Roadman today I want to talk about riding in the ice
Roadman today I want to talk about riding in the ice. Let's kill that intro! The big question is this. How do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness and our longevity? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh and welcome to the Roadman Podcast. Hello, man. Welcome back, roadman. It's another roadman podcast. How's everybody getting on? If you could ask me how am I getting on? I can tell you. I am the busiest man in the world with the roadman summit. It has been a labor of love. I set out to do this really to take the leverage from this podcast because so many of you have been so amazing at spreading the word and give me the reach with the podcast and I thought, you know what would be cool to reach out to as many, as many experts and as many different angles as I could in cycling. That's the mission I set out with. I went with the number 30. I'm not really sure why. It's the same round, the same day even. It was easy for me to avoid by 15. That makes no sense. Yeah, look, I've no reason I went with 30. It just seemed like an achievable number. It was a lot of work, folks. I finished recording all the interviews for the Summit and it's going live tomorrow. If you know anyone that hasn't registered yet, it's roadmansummit.com. It's a free ticket. Go and check it out. I've taught you speakers from every angle you can imagine. We're covering sport from pros to aspiring pros to physios, boig fitters, nutritionists. I don't know who isn't going to benefit from this. World Tour Reuters, the absolute beginners, something in it for everyone. It's been a labor of love, but it's definitely something I'm proud of. I remember a story and just when I was younger my dad gave me a job and it'd be like for him he worked as a bike mechanic, he was in the army but he worked as a doing nixers all the time building bikes and so invariably as the loose child labor lost and I was roped into being the assistant mechanic at probably the tender age of five or six but he'd give me trivial jobs a lot of time like cleaning a bike or you know put a chain on or something like put a chain on, it's probably a bit complex or four, but yeah, you know what I mean, like clean a bike and I'd come back to him and I'd say, right, that's done. And he'd say, okay, are you proud of it? And I'd be like, eh, okay, I guess not, let me go back and do it again. So I'd go back and I'd come back to him saying it's done and he'd be like, are you proud of it? And I'd be like, yeah, you know what, I think I am proud of it. And then you come out and check it out. And it was just a nice little way of always having a a pride in your work. And if somebody was saying to me now with this summit, are you proud of it?
What, I definitely pause for a second to reflect back on the 30 hours…
You know what, I definitely pause for a second to reflect back on the 30 hours of interviews, over 50 hours of interviews with 30 speakers. And I would say, yeah, you know what, I am really proud of this. I'm really proud of this as a contribution I've made to cycling. And I think it's going to pull a lot of people who have bad habits around sleep and food, it's going to help them lose weight, sleep better, be more productive. know everyone is not going to get those benefits over but it will touch some people and if it makes that change but even one person you know what I'm proud of it. So yeah it's roadmansummit.com the link for that's down below. Today's podcast is like all other podcasts it's brought to you by patreon that's over on patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore waltz make a small donation that helps keep the show on the road around the summit and around this but today guys what I want to talk to you about is the ice and I want to tell you a little story because this morning I woke up I looked out to cordon and I thought that doesn't look good got the dogs brought them outside the roads were slippy there was frost on the cars there was frost on the windows the grass had that you know real course almost like felt like a brake blades of grass brittle nature to them it was cold cold cold. The thermometer here in Ireland it said minus two degrees Celsius with a real feel of minus five. And I texted my training partner and I said you know what this doesn't look good let's push the start back from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. and see how it is. 10 a.m. I rolled to the calf. He was already in the calf. We sat there and he's like what are you thinking? And I was like I don't like to look at this. I just don't get a good feeling about this. And many times I've I've made the wrong decision on this one. And I was the more experienced out of two of us and I said, I'm calling it, we're not riding today. And we were sitting there drinking coffee for the next half an hour in our kit. Cyclists were riding past, a lot of cyclists were riding past on the bike paths and he being a much newer into the sport was probably looking at me and going, like this lad's gone soft, like we could easily train in this weather. And I've no problem training in the worst cold, the worst rain, snow storms, ice is the one weather I draw a line at and I haven't in the past and I've paid for it. So I was so proud of myself that I stood firm on this I said no we're not doing it. Anyway we had our coffee, I went home, I didn't try in on the indoor I will confess, I had a busy day and I was like you know what I'm gonna crack into the summit stuff and I'll move rest days around. Checked later on that day into where we've a little roadman WhatsApp group for the local group, Royd, and someone posted in a picture of Garan Thomas who'd gone out trying on the ice in Wales and he crashed and he dislocated his shoulder.
Since then I posted that up on my Instagram and since then I had a…
And since then I posted that up on my Instagram and since then I had a bunch of messages from Reuters, everything from beginner to pro saying they'd also crashed today on the ice and it just got me thinking about like, you know, talk about these towers are grippier, these towers are you know they never slip out on corners, I don't ride rural roads when it's icy, I only ride main roads because the car's gone past hot and out. The one thing I would say to all that is you got to look at the risk to reward this, one training session, a good one or a bad one, never makes or breaks, a training week, a training block and definitely not a training season. You go out today, minimum upside, you're going to be on edge all day, you're going to get your training benefit year if you come home without incident. But the potential downside, it's Grand Thomas today, it's all day in the hospital, it's hospital bills, it's a broken bone, it's mistraining time, the risk to reward ratio just does not stack up on this. You can go running on grass, get a bit of cross training in, you can You can go and do some strength work, you can move a rest day around and spend it with family, bank some credits for that. The risk to reward on the ice just does not add up folks. When I see groups out training in the ice, it just infuriates me. Who's in charge it is? Who's setting the example? Because new Reuters will follow the lead of experienced Reuters. And if experienced Reuters, don't stick their hand up and say, you know what? This sport, it's dangerous enough as it is. We don't ride a noise. A very senior writer in our Saturday morning group put in a brilliant quote that I absolutely loved and he said, and I'm gonna leave you on this one for today, he said, the only reason you should be rowing your bike in icy conditions is if you like hospital food. I love that one. Royal men, I'm gonna leave you with that. Don't rowing your bike in the ice. Chat you tomorrow. Royal men, before you go, I've got an important announcement to make because over two days and the 8th and 9th of December. I'm going to speak with 30 of the world's leading fitness experts. And I want you to join me, free of charge from the comfort of your own home. This is the first ever roadman virtual performance summit for aiming to bring together the best minds and fitness and they're going to share with me their secrets for biohacking your physiology, melting away body fat and smashing your cycling goals. Would you like to learn their secrets? It's easy. All you have to do is registered for your free ticket over at www.roadmansummit.com forward slash free. That's www.roadmansummit.com forward slash free. The link is in the bio.