Neutralized Downhill Start Chaos
Rowman, let's do this. It's stage 16 of the Tour de France. 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 chances? That is the question on this podcast, give you the answers. My name is Anthony Welch and welcome to the Roadman Podcast. Roadman! Welcome back, Roadman! To another Roadman cycling toward the France podcast. Feeling energized, feeling pumped from the rest day. How is everybody getting on? Ping me over on Instagram and let me know how are you getting on? How's the training going at the moment? you're clucking up the kilometres, it's on roadman.soitlin. Stage 16 and we're heading back into the medium mountains. I'd call it a little bit of an amuse-bouche in a pertif before the main course tomorrow and the next day where the GC boys are going to go to battle. Today I won the fancy race in it when I was racing Ross as the national stage racer here in Ireland. What used to always cracked me was the neutralized start to the beginning of the stages and today we have one hell of a neutralized start we had over 20 kilometers straight downhill off the start that poses a real clothing problem one of the last things I always used to do before you know heading out the door from the hotel it's just checking the teammates come what are you wearing what are you wearing and make sure I haven't completely misjudged the weather misjudged the day and 20 kilometers straight downhill and then we stop and start a Cattoo climb. The downhill is neutralized. Then obviously the Cattoo climb is where the racing starts officially. So you're getting changed into one set of almost winter kit, straight out of the hotel freezing cold into this downhill in Andorra in the rain and then you're stopping and you're racing up a Cattoo. Thankfully the Tour de France organised their ASO for once showed a little bit of common sense and instead of 200 lads trying to undress themselves simultaneously. I'm fairly kit back to the car, they just decided, you know, we'll just stop and let everybody change out with our winter kit and enter their racing kit. So that's what they do on 20k downhill, stop the race, let lads get changed and then they start the racing on the cat's hook line. Hard to talk about today's stage without mentioning the death of Fabio Casertelli who tragically lost his life on the call, the Port of Aspeh, We're riding for US Postal back in the tour a number of years ago and anytime we go over these iconic climbs like Montvault 2 we remember Tom Simpson on the call of the port to Aspey we remember Fabio Casertelli and we tipped the cap and we spilled out a drink for him and he's one of the good lads and he'd be sadly missed by teammates, friends and family. It's a dangerous ascent at the best of times but Fabio Casertelli will be in all the Peloton's mind today and especially because it was a wet descent going down there so you could see there was extra vigilance and we all know that the day after a rest day it can be tricky we speak about this from time to time that we're like a is it one of Newton's laws of ting in motion stays in motion don't exactly know how that one goes but it's we're we're like beings that like consistency and when we're roiding five hours five hours six hours five hours, six hours, day after day, and then you're just stop. The body is crazy, crazy resilient and I've seen this on when I've raised six, seven, eight day stage races. You'll be fine. You'll get through stage six, stage seven, stage eight, you'll have fatigue. You'll take a rest on the Monday and then you'll go to ride on the Tuesday and you will be absolutely rolled off. You're sick, sore throat, body's shut down. You're getting injuries. You didn't even notice. Your body is in survival mode and it will get you true those back-to-back days but as soon as you stop and you take a rest the body thinks it's time to recover and it shuts down that system that kept us running all those other days. So what the tour lads do to combat this is they ride on rest days to make the but to give that consistent signal so the body knows no we're still in the battle we're still in the fight it's not time to recover yet.
Konrad's Solo Breakaway Win
So a lot of riders will have different rest day protocols very few riders take a complete day off now most guys ride some guys ride quite hard on rest day, especially the GC guys. We remember the story of Christian van de Vell that a few years ago, well that's been more than a few years ago now I'm showing my age. It was probably 2012, 2011 but he was pushing for a podium on GC and the day after rest day just absolutely crumbled and he came out afterwards and saying he actually took the day off and the body just shut down. So anyway back to today's stage we grew up 14 riders and they foraged up the road and they It cooperated quite well but one man was too strong for him today and he's been on the attack. I think he's been in the break about two or three times and it's the Borahansgrove rider Patrick Conrad and he's soloed in out of that 14 man group for maybe the last 35 or 40 kilometers for a crazy win from the Austrian champ and a quote from him here. This is my fourth world tour win and it's in the biggest race of the world. I'm really speechless. victories from my family, from my friends or all the believers, also for Borahansgrove who believed me to win a stage in the Champions jersey makes me really proud. It wasn't far off thanking the Lord's savior Jesus Christ, praise the Lord! Yeah look, it's extra special when you think that Sagan has gone home and a lot of these teams are built around that one marquee rider. And the other riders can be left feeling like, you know, they don't matter feeling like they're only there in service of Sagan and then so to see Patrick Conrad gone on the attack the last few days, it's been really, it's been really fascinating to watch and especially after the crash he had in the first weeks, how he's getting stronger and stronger and stronger and I think that's what was so fascinating about it. We've also seen these long range attacks working quite well in this Tour de France. The long range attacks are gone and then the remaining breakaway, in this case the other Tourtean escapees, they can't seem to get organised, they can't get the chase organised behind. It's almost like Nolan wants to commit. This is the same dynamic in any breakaway when someone attacks. This isn't Tour de France specific. What I'm just thinking out loud here is the extra pressure of the tour and the extra scrutiny and the extra prize money and prestige that goes with winning the tour magnifying this problem. In any breakaway when someone attacks, the rider that's attacked, he's able to put out full commitment. There's no one on his wheel. Every single what he's putting out is for himself. The group behind that's chasing, you have this weird sort of dynamic in the relationship gone. They're competitors, yes, but they need to change their relationship briefly to collaborators. They need to put out this collective effort. But at the same time, as they're putting out a collective effort, everyone wants to gain a small bit of an edge on the other Reuters in this collective. So if we can catch Conrad today, but I can spend a little bit less energy than Bling Matches, I'm going to be in a better position in the finish. So I don't fully commit. So what we see is this game of bluff where everybody is putting out a little bit less energy than their absolute best effort in the hope that they still catch Conrad and they're fresher. But because everybody is playing this game of bluff, they're not catching them and these long range escapes are going to the finish. And I wonder is that just because there's more on the line at the Tour de France that we're seeing this more and more often. This is a problem, you know, this is the breakaway experience of this problem in local races, regional races, national races, all the way up to par with it. Not unique, but it just seems like it's playing out in the favour of these long range attacks more and more over the course of this tour de France. One rider who's absolutely astounding and amazing at this tour is Sunnico Breli. Italian Champion, he's a sprinter, he's gone in the break and hard mountain stages, he's contested bunch of sprints, he's gone for stages, he's gone for the rest of the intermittent sprints.
Pogačar Leads Into Pyrenees Finale
He's absolutely everywhere and he hasn't got much out of the race yet. I wouldn't bet against him taking a stage on the road into Paris now. In other news, Lachlan Martin has finished the short of France. Lachlan obviously raised him money for charity, he rode in the Altar 5510km. He is one crazy motherfucker. I'd love to get get him on the podcast, 5,510 kilometers. So he rode the transfers as well, 18 days, 220 hours of riding, and he finished this morning at 5am with a few laps of the Champs-Elysé and had himself champagne for breakfast at 5am. He's been riding portions in the sand, he's a madman. Today's stage finished up, Patrick Conrad, the Austrian Champion, as I said from Borran's Grove winning in four-hour Sonny Cobb, really, no-jinn Moica matches for second place, matches taking towards GC, it was absolute snoozefest. Barra Wout Van Eart having some, you know, he was touched on the shoulder by a ghost and told to Roydon the way in. He said he'd talk Carapaz was down the back. Carapaz was sitting in Fort Wailbroke. What are you talking about? So I don't know what that Wout Van Eart Roydon was about. I don't think anyone there would comment here, I just didn't know. Reuters didn't know it was just pure baffling but we leave that aside because it was just the the act of a madman. Pogacha is leading the race. Look Pogacha's crew and we've been saying it since week one. Rigoberto runs at 518, vineyards at 532, carapas at 533 and Beno Conner is at 558. GC battle is done and dusted. Although we are heading into GC territory tomorrow. I suspect we'll see Pogacha put more of a stamp on the race. We might see a shake over Napoleon. That's a real entertainment. We have to look forward tomorrow. We call the pater suit on the menu. It's a forest cat tomorrow and we're finishing up the horse category climb tomorrow of Sant-Lari Sullen and it's 178.4 kilometers on the menu tomorrow. It feels like the Pyrenees has just gone on and on and on in this race. Row men, please continue to support the podcast. It's over on patreon.com a forward slash Anthony on their score world. That makes such a huge difference. It's like supporting a small shop as opposed to going to Amazon. It's really important in post pandemic times to support these small enterprises. And every time you do support the podcast, I promise you it puts a smile on my face. It's the price of a beer once a month. If you've seen me out around city, I'm sure you'd buy me a beer. I've seen a few of you guys at coffee shops and people have offered to pay for coffee because they're enjoying the podcast. And that's greatly appreciated. But the the way to express that, it's true of Patreon. It's a fiver once a month, and I get your access to the secret podcast as well, which I'll be dropping straight after the tour de France. Also continue sharing the podcast, it's brilliant. I love seeing some dude, seeing someone's in Berlin, someone's in Paris, someone's in Toronto, someone's in Dublin, listening to the podcast and their local coffee shop, out with their local group ride. Snap a picture of it, tag us on it, hit me on Instagram at roadman.org. I'll share as well, you can get your little 60 seconds of fame. Roadman, thanks for listening, ride safe and I'm gonna chat it again tomorrow. Hey everybody, it's Anthony again. Really quick, I want to invite you to join arguably the best thing I've ever put out inside the Roadman community. It's a challenge, it's a challenge called a 14-day Kickstarter challenge. So regardless of where your fitness is at right now, this is going to be the catalyst for making you faster and making you leaner. I've created this challenge to take the guesswork out of everything. It's 14 days of training plans regardless of what your level is. There's the master's beginner advanced, there's meal plans shopping list and even a video course holding your hand and talking you through at all. So what I recommend you do right now is just stop everything, press pause on this audio and go to roadmansoycling.com forward slash 14 day or check out the link in the bio at roadmancycling.com slash 14 day.