You're going to see my dogs. You're going to see my girlfriend, Sarah. You're going to see it all. It's all there in the daily vlog. It's been very enjoyable, massively intrusive for a brilliantly brilliant phone so far on the vlog. So I'm going to continue doing them as definitely as I lockdown continues beyond that as well. I am getting back to the regular cadence on this podcast. I'm going to aim for once a week, but I'm going to hope for twice a week. Fingers crossed on it. What I love the podcast is because I just go off on these random rants. So yeah, they went short of the fall on lockdown in Ireland, but someone commented on a YouTube video that I linked on Facebook saying I was calling all group rights to be cancelled because I seen some groups of cyclists out last weekend. And I think for a couple of reasons, one, it's going against the guidelines on social distancing. We've been asked to be a couple of metres apart, but two, I think cyclists we've been viewed by portions of the community, the wider community that is as kind of renegades, floating the law, not concerned with stop signs, red lights, and just a little bit maverick. I think when everyone else is making such huge sacrifices, not going to work, losing their jobs, distancing from parents and loved ones, we can't even stay away from riding bikes consistently. We have to show up with trying to partner. So I think it just sends a bad message to anyone who's looking on. And I think to the point that you could start saying road rage instances, which is in nobody's interest. So I would call on all cyclists to just train on your own. It's not that big of a sacrifice when you consider other sports like swimmers, team sports, they have no access to training and at the moment no access to training or competition where we have all these virtual stuff, you know, it's with the trainer road, so for first where we can virtually race each other plus we can try and as much as we want outside here in Ireland but yet we just need to push those limits and training groups. like as someone pointed out in the YouTube comment, it's not illegal to try and improve the four here at the moment and I wrote back to him, like there's a distinction between legal and moral. And I think, you know, if you look inside and you ask yourself what's the right thing to do, I think that's often easier answered than what's the legal thing to do. The Olympics are gone. Can you believe that? Obviously personally, I'm very disappointed the CDO Olympics gone. It's been a big focus for me trying to qualify on the tandem with Peter Ryan. I went off to the World Championships in Canada in February and we rode the pursuit over there. I rode the kilo as well, but that was more of a frigid shit and giggles than anything else we rode the pursuit. Happy enough with 9th place in the pursuit in retrospect. It was a PB for me, 427. Can we go a bit faster? Definitely, yeah. 9th place in the world and secured us from them again, which is the important thing and secured us Olympic qualifying points. So yeah, we are marching on, hadn't secured qualification yet, put a big race coming up in June, the World Championships, which is now cancelled and the Olympics are cancelled. So where does it leave me? Honestly, it leaves me a lot of tink in the deal. I'm kind Kind of deferred what I'm gonna do. Not that I'm gonna, and you're like, announce my retirement here on the podcast, but I've just deferred even thinking about it. I think at a time like this, there's more important things going on than sport. Like many you probably listening, you have relatives and direct family members who are approaching the retirement age or retired. And you know, my concern would be just for them at the moment and senior citizens in isolation just hoping not too many people get this nasty bug and then once that kind of goes into remission I started thinking about sport but I think at a time when people have loved ones are sick for some people and a lot of people have lost their incomes it's very difficult to start thinking about sport and it's very selfish but yeah in those moments when I'm putting my cycling kit on and you're just thinking huh I used to have a real pep in my step putting my cycling kit on, it was very purposeful, driving towards something, driving towards the Olympics at the end of the summer, the opening ceremony, the Irish flag, never needed a bit of motivation in my life when an Irish jersey on my back to race the bike and that's been taken away.
And yeah, I suppose when we're talking at the start about groups and groups not socially distancing from each other, that's what I've lost so far and not even to start on the damage to A1 coaching, which I'll get into now. But yeah, like I've lost the Olympics already and this is, it's gone a spread further without that social moral compass and that social responsibility. So everyone just needs to suck the fuck up and stay indoors for a while. I've seen some great rants about, you know, our grandfathers were asked to fight the Black and Tans and they were outgunned and outnumbered and all we're being asked to do is just stay at home and watch TV do something productive with your time just don't go outside it's not a massive sacrifice so what can you do during this effect of lock up I know some of you listening will be in country where there's a hundred percent lockdown I know a lot of listeners in Jourona and there's a hundred percent lockdown going on there at the moment three books I would definitely recommend you pick up in the cycling genre. Cycling books have always been a little bit of a postman's holiday for me and I haven't typically tended to read them because there's so much cycling on the TV and I just love watching the classics. Favorite races of the year, barre known, love Tour of Flanders, love Roubaix, went over last year and watched Tour de France stage on Roubaix and stolen Caroford elaborate and phenomenal. Missing all that, I'm having withdrawal symptoms. So, tree books that I think are absolutely amazing. I've been on a bit of a history buzz since the turn of the new year, watched a World War II on color documentary and that kind of got me a taste of it. So this first recommendation is, I don't give you these recommendations likely folks. These are, you know, I'm a big book guy, I'm a big book nerd. And I have, like I've been consuming serious amount of the books now since this lockdown, but these books are the recommendations from hundreds I've read. So yeah, listen carefully, get the know pad out and get that Amazon. You know what, I put them in the, I'll put the links in the show notes if I remember, but if not, get on to Amazon. The first one is Road to Valor. And this is a book you might not have heard of. It's about Gino Bartole and his role of his role within World War II. So the Italians obviously were flipped flapping from Allied to German side during the war. But when they were on the Allied's side. Sorry when they were on the German side, what Gino Bartolei was using his celebrity status among the army. He had a little bit more freedom than your average person who had restricted travel and movement, but Gino Bartolei was allowed to train because he was a superstar. He was you know, part of their propaganda machine. So he had improvised in the top tube of his bike a little sloth to carry forged documents and he was sneaking behind German enemy lines and he he was given forged documents to Jews. He saved countless hundreds of lives but it's a brilliant book, wrote to Valor, Gina Bartole, one of the true stars of our sport. Second recommendation, it's the Mystique by Charlie Wigalius. It's a brilliant one, so Eitlin, it's not all glamour and to give you one brief scene out of the book, it's not a spoiler alert, it's just a brief scene that I think sums up the book, it's Charlie Wigalius and he's gone clear and he's He's the voters whole life to be in a domestic and he's finally in the Vuelta and it's one of his last boy graces and he's in the break. His team leader is in the break. His team leader drops back out of the break and he says, Charlie, look, I haven't got the legs today. Just before he gets dropped, I haven't got the legs today. It's all you today, mate. And then he said in that moment, he thinks, you know, I never needed to win. I never needed that validation, but maybe this is the perfect way to top off my career. Maybe, you know, this is the validation for my coaches, for my family, everyone that sacrificed for me and he recounts the thoughts that are going through his head as he attacks the break, as he goes solo, with 5k to go, with 4k to go, 3k to go, 2k to go and he's like, you know, this is it, this is the moment the icing on the top, cherry on the cake.
Here we go, 1k to go, zip up the jersey, it's time for the photos, what are you going to say to the press, 500 meters to go? Oh shit, I've been caught. Saitlin, it's no fairytale is it? I'm not reading the next track from the book there, that's just from memory so I probably butchered bits of a book. It's a great, great book, a brilliant read. The last one is Shadows on the Road by Michael Barry. Michael Barry had a career which is probably a little bit under the radar for some of the most hardcore Silicon fans, but he wrote for the biggest teams in the world, HTC, Columbia, have T-Mobile, Yann Oric, Team Sky with Bradley Wiggins, phenomenal US postal at Lance Armstrong, phenomenal, phenomenal career. He got dragged into the murky side of Dope and at US postal and he served the band with Dave Zabritke and all the other guys in the wake of the USADA. Mike Barry is an ex-training partner of mine from Toronto. He is a gentleman. He builds Mary Poe as a handmade steel bike at the moment which are beautiful and and worth checking out. But Mike is, for me, one of the rare guys who has a story to tell, but is also well able to tell the story. He's one of the most articulate men I've ever met. And he translates that brilliantly onto the page. He paints vivid pictures. And it's beautiful if you're a wordsmith, if you're a man for the lyrics, great book to check out. I take check out all the training. But there you go. As I said, then books, the recommendations they come from, errors of hard work. So I want to talk to you about A1 coaching and the challenge that a lot of us are facing, you know, you can use A1 coaching here as your metaphor for the challenge your face. And I know some of the jobs that are gone down the swanning yourself, employer, your PAYE, and you've lost the jobs and you're facing a lot of uncertainty. And it's the exact time uncertainty that I'm facing that A1. Look, already we're what a week, two weeks into this crisis. I know some of you might be thinking, A1's an online coaching company, and we're pretty much resilient because people are gonna wanna train more than ever because they're stuck inside. And that is one facet of A1 coaching, but I've also in a snap of a fingers lost huge amounts of our revenue streams. There's obviously one on one clients who are gonna lose their jobs themselves or can't continue paying, but we've lost the ability to do training camps, to do lactate testing, to do one-on-one roids, to do consultations, all gone in a heartbeat. We're gonna lose 80 to 90% of revenue. That is a kick in the teeth, and that is a death nail in the coffin. It's a death nail in the coffin for every single person or business to choose as for that to be a death nail in the coffin. So, what are we gonna do? You know, I've talked on the podcast before and I love a story of somebody doing well. Like, I really love to see people doing well. I'm not one of these guys who's begrudging. I love to see someone rise in and whether it's in sport or it's business or life or academia. I love seeing someone doing well. But what I love even more than seeing someone doing well is someone who's done well. And then they completely fuck it up and they make such a mess of their life. And then they rise from that failure, from that disappointment. And they do well again. And that's what we have right now. We're in stage two of that. All of us are. And we are in ruins. We're in flames. The house is on fire. Now we have a choice and we get to paint our story. Are we going to rise again? Or are we going to sit back? We're going to watch Netflix and we're going to say, yeah, you know what? I'm done. I had some bad luck. Covid ruined me. We're not defined by how we do when times are good but when times are bad that's what shapes us that's what gives us the character so now's the time to see what we're made of what's our mental we're made of and honestly I just can't give up on A1 coaching and I can't give up on A1 coaching.