view what cycling should be. It's not about the strongest cross in the line. It's about using our collective. How do the strong protect the weak so we can all benefit as a collective and get the very best out of the team unit. And then you have you positioned as the domestic for your entire career and entire career in servitude and sacrifice for others and you're such an integral part of these team time trial victories.

10.Belfast 2014 and the maglia rosa

So for you to cross the finish line and then for me the third element of that was we had the orca backstage pass which gave us a look into orca. Like I don't think we've ever seen before and I'm not sure we ever will see again. So as the fan I felt such connection with the riders I honestly don't think I've ever been as happy watching a pro cyclist who I've never met and never talked to winning a bike race. There was just something so special about that day in Belfast. Wow. Yeah. I mean, that's amazing to hear. And I mean, that's a big thanks to Dan Jones, who figured out that how to kind of bring some life to cycling teams. And you know, I see a lot of people trying to follow that template and not necessarily pulling it off in the way that he did so fantastically. And just to touch more to that was team time trials. I mean, you said it's bought on. It's, it's, for me, it's one of the most beautiful events because it's, it's, I can't tell you how many times I've seen the strongest names on paper, absolutely fuck it up. And that's the beautiful part of it. You can take a bunch of people who just understand how each other work. And that's, that's what we are as humans, right? We were meant to work together in groups and, and understand everyone's strength. And yeah, for me, that was the most beautiful thing about that event. So I could literally end up talking to you for the next hour about all things from gravel to picking your brain on cold immersion, and grounding, and fighting bears, and wolves in the forest which we'll get into in the future podcast. But what's the best place for people to continue following your journey or potentially come across and join one of your gravel camps when they open back up again? Yeah, you know, it's funny on all my career, I was never a social media guy, but now when you're running businesses and trying to get things up off the ground with the gravel tours and stuff, you just check me out on Instagram, swain.tough. So everything is there as to what we're doing. And then we have a website called toughcamps.com. So this year we're running a few training camps for gravel riders. And it's going to actually be focused on a lot of the stuff we were talking about, Anthony, where everyone wants to have these secret training plans and special recovery devices, but it's going to be about bringing it back to nature and kind of working on those techniques that well, that I started to learn worked very well for me towards the latter part of my career as I was 42 when I retired. So, like racing at that age, you're kind of questioning, but I was still feeling good and all those things. So, I want to try and pass those things along to riders who are trying to juggle all those things you spoke of earlier with kids and jobs and all that lack of time really to focus on recovery and training. So, I think if you can add a lot of these techniques into your daily routine, you can really harbor the benefits. So yeah, toughcamps.com. We'll have all the information there and send us a message from Instagram, whatever. We'll get back to you ASAP and any questions you have. Next year we'll be opening up the bigger tours and opening up internationally. So come on over. Awesome Swain, thank you for taking the time to join me, thanks for chatting and listeners, thank you for listening and I'll be back to you again tomorrow! Okay, stop what you're doing, it's Anthony again, I want to talk to you for one second about the next step in the roadman journey. I'm laying down a challenge for you, it's called the 8-week challenge. So for 8 weeks, I'm challenging you to be the very best version of yourself, whatever that is. For eight weeks I want to take you under my wing and I want to personally build for you customize training plan on our analytics platform. This plan is going to be laser focused on your goal and I'm going to navigate around your life, your work, your social commitments so don't worry about what your circumstances are right now. I remember after I took some time out of cycling and went off and taught out this Billy Big Businessman I came back and I realized I wanted to get into the cycling but I knew after a bit to try it in a loan it actually wasn't making me any fitter. I needed an entire system it needs a 360 overhaul. So for the first time ever I want to share with you this exact system I used to get back in shape. I'm talking stuff like I'm gonna give you my morning routines, the cold therapy I used, the cookbooks and recipes I used and even the motivational audio's by listening to get back on track. So right now what I want you to do is pause this audio go to www.roadmancycling.com forward slash eight week or check out the link in the bio click that so one more time it's roadmancycling.com forward slash eight week chatty also