1.Hello you beautiful roadman, it's been a minute

Hello you beautiful roadman, it's been a minute. Apologies for the radio silence for the last couple of weeks on the podcast. I always intend to get a regular cadence on the podcast and then wanting or another happens and that is derailed. Luckily for me I have quite a good excuse this time as the work of being derailed. Much like I'm sure many of your life plans have been derailed. COVID-19 crisis has drawn up all sorts of crazy permutations in my life, some of which we're going to get into now. So I have an action pack show today, I want to talk to you about the Olympics being cancelled, the future A1 will be survived as big down torn, what I'm doing to pass the time in captivity is captivity too strong a word? Nah, I like it, let's roll with it, captivity it is. What a training day looks like and some books you can read about cycling if you're missing all the live cycling classic season. Oh my god, we're missing classic season. But before we dive into all that, I'd like to announce a new podcast sponsor. It's been a while coming. We had one or two sponsors back last summer for periods like the Tour de France sponsor. But now we have our forced regular show sponsor and it's JUVE. J-O-O-V doesn't spell JUVE for me. J-O-O-V spells happiness for me. What JUVE is, JUVE is a near infrared light machine, near and far infrared light machine and it's part of my morning routine. Anyone who's been watching my YouTube vlogs will see that I start every morning by jumping up and standing on front to the Jew of the reason I waited so long to get a podcast sponsor was I didn't want it. I didn't want to be shilling something that I don't believe in. I was a customer of the Jew of long before they were a show sponsor. And now I'm delighted. I had to chase them. They didn't chase me. I had to chase them together to be a show sponsor. I use it every morning. The near and far infrared light. It has amazing benefits. We don't get the right wavelength of sunshine with the cloud cover and CO2 gases outside at the moment. So what the dew of those is it replicates the bandwidth which we should be getting of light. Amazing host of benefits from this is getting real trendy and like San Fran and the really popular places your people are going into beauty spas because what it does it builds up collagen in your face so it keeps you looking younger. Our athletes listening also elevates testosterone levels. I don't know before and after on my testosterone and I got a 10% bump which is huge considering testosterone should be declining for me now after the age of 30. It's also been proven to combat sad seasonal effect of this order but at the moment for me being stuck indoors a good chunk at a time like I'm sure you are, it's just an absolute essential tool. I'm gonna drop the link to it down in the show notes and if you use the link you get a special little gift It's definitely worth checking out as I said I never would get a show sponsored that I'm not passionate about and You've used them long before they were a show sponsor. So with that done, let's jump into this crazy crazy world We're living in what have you all made this whole covid crisis? It's been pretty mental here in Ireland, T-Shock Leo Veratkar, who incidentally I feel has just had brilliant leadership in your contrast. It's some of the idiots around the world, like Donald Trump especially, and you can't believe anything the voice says. But Leo Veratkar's exhibited some amazing leadership here in Ireland, and he introduced more restrictions today. So we've pubs have already been closed, but now cafes and restaurants and all non-essential businesses have closed. When short, given us the full French style lockdown, so thankfully for all cyclists, we can still get out and about and do irritating as long as it's groups of under four. Now, I just had a comment on, I put up a video on YouTube. A big reason I haven't been hitting the daily podcast is I've been hitting, or the weekly podcast, I've been hitting daily on YouTube. So if you're not following me on YouTube, go over and search Anthony Walsh on YouTube and you're going to get a little peek into my life.

2.You're going to see my dogs

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.

3.Suppose when we're talking at the start about groups and groups not…

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.

4.Here we go, 1k to go, zip up the jersey, it's time for the photos,…

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.

5.Lot of you are probably listening and you know that I have a…

I know a lot of you are probably listening and you know that I have a background in law and I'm trying to be a barster and you're probably thinking you know oh he'll abandon ship and he'll I go back to that, I absolutely will not. And the reason I won't go back to it is I passionately truly believe that what we do with A1 coaching, it changes lives. And that's why it's my mission, my sole mission in life is to impart that knowledge onto you and get you to come onto our coaching plans because I absolutely know they change lives. Countless of our clients, Look, I could any single client, I could call him up and I could get a testimonial of them and it's mind blown, it's life changed. A client I'm personally working with at the moment over in the United States and it's been brilliant watching him grow. He came on just around Christmas time and the usual reluctance and hesitancy to get started because he didn't know what it was. Since Christmas I think he's lost seven and a half kilograms. He's in the structure training and he's training in five days a week. This is one of the busiest guys running a multi-million euro a year business. Every reason to not train but when he sucked it up and he's committed to this plan and he just trusted the process that I was saying to him will change your life. He's happier, he's fitter, he's healthier, his motivation for life and it's just his lost and desire to win is better than ever. And listening to him, it's absolutely life-changing. And that's why I have to get this information into people's hands. I have to keep trying to get people on these coaching plans because I know what we do. It's not replicated anywhere else. Nobody else does this. I've been with countless cycling coaches and that's all the art, or cycling coaches. What we are, we're results driven. We're, it's transformative. It's transforming body, it's transforming mind and it's on the back end it's churning out something that is a product that I just can't walk away from as I have a compulsion to put it into the hands of as many people as I can. That's why I won't sit down. That's why I can't lie down during this COVID crisis where I have to figure out new ways to rebuild A1, figure out new ways to get this service into the hands of the people who need it most because this service into the hands of the people who need it most, it's life changing, it's absolutely life changing and it's that fork in the road for a lot of people so that's my mission and I'm going to continue to do that and I know a lot of you guys can't do that on your own and I want to be that help so let me be that help for you. I'm doing a special, a COVID special we'll call it, I'm doing 50% off the first one coaching, pop me an email on info at aonecoaching.net and I'm going to get you hooked up on that. Because I know you can't do this on your own, you need help and let us be that help for you. Let me be that help for you. So there you go, the passion, the foyer, you can hear it, it's in the belly. Yeah, right now I'm trying to be productive for my days. I'm working a lot, I'm working and harder than ever to figure out the way out of this for A1 Coach and figuring out new revenue strands, new ways to get the message out to you guys. But I'm also spending a lot of time on self-development. The self-development, it's in many different areas, photography and videographies, the commitment I made at the New Year. And I'm staying true to that and I'm still learning and I'm working on that and bringing the YouTube daily vlog. I like to say almost daily vlog because I do miss one occasionally. So make sure you check it out on YouTube because that's where I'm touching in every single day. I'm still training. The routine for me is so important and training goes so far beyond just the physical for me. Obviously there's the physical benefits but there's the mental health benefits and at this time there's the immunity benefits and it's gas. I'm seeing like articles online on how fast, fake and false information spreads about people saying you should dial back intensity in your training because it compromises your immunity.

6.Studies absolutely, conclusively do not back that up at all

The studies absolutely, conclusively do not back that up at all. You don't need to ease off any of your intensity. Maintaining your intensity, it supports healthy immune function. The studies are irrevocable and there's many of them out there. The 2018 one from the University of Bath is the latest one I was just reading today. And that's worth checking out if you google cycling immunity university about 2018 you'll pull it up for yourself. But yeah, everyone keep the face. It's a tough period. It's a challenging period for all of us. Try keep your days structured a day for me at the moment. I put out a video on YouTube about my morning routine since then I've actually added in cleaning in my morning routine and I was chatting to Peter Ryan who's on the tandem with me during the day and I almost get Peter on actually as a guest on the podcast. Actually, you know what, I'll do that for the next podcast. I'm going to get Peter on as a guest and we'll dial in from Skype. That'll be interesting. I've loads more guest lined up as well so that's what we're going to start doing. It's going to be more guest focused. I'm going to get Peter in and talk about the Olympics and how disappointed he is. But yeah, I've added in actually cleaning into my morning routine and bleach and the shit out of everything I mean sir. Again the book of the Milton we're cleaning surfaces and floors every morning and it's as much for the routine as it is for the hygiene. Neither of them should be overlooked at a time like this. Then I'm going into my morning routine which as I mentioned at the outset it's using my juice. It's meditating for 10 minutes. It's cold shower, journaling with some gratitude in it. point of water with the lemon and the ice and then a little bit of movement and I'm trying to get my training in. I'm typically trying to train twice a day if I can. I'm not always making twice a day, definitely once a day but it depends on what I'm doing. If I'm getting out for a two-hour plus bike ride, that's me doing for the day. If I'm doing something a bit easier, shorter bike ride or run, I'll typically try and throw in like indoor gym style workouts in the house which is one of the projects I'm working really hard on at the moment and I'm hoping by the next podcast that I'll have that in your hands. It's a home-based gym program which I've been experimenting pretty hard with chatting with some pretty prominent physiologists to bring this to you. It's gonna be epic! Okay that's it for our podcast. Thank you very much as I said at the outset to our show sponsors JUVE, JOOOV, link is down below. Check them out because they're absolutely on real check it out. I have the travel one of the big one. They're both class like Peter Ryan who's been gone away on the camps with me. He's been using it in the hotel room just taking it out my suitcase. He loves it as well. So yeah they're phenomenal. You need to check it out. It just makes you happier. You feel better. You have more energy. Bills, mitochondria, increases testosterone. The science is class. Guys that's it. It's been great to be back in your ear at a time like this and I will be back more regularly in your ear and we'll be getting podcasts, guests and the likes. Thanks for listening, roadmen, be safe out there, practice your social distancing, wash your hands, until next time, it's Anthony Walsh.