Roadman, in today's podcast, I want to give to you the top five…
Roadman, in today's podcast, I want to give to you the top five mistakes that I see getting made on the bike. 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 and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh and welcome to the Roadman Podcast. Roadman, thank you for joining me for another Roadman Podcast. It's a pleasure to be back in your ear wherever you are working out. It's the magic of the podcast, isn't it? When I look at the demographics of who's downloading this podcast, they're in far-flung corners of the universe. So if you're over in Doha and you have this podcast in your ear at the moment, shout out to you. If you're in Cork City with the podcast in your ear, equally a shout out to you. It's amazing and humbling to watch the downloads from across the world, so thanks for that guys. And today I want to give you the top 5 mistakes that I see getting made out on the bike. Some of these mistakes are obvious ones in hindsight, but you need to have made these mistakes to understand how detrimental and how important they can be. Before I jump into that, I'd ask you all to head on over to patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore watch the link is in the bio down below. Just take one second and head on over there because that's how you support the podcast. We don't have a total sponsor on the podcast. Look at a lot of our competitors do. But you know what, we're a small little podcast to set up, but we're pulling some big punches. We're pulling some big guests and our frequency as it's good as anyone out there at the moment. So I would ask you to please continue to support that so we can keep this high standard common. So we can keep that sacrifice going. It might seem like a small amount of cash to you. Products with beer once and once. For me, it means I'm on the right path, but it also means we can keep taking swings at the big boys and keep doing what we do. So I really appreciate the support. It'll take you two seconds to do. Link is in the boil, head on over there. Now pause the podcast and come back. Right, top five mistakes I see out on the bike. These are ones that are born. I've learned these mistakes the hard way, because every one of these mistakes I've made It's been horrible. It's been dire and someone of hurt like badly hurt. So I'm gonna rattle through them for you Not bringing correct tools out on the bike and I'm not saying you need to carry a big fucking park tool case on your back and the park blue tool book Incidentally they're all in roadman resources. What to us you should get how How you should fix those mechanicals inside that big blue book that I recommend the best book I've ever found a maintenance and just to segue to that roadman resources. I don't get shit for those roadman resources. They're not sponsors that I show, they're not products that I'm paid to promote. They're just stuff I love and I use. So if you're looking for what sunglasses you use, what shoes to get, you'll see me wearing the physique or one shoes that I recommend there. I recommend them because they're gangster. They look cool and they work class. So going out on the side of the road, I've been up in the Wicklow Mountains in Ireland and it's being pouring rain and I've broke a chain and I haven't had the correct tool to fix it. So that's why I've put this in as mistake number one. So starting out, it's as basic as, do you know how to fix a puncture? Do you have a tube? Do you have a pump? Do you have tarot levers with you? You need to know how to use the tools that you're bringing with you. Spirit tubes is absolutely essential and a multi-tool with a chain breaker on it's absolutely essential. That's the minimum, I would say, you need to be going out the door with. So you need to have an Allen key set with a chain breaker. You need to know how to reattach a chain if you break it, which is so, so easy.
It's just, if you, it's five minutes gone on YouTube, find an…
It's just, if you, it's five minutes gone on YouTube, find an eclipse, how do I fix a broken chain? And now you know how to do it. And it's gonna save you waiting on the soil of the road for like an hour for a pick up in the freezing cold or rain. And depending on what climate you're in, like I've lived in Toronto and I've ridden winters over there. It's no joke. If you break a chain and you're waiting 60, 70 minutes on the side of the road in minus 15, minus 20 degree temperature. It's no joke. Things get very real, very fast. So just take responsibility. Yesterday's podcast or Tuesday's podcast was about extreme ownership. And that's what you need on this. It's extreme ownership. Don't assume someone else in the group knows how to fix a puncture. Don't assume someone knows how to fix a broken chain. Learn how to do, bulk them yourself. Mistake number one. Mistake number two, it's the unclip crash. Now, this one, I need to tell you, I need to be a little bit vulnerable and a little bit honest here. I'm gonna journey back to, oh, what, my college days, I'm gonna say it's around 2004 and I'm just getting into cycling. I've faltered a loan application. I'm of all this shit, I've nice bike. There's a story behind the bike, actually, I managed to get one of my forced racing bikes, proper racing bikes now when I got into this seriously, was a bike that Lance Armstrong actually had in the tour. I'll tell you that story in another day. Actually, no, I'll tell it real fast now. So I was getting treated by Fizzio in Limerick who had done a lot of work for Lance Armstrong back in the day, famous physio here in Ireland, Jared Hartman. And Jared had worked with Lance. Lance refused to take payment from Lance. He said, you know, I'm really happy to work on you, it's great for my profile. It's an honor. Yada, yada. And he didn't take any cash, Lance sent him couple of bikes at the end of the season to say thank you. And this was one of the bikes which I'd gotten off Gera Hartman. So I was riding, I wish I hadn't sold it. Like what was it thinking? Stupid student. So I had one of Armstrong's bikes and I was riding that as my early bike. But I rock up in all Gera Hartman's hand me down to give me including the bike that Armstrong used to use to my local club swords. I think I'm the legend. If you don't know, if you can't be the part, look the part and I certainly look the part. And I rock up to the group, there must be 30, 40 guys there. And I go to stop, I clip out my left foot because I'm not an idiot, everyone knows you have to clip out when you're getting started just before you come up to the junction or come up to stop. So I come up, I clip out my left foot, but I distribute my weight to the right side to the foot that's still clipped in and boom, down I go. It was not nice. So the on clip crash is mistake number two that I see. When you're coming up to a junction, you're coming up to a stop, needless to say, you need to rotate your heel outwards to unclip, but then you make sure to distribute your weight to the soil where you're unclipping from. Don't feel bad if you've had that crash. Every single one of us had that crash, but honestly, most of you didn't experience the intense laughter. The kind of smack group when I crashed. So that's just one of a number of stupid things I don't. I'm a very forced bin out in a group. Thankfully I've put most of those bad habits behind me. Mistake number three I see people making. It's tire choice and I'm gonna loosely use this to talk about tire choice and pressure. Grip, grip, grip. There are the three things you need to be thinking about when you're thinking about tire choice or you're thinking about pressure. Your ability doesn't mean shit if you're in hospital. Honestly a set of tires is like a torty quid. to recommend in roadman resources I think is like a tenor of a tower. What do I recommend them? Because they're grippy. What do I recommend them?
Because I've slid out on shitgazer skins in wet descents, time after…
Because I've slid out on shitgazer skins in wet descents, time after time. Because I went into shops and just shops. Not in a malicious way but they just buy into the american and they're not boy-crudders, they don't understand the demands that you face out on the roads. The only thing that matters on a tower is grip. Forget about your ability, forget about roll and resistance, it all means shit if the towers aren't grippy. So you want to find a grippy tower. I've recommended the grippy as towers in roadman resources. Ditch your gator skins. If you're on puncture resistance means no grip. Okay, so ditch these puncture resistance towers. It's not that time consuming to fix a puncture back to mistake number one. If you know how to fix a puncture, it's not that intimidating. If you don't know how to fix a puncture that leads into you wanting to get a puncture resistant tyre which has no grip. Secondly it's the pressure in your tyre. The pressure in your tyre very much depends on your weight and it depends on the conditions outside. So while I'll go out on a time trial and I'll ride 140 PSI in my tyres on a completely flat course with no corners on a dry day, I'll go into a wet criterium and I might ride 60 PSI in tires. It just depends on the day, it depends on the course, how many corners there is, and it depends on your rider weight. Loads of good videos online for exactly what pressure you should be using, but as a general rule, if it's raining, you want to be riding a lot less pressure. You want grip, grip, grip. The second last one, mistake number four, is riding without structure. I couldn't dedicate an entire podcast to this. We have a number of training zones. zone 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Every single one of these zones, it's set up as a percentage of the max you can sustain for one error. Now, I have a full podcast on this, it's back on setting your zones and the importance of it. So once we have these zones set, we've sort of six different buckets of training intensity from full gas sprint to cruise and along. We need to distribute our time in the week. So if we're going to ride the bike for five hours a week, we need to make sure we spend someone else five hours in each one of these zones collecting time in each one of these zones. The mistake I see is people going out the door and riding 95 or 100% of their time in one zone. While there's nothing inherently wrong with riding in zone tree you get a very narrow set of adaptions physiological adaptions in zone tree and you don't get adaptions from zone four five six one two you only get the adaptions from zone tree if you your riding zone tree. Sounds like common sense, but when people head out the door, they don't have a session, they don't know what they're doing, and that's why I have that Kickstarter challenge. It's at the end of the podcast telling you how you can get access to it, but that's why I have the Kickstarter challenge. It's to give structure, because without structure, you're just wasting your time and you're not actually training for the bike, you're doing cardio. You're going through the gym for a little bit of cardio. The last mistake I see, commonly, and I see this every time I go out on the bike, and especially it's October here in Dublin as a talktop or whatever you're listening to. What am I talking about? We only have one calendar. You're getting confused with time zones, you idiot. This is why I had to give the best part of Ford class staying back in remedial class. It stood me well. It was remedial spelling class. No, you can't see it on the podcast but my show notes here littered with spelling mistakes. I see this all the time. It's dressing for the weather. Do you love those little segues? sometimes I go off for weeks before I arrive back at the point, luckily for you I've arrived back at a quite fast this time. Dressing for the weather is mistake number five and I see it every single time I go out on the bike, people not dressing correctly for the weather and it's normally beginner cyclists and it's normally under dressing.
If I go out and I ride around from here to my local coffee shop ride…
So if I go out and I ride around from here to my local coffee shop ride up in Hote which is about a 30 minute cycle away, it's a popular cycling route And I guarantee you can tell the experience of somebody on the bike how many years they are racing and training according to how appropriately they are dressed for the conditions that are prevalent today. What you need to do before you go out the door, so I'll lay out my routine. So if I know I'm going riding on Saturday morning meeting the roadman's been on Saturday morning, what I will do is Friday night I will look at the weather. I'll lay out my kit according to the weather. So if it's like 10 degrees and cloudy, I'm not going to think shorts and jersey. Unless the sun is beaming, I'm going to have my arms covered, I'm going to have my legs covered. So my decision at 10 degrees is do I want shorts and leg warmers or do I want leggings? Most of the time if it's like 10 degrees, I'm going to go with leggings. Next I'm thinking about up top, what's our base layer, do I want, what's our jersey, do I want? my next decision is do I want a jacket or do I want gile and armormers? 10 degrees I'm going with a jacket and probably gile over that and a little neck scarf. The neck scarf at the moment doubles as amazing in case you forget your mask, going into the coffee shop, you've got a neck scarf. So that's what I'm laying out the night before but then the morning of the ride because the weather forecasts doesn't always get it right or specific to your area. I bring the dogs out first thing in in the morning and I'll check out the weather. I'll just walk out and if you don't have dogs, just walk outside for 30 seconds, feel the temperature, do you need gloves or your feet going to be cold, do you need shoe covers, do you need your ears covered, what is the weather like and dress for the weather. If you're in Ireland, England, anywhere with similar type climates, shorts, jersey are not appropriate for the months, September, October, November, December, January, February, March, April. We have a very narrow window in the middle of the summer on a very specific day where you can get away with shorts in a jersey. Also regardless of the weather, regardless of whether it's rain and or not, I'll always have in my back pocket or in my handlebar bag if I have it on, I'll always have a rain cape. Sharers prevalent all the time. Also, if you're stopping for a coffee and you want to get going again, you're going to be cold getting started, showing the rain cape for a couple of minutes. One of those boiling the bag, raincapes, having it in your back pocket all the time, literally the best piece of kit you'll boil for under 50 quid. Guys, that's the top 5 mistakes I see, so to recap them, it's not dressing for the weather, it's roiding without structure, it's grip on tours, it's the only clip crash and it's not having tools to fix your mechanical breakdowns on the side of the road. Guys, don't fall for those mistakes, I fell for every single one of those mistakes. Learn from mistakes but they don't have to be your mistakes, roadmen. I'll be back again tomorrow. Jatiran. 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 kickstart 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 Masters, Beginner, Advanced. There's meal plans, shopping list and even a video course holding your hand and talking you true 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. That's roadmansoycling.com slash 14 day.