Hello you beautiful cycling fans, welcome back at stage 8
Hello you beautiful cycling fans, welcome back at stage 8. Bit of a transition stage today, before we hit the real key stage, probably the queen stage tomorrow, definitely one of my favourite stages, the shorter version, only 90 kilometres tomorrow but yeah we're going to jump into today's stage. It was destined to be a sprint stage but we knew the breakaway was always lovely to steal the glory on the day and that's how it turned out. Couple of toy components include some very slippy glass-like surface on the road today and a load of stack-up. So let's not put it off and let's jump right in before we get cracking. As always, honourable mention to our show sponsor Missing Piece. Check out missingpiece.ie. As I said, when you check out the sponsors like this and you give them your bit of business and you get the bit of hype going about their product really helps the show grow and as we're keeping it we let us self-sustained ecosystem that everything that comes in and we pop back into the show it's win-win for all around so missing piece is a class place to go and check out gift items gift ideas it's also a class place to go if you want to pimp out your kitchen a little bit and get a few custom bespoke items i'm expecting my delivery on monday so i'll let you know what that is like and early next week we're also going to have a competition from Missing Piece so I'm excited about that. Today's stage, it was defined by a big break away. A big break went and a stand out looked like they had no interest in keeping the jersey today so they just kind of rolled along and the break it went out to stupid season and it ended up taking seven and a half minutes or something in the finish. before I jump into that Nicholas Roach update while it's on the tip of my tongue. Nicholas Roach books himself up pretty good but he has no broken bones, tanks for Luke, thankfully. He has a bunch of stitches and that's about the height of a row. So hopefully a couple of weeks and he can rest up and finish off the season strong. Today was defined by the big break but also the weather. If anyone hasn't ridden in Spain, Spain isn't as a horious for slippy surface, glass-like surface, when it rains, whatever they use, they don't lay the roads like they do on clam held on Spain. So whatever they use in the road, when there's a touch of rain, they're just not used to it. And the road's torn into absolute ice skating rink. Everything changes. So you're breaking your line, your grip, your pressure, how close you're riding the wheel. changes. Like you look at the line through the corners the boys are almost it's some great lessons for us. I know we have to race in Ireland a lot in the rain and I'm sure for every year you have to deal with the rain every now and then unless you're that solo listener at Mongolia you still representing out there don't know who you are. You're lying in the long grass reveal yourself come forward and take the surprise down Nobel Prince. The line in corners is super of orange, you need to keep the bike almost straight through the corners. Once you start leaning at all and put the bike on the tyre sidewalls, it becomes super super sketchy. Especially dangerous on a day like today because it started out dry. So these guys would have been running dependent if they're running tubeless, clincher or tubular. You can't actually assume anymore because the clinchers have got so good. Like satani, marin and primus rug glitch are rolling clinchers in the time draws now. They're gone that fast and there's been a big meal of the tubeless in the lab which I personally hate tubeless. I punctured out trying in two weeks going tubeless and it's a messy nightmare. You gunk and spjok stuff all over the place and it's horrible and you have to wipe all that out and then you can't find a bit of grit and your chance of repunction has gone up and you're trying to cram a tube in there and take your tubeless valve out and that's That's not a nice experience now. You are less low to puncture apparently that is the first puncture I've had all season on them. But yeah I don't know. I still have traditional I like trying non-clinchers and racing on tubulars but yeah with the mix of tyres it's hard but say if somebody's running a tubular like a 75k roller they're probably running around 110 PSI in their tubular at the start of the race because it looks super dry. Then the rain comes in and you don't want to be running much more than probably 70 PSI in rain like that for the same rider.
There's a big difference in PSI that you'll be running on a race like…
So there's a big difference in PSI that you'll be running on a race like that. Obviously the exact number varies from your waist to our manufacturer and stuff but rough estimates there. You can see there's a big gap between pressure on a joy day and pressure on a wet day. You also got to think of what tires you're using. Some of these guys don't have the luxury of going with the gripiest tires because you've got to go with the manufacturer. I know I've had written for some things and the the tires have been absolutely brutal and yeah it's just it's so dangerous it's the worst thing. I know a big trend here is I know boy shops seem to push it a lot in the winter is skater skins they push them go on gater skins it's amazing they're so puncture resistant you want puncture all season you'll slow it out on every single roundabout what makes them puncture resistant is that hard rubber That hard rubber is the exact same thing that doesn't grip. Like every day of the week I'd prefer to puncture once or twice over the winter and have the grip. But what you can do, which is a great little trick, is if you have an old tower, cut the sidewalls off and put the old tower inside your grippy tower. Like get something like a pro race four or something like that and put an old tower with the sidewalls cut off and inside that temperature tube inside that for trying. training and you had to benefit of both things. You've started to double there so it's more more unlikely to jump on sure but you also have that grip. So yeah everything changes for the guys today coming down that final descent. It was a catch rate coming down probably I think it was 910k to the finish bottom down so braking it's got to get all your braking done early the line you want to go around the corners with very little lean grip depends on your tires. You see he's a lot of riders sitting way off the wheels. David De La Cruz was riding way off the wheels from Team Inios. Like stupidly so because he ended up getting himself dropped once he's on all that work all day and got himself dropped because he's unwilling to ride on the wheels. That was on the flat so you know he showed like he showed me in the wheels on the flat even the spray is horrible on a day like that if you haven't raced in it. It's a miserable experience. You can't have your glasses on because you can't see how the lenses start to have them off because you keep getting stuff. Trowing up into your eyes, it's going to your mouth, it's just miserable. But the riding back off the wheels like Dela Cruz, you just have absolutely no chance for the day. So yeah, it's a bit of a catch 22. We had a couple of crashes coming in the road. We had two results from Sunweb. He hit the deck, he was trying to go solo, push it a bit much trued around the belt and went head over heels. Being that soldier, we're almost at identical crash before and it's not a nice one. Feels like you're in a tumble drawer. Also we had Lewis Leon Sanchez, it looks like he hit the deck, they didn't mention it in commentary but he came in, he disappeared from that group and he came in with the shoulders cut out of his jersey. So that looked like it could have been a nasty one as well. Also we had the TV motorbike came down. Now it's bad when the motorbike is starting to come down. Boy-cannan skills are important in that weather, and the cream started rising to the top close to the end. I thought it was gonna be the move. Yennec Steve, our head out, the Soyco lacrosse legend, head out for home, started gapping them through the corners. He just didn't have enough power in the end. When you would expect him to start opening it up, he just didn't have it. Dylan Jones was actually very instrumental in closing it down. He's our red jersey wearer from a couple of days ago. He was super strong, But I'll go through GC in a minute, but he's back up to second on GC, but you know, with tomorrow I just can't see much happening. So, Doregues finished with Arent from Sunweb. Like if anyone doesn't know him, he's a super, super fast finisher. And they were talking about Arent brew coming in the road from Károá, and he got second in the end, and I was like, what are you talking about him for? Like, Arent is there, and he is super fast finisher.
He's one of the Cadet 11's races, on the criteria of the dolphin age,…
Like he's one of the Cadet 11's races, on the criteria of the dolphin age, on the cheer-up stage. Like he's now because there's a lead out man, but before he's a lead out man, he was a sprinter. And lead out men are fast. Like, do you remember how fast Renchor was? Like Renchor, obviously fame from Lead Nail Cavendish, probably the greatest sprinter of all time. But Renchor moved away and he was sprinting for himself for a while and super fast, going. So Nicholas Arndt, you know, he won it in the seat, probably a choice from him to get that extra bit of traction sprinting seat and just a bit more control off the bike. honestly he just he didn't need to take that risk of getting out of sea because he probably won a boy six seven boy clamps in the end super impressive display from him and he seems like a really nice guy it's I think anchorman won yesterday as well in wherever the race is going on so it's a real purple patch for German cycling at the moment and you know a lot of that can be attributed to Marcel Kittle and really dragon German Soglin out of a bad bad era post Jan Ulrich. So Mark Kittle obviously retired on last week announcing his retirement, he didn't want to see his kid growing up on Skype and Fair Play to Kittle. But he had a bigger role in a lot of this stuff than people give him credit for. So yeah, real porpo patch for German cycling, I'm betting to one of the guys who suffer him because of that, because he's just not getting no love at Borre. I'm still having heard what's going on if he's trapped into that contractor, what's going on. I don't, didn't understand today why Louis Leon Sanchez was in the break. That's just something we've never seen the successful teams doing. We've never seen, you know, US Post-all back in the day when Armstrong was just so dominant, people into the break. We didn't see it in the Contour era, we didn't see it with him in the Osearteame Sky with Framem or Wiggins or Thomas. Is it a disciplining or is it a tactic staying that's different but for me it just makes no sense. Louis Leon is a strong strong domestic for Astana. We're coming up to tomorrow probably the Queen's stage and they put Louis Leon in the break and what does he get for his troubles in the break? He hits the dick and so they're effectively a man down for tomorrow. For a team that's looking to win the Vuelta España, I just don't see the logic in that at all, it seems absolutely stupid decision. Another show sponsor plug, if you haven't had a chance to check out ClickFunnels yet, do go and check them out because ClickFunnels have been a complete game changer for me. ClickFunnels allow me to get back to doing stuff like this, doing the podcast, coaching Reuters, getting out this morning for the A1CC, which I'll tell you in about the minute was class crack. It allows me to focus on what I do and not have to worry about building websites, optimizing pages, trying to figure out how to mesh together my AWeber auto responder with my Google AdWords accounts with my Facebook retarget. It's all done under one roof and it's a joy of a tool to use. So if you're a small business owner, I definitely encourage you to check out ClickFunnels. The good people at ClickFunnels have hooked their listeners up with a 14-day free trial of their platform. I'm gonna pop the link in the show notes down below. And again, I would encourage you to use the links. Obviously you can go and sign up or click on the independent link, but if you use the links I'm giving you, we get small kickbacks, which again, keeps float this whole podcast and keeps the show on the road. So even if you're mentioning that someone are sharing it around, I'd appreciate it if you shared around the link that I'm sending you guys. Thank you very much. So what are we looking at GC at the moment? We have Nicholas a day from coffee. This is a change of hands again. You know, they can't like Astana just, it's a hot potato. They want to get the jersey, it's gone. Get the jersey gone. So, Nicholas Ade has a handsome lead at the moment. I'm 221 over the previous Red jersey. We're dealing tunes, who's rocking the back up to GC. Well, I suppose the real GC starts in tour place with Superman Lopez as a 301 and Rugg, which is a 307. Just a quick word for Nicholas Ade because he's riding for confidence. Cofus have already had a stage win with Herrata two days ago.
Now they have Nicholas Aday in the jersey
And now they have Nicholas Aday in the jersey. Cofus got a wild card into this event and stuff like this, like even getting in the break is huge for teams getting or getting wild card entries in. And Cofus for as long as I can remember from the David Moncute at Housewives Favors, from his days with Cofus, it's just a team that I can remember being so loyal And so such a consistent supporter of Sowiklin all through the years that it's amazing to see them back. It's big for them. This is big. It's amazing to see them back at the top of world Sowiklin. So yeah, shop out to them and, you know, Nicholas today, he's got to get the Roadman award for for today's show. Anyway, if you're listening to the move podcast, they called the, I think they called the Patreon award or something shit like that. But yeah, Roadman's way cooler. Actually, we might start bringing out, we launched, well, kind of a soft launch of a roadman mug, a couple of, I was like last year or 18 months ago, but the more I'm looking into behavioral therapy and things like this, the more I'm thinking about bringing the mug back as an offering, I probably won't even sell it. I'll probably give the mug for free, like just cover the shipping or something like that. I've one of these roadman mugs in my kitchen and what I've done is I've started to use the roadman mug as a catalyst for me. So you know there's I'm not gonna this is a this is a deep dive for one of our podcasts that aren't as well as special but you know there's some behavioral techniques that we can start to associate actions like pressing our toe on our forefinger together, we can associate that with a mental state of mind. And you know, so pressing our TOM and forefinger together, you know, say if you're one of the GC contenders, you know, say, Grand Thomas, I know, because I know they use this at any else in Sky. So coming up to a big climb, you're pressing your TOM and your forefinger together, and that helps recollection with all the sacrifices that have been made through the year, all the training camps away from family to herd errors training. So by pressing that thumb and forefinger to get her to recall all this and then they think you know get switched on get plugged in. I've made all these sacrifices for this exact moment so it's a pre-framing it brings them into a very positive state of mind for them to take action on that climb coming up to the sprint whatever event they've defined but what I'm using the roadman mug for is you know what I'm getting up in the morning, I'm like, oh, you know, it's pouring rain. I don't really want to get out trying. And I have my coffee in that roadman mug. It's that it's I've trained it to be that catalyst for myself that's like snap yourself out of it. You know, you're a boy, your rider, get out, do your ride. You know, you set the alarm clock last night to get up because you had a ride to do this morning. They don't start making excuses. So the roadman mug for me is turned into a very powerful catalyst so I'm actually looking at trying to set up something. We'll do it, we'll figure it out in there, one of the upcoming deeper dive podcasts but I'll talk a little bit more about the psychology in that and we also look to start shipping them if we can for like three to you guys just cover the postage on them. That will be cool. We had the A1CC ride this morning which was classed to have it back. We haven't had it and didn't do it all summer and probably cut it off earlier last year but it's back now weekly. We didn't have a massive crowd for us a week back, we have six guys or something like that. Out, amazing fun, great to just roit people from different backgrounds, different abilities and I think that's what cycling should be. It should be socially inclusive, it should be not defined by our ability and then riding with a very narrow subset of friends who also always tend to come from similar sporting backgrounds. This is, you know, people coming from just massively different life experiences, massively different family situations, sporting situations, work situations. What happens is you don't just get the usual sterile conversation that you do on a group ride with a bunch of teammates who are all the same ability. You get just this varied conversation which makes the time flow past. So if anyone's Dublin based could be tough commute for the lot of Mongolia but we're meeting at the field room in Clontherth Road at 930 every Saturday morning so that's just an informal get together it's about 64k we normally meet a little bit early get a coffee before stop for a coffee halfway real social spin tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow it's the Queen's stage we're heading into Andor the roads I know very well I've trained out there beautiful beautiful terrain but massively unforgiving.
Tomorrow's stage is only 90 kilometres and this is an innovation…
Tomorrow's stage is only 90 kilometres and this is an innovation that's come around the last few years and the Vuelta was actually a forced grand tour to innovate and they needed to mix things up because they were losing focus and they started throwing these short stages to their class. So right from that gun tomorrow lads are gonna be on the rollers, get more them up because it goes straight away, automatic tomorrow, we're straight into a climb. Tomorrow we're 3,400 metres of climb and over five categorised climbs and the running to the finish is absolutely ridiculous. This one I'm saying Nicholas today has no chance of being in the jersey Dylan Jones, there's no chance of being second on GC. This is a Lopez Roglich Quintana Valverde, straight-all shoot out. We're running in with two Katu climbs and a Kat1 climb coming into the finish. It's gonna be brutal, it's gonna be epic and it's 90k so I'm gonna try and park myself on front of the TV for as much of that as I can. The only other thing I found of interest today was interview Peter Stettner after the race from Trek. Great to see him back because he had a real bad slack up a few years ago where he hit a pole and broke his leg. He's an interesting guy and he's just kind of come to my mind because he's been doing the alternate race schedule with some of the EF guys this year like riding a lead-ville, dirty hands. It's something I'm kind of looking at for next Well, he was in the break today, which was great to see him back there and shop out to him. So I'd love to see him getting back to his best. He's a man who, you know, he said he was given abuse to wheel suckers, as he called, I'm very American. You need to ride with honor, he said, when you're in the break. I don't know if I echo that sound, but I think it's about actually winning, not riding with honor. So you got to do what you got to do. You got to play to your strengths. If you're not a diesel who can ride through all day in a break, you got to, you know, drink out at Magic Potholay on the back and skip as much as you can do your tourns, true corner, do your tourns and tailwinds and play the all rope as Ali would have done. So tomorrow we got the Queen's stage, then we're into the rest day and then we're into the time trial. It's been a tough force week, it's been a tough force week for the racers and it's been a tough force week for the whole podcaster here, really enjoying us but yeah, I'm not going to lie, I am looking forward to getting into that rest day and just not having the daily, you're going to get the podcast up for at least a day, then we're into the time shot and then we're back in. But you know what, we're like eight days deep already and they're coming up to this stage tomorrow. Like this is going to be nine today in a row. These are gladiators, they're gladiators and their turn strips off each other and tomorrow it's the final battle before a little bit of a break. So looking forward to hopefully all the guys who crash today have a good night's sleep and they heal well and I will back to you guys tomorrow to dissect and pull apart the Queen's Edge and let you all know how it went. In the meantime check on the links down below for our training camp it's also up you go on a1coaching.net you'll see it linked up our training camp is the 9th to 15th in November. A1 the 8 week challenge is closing up in the next few days so if you're interested in that you can pop me an email on info at a1coaching.net I'm gonna link it up on the show or I'm gonna link it up in the show notes down below Have an absolutely Whopper Saturday night don't drink too much and get up and ride your bike tomorrow morning chat to you all then