Here we go, it's the Vuelta España, a Rima
Here we go, it's the Vuelta España, a Rima! Okay, set myself down, let's cure that intro. The big question is this, how do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness and our long childhood? That is the question, this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Welch and welcome to the Row Man Podcast. Hello Roman welcome back to another Roman podcast we are on the precipice of another grand tour starting and we actually have two grand tours overlapping because the euro which I held my hands up to yesterday's podcast and said look I haven't been as engaged as I showed in the euro just hasn't caught my imagination although it is a race I love but I'm going head forced into the Vuelta I'm going to dive into it. Eighteen stages instead of 21 this year, reduced cause of coronavirus and I'm going to get stuck in because it is mouthwater and when I dug in to do the research on this, now I'm invested more in it. So that's what my goal is for you guys in this podcast to get you invested into this wealth of pod, into this wealth of because it's going to be epic. I'm not going to do a daily wealth of podcast. I just don't think there's that amount there for terms of listening every day to it and I think I can deliver more benefit to you guys and girls, the listeners, boy, dipping in and out with Welter, but also keep educating through the stuff that I'm reading, researching and coming across along the way. Before I dive in and get stuck into today's Welter, where I'm going to give you my top picks, I'm going to give you the odd, true patty power, I'm going to give you the stage just to watch. I first want to remind you to please head across to patreon.com forward slash Anthony on their scoreboard, buy me a point of beer just to say if you're getting some value out of the podcast, it's a nice way to say tanks, you know, everything we get in life we pay for it. And a lot of time if we're not paying for it, we are actually the product. But that's not the way we podcast and just because it's coming for free like Facebook doesn't mean there's a product. The way we monetize this at the moment, it's through your generosity over in Patreon, it's through people that saw it, through goodwill and charity to buy a point of beer to support the podcast once a month. And in return, what I do for you guys is I create the secret podcast once a month where I give away all my best bits on how to go faster. This month again, we're going to jump into an ask me anything and I'm looking forward to the October edition. Okay, let's jump in. So as I said, we'd 18 stages on this year's Vuelta instead of 21. Unfortunately, Mr. COVID, I feel like I've done a good job in not mentioning COVID on the podcast and I'm gonna try and keep it that way as much as possible because it's like every time I call my man, oh how are you getting on man? Yeah yeah good there was a hundred or twelve hundred cases today and fourteen ICUs and you're like yeah that wasn't really the question I was asking. I got to see how you were getting on not what the stats were. So yeah you can't you can I don't know you need to be touched by someone or in their proximity to catch COVID but you need to only watch it on the news to get infected by that media hysteria. So I tried to not contribute to that media hysteria and instead let's just focus on the Soyclan this podcast. So we do only have 18 stages instead of 21. We're kicking off in the Basque region today and we're hopefully finishing all things going to plan and going well in Madrid 18 days from now. When you break down this race, folks, we've four flat stages for Mr. Benas and Ackerman, who were going to be the two main protagonists in the sprint.
Great to see Sam Bennett back obviously after his green jersey in the…
Great to see Sam Bennett back obviously after his green jersey in the Tour de France. Don't think he's been back home to Ireland yet to celebrate. I'm sure we'll throw him one hell of a party when he does get back. We've got his former teammate, Brotso Nemes Pascal Ackerman from Bora Hansgrove, who often got the nod at Bora ahead of Bennett because he's German with the German sponsor, so those two are likely the two fast men that are going to go head to head for the four flat stages. We've got one individual TT and we've got eight mountain finishes. So let's jump in and have a quick look at these stages. So we've stage two, like folks, compared to the Tour de France, if you're used to watching the Tour de France and waiting sort of six days between big stages, the Vuelta has an absolute epic every single day. So at stage two, we have like a cut, a force category climb right at the finish. It's like 17k to the finish and it's 10 kilometers at 7.8 percent. The alto the San Miguel Aralar. So 10k at 7.8 percent. That's epic. That's only 17k from the finish. So you're basically down the fire so I dive into the finish. Stage three, we have a summer finish. Stage six, we have a summer finish up the call of the that's only a 135km stage and finishing up the tourmalade if we don't get snowed out of the tourmalade. Stage 8 we have a summer finish again, stage 11 we have another summer finish with 4 Cat1 climbs that day, then we have the Queen's stage up the Angrilou on stage 12 and the Angrilou if you don't know it's potentially probably I'm going say you've up to Wes, the Stelvio and Angrilu. That's the three most iconic climbs and you can maybe throw in Rucker Coba from a training perspective in Jirona into the mix but in terms of grand tours it's Angrilu Stelvio up to Wes. So we're going up the Angrilu which is 12.5 kilometers long and it pitches out up to 23%. It's an absolute epic. That's on stage 12. Then we're into the TT which you would think is flat but it finishes off right to finish. Two kilometers are 15% into the finish and anybody who's listening to the podcast and you're kind of thinking what do these percentages mean? You just hear 23% but what does that mean? If like your garment or your wa who over to percentage when you're riding up your local climb and I now here in Dublin, my local climb, it's hot and it's quite a good challenge for most amateur club riders or sporty freighters and I think that's pitching out at max sort of 80%. So 23% is serious, serious terrain. But yeah, that time trial, it's finishing as 2k, 15%. So we're going to have that interest in the bait then, our guy is going to switch from the TT bike to the road bike for the finish. I personally don't think they will just because the time you're going to lose for a bike change for a two kilometer climb, you're going to carry momentum into it which you lose with a bike change. I don't know, it'll depend exactly where it's situated as a corner is into us, what's this rain like before, but I see most people riding that on the TT bike. We've caught one somewhat finishing again on stage 17, this is 10k at 7%. That's the second last stage, so that's the real last GC mix up we're going to see before to sprint finish into Madrid. Look, it's absolutely epic every day. I know I was shouting through stages there. Gone stage three, stage eight, stage eleven. It's basically every stage. You can turn on the Vuelta for 18 stages. That is littered with climbing. So, having said that and this being a crazy, crazy climbing race in what's been a crazy, crazy year racing, it's more difficult than ever to pick a favorite. But I'll tell you the guys that are there and I'll give you the current odds that Patty Power are given.
I'm definitely going to trow a couple of quid on a few people who…
I'm definitely going to trow a couple of quid on a few people who will tell you in a second. So Primo's Roglic is back from his Tour de France disappointment in many people's eyes come in second to the young Pradagie Pogacha and Roglic. He typically sees a little bit of Tour de Week fatigue and he won Liège only two weeks ago. A great result for him, but he's gone from Tour into classics and now he's into the Vuelta. Will we see that Tour de Week fatigue from Roglich Rears head again, I think we will. He's at 6-4 and he's the favourite for this year's race and he's backed up by the stellar cast that we know all too well at this stage. Super domestic Tom Dumelan. He's a 4-1 bet himself for the overall and you know it's not a bad bet if Roglich has a bad day Dumelan could become their GC-E going and we have Sepp Kuse who was nose-breathing while putting the best rotors in the world out the back in the Tour de France. So So he'll be back in support and roll again. We have no Wilt Van Art, he's just off the Baccatoire of Landers and has opted for a rest. Now the French hopes are really on Tebow Pino, he's a 10th one shot and Guillain-Martin is there for the French as well. The Spanish are actually in good stead like we've Einrich Mass from movie star and Valverde. Valverde has an insane amount of Vuelta's under his belt and he's always dared her about. I don't know off top of my head, he's something like 17 stage wins, it's absolutely insane. We've David De La Cruz from UAE wrote super well in support of Pogacha at the Tour de France, now he's getting a chance on his own. Can he do it? I'm not sure, I'm not a fancier of him but we'll see. We've Buckman, who very very strong in tour from Borra Hansgrove Tour de France stage win but now we have the greatest grand tour rider of all time bar no one is making a comeback to grand tour race and after two years it is none other than the legend that is Chris Frillm. Five time Tour de France winner he's been out with injury after that very nasty training crash if you cast your mind back back two years ago at this stage since Frum had that crash and he was taking a jacket off on his time trial bike and he got caught with the wind and crashed into a brick wall and he had really really nasty leg break in multiple places and it was horrible to see. And it's amazing to see the greatest rider we've ever seen in terms of wins at Grand towards back in action. Throom is an 18 to 1 shot for the overall and I don't see him being an overall contender. It's tough to see him contend in GC at all because he has carapas in the team and I see Throom more in the support role in this year's Vuelta which is crazy hard to even get those words out to Throom in the support role but I think that's what we're going to see. didn't look super in any of the races, especially the classics where we hoyloid in some of the podcasts, see I dropped super super early. Now we have in my eyes the out now race favourites, Richard Carapaz, a 13 to 2 shot. We've lost off at a 14 to 1 shot. We've done Martin there, which could do a little bit of a mix for some stages. And we've Mike Woods at 60 to 1. Right, where's the value in this? The value bets from me and I'm going to throw it on is Mike Woods, EF Education. I've had Mike on the podcast. Mike is one of the best climbers in the world, especially a best standing climber. Now you might say what's the difference between a standing climber and a seated climber. At pitches of up to 23%, like we see on the Angaloo, that's where you need standing climbers. At those super, super steep gradients, you won't get up them seated.
Standing climbers are what you need
So standing climbers are what you need. Mike Woads is the best in the business. We seen it in the world's innensbrooke a couple of years ago. And in a 60 to 1 shot, I actually don't understand that The book is mess-o-y-clin up the odds a lot of the time. Mike Wodz at 60 to 1 is a serious, serious podium bet for each way. That's a good outside bet for you, but I'm gonna call Mike podium as in no particular order. No, you know what, I'm gonna scratch that no particular order because that's pure sitting on the fence. I'm not gonna sit on the fence. I'm gonna nail my colors to the mast. I'm gonna say Richard Carapaz wins this year as well that it'll pay me to watch him win it it because I don't like them and I don't like them entirely off one data point that Netflix movie star documentary where he came across like a little prick. So I hope he doesn't win it but I think he will win it. The rest of my podium it's big Tom Zumelan I'm gonna say in seconds because I think the wheels are gonna come off Primo's Roglich and Vlasov from Astana and Tord which again is another decent each way bet at 14 to 1. Vlasov had trained very well was moving super well into the 0 I think he got sick on like day two so he's well rested up. They actually used to have a rule where if you started a race like the Jiro and that was still going on that you couldn't enter any other race but they've waived it this year because of just a crazy year that we're having. So it is going to be an absolutely epic Vuelta today. We're up to, it just GC makes up looks straight away from the off. Today it's 173km from Uran to Arate Elbar and we've a cat one climb 3k from the finish. So GC makes up straight from the off. Don't miss this one folks. The Vuelta this year is set to be an absolute meltwatering epic and I'm super super looking forward to having something to watch on TV for the next 18 days. Roadmen thank you for listening to another roadman cycling podcast. A bunch of people ask me coming into the winter about what areas they should get, what coats they should get etc. Sorry I don't have time to get back to all the DMs but but I am updating roadmanresources.com. I'm showing all the stuff in there. I'm literally recording this podcast right now with a PowerDot on my back because I'm just in after a session on the bike. I met one of my buddies cruise around for three hours, getting back into winter, trying to mow my back is super tight and have the PowerDot on there and I have that in roadman resources. So my best to hook you guys up with discounts where I code and chat to the company's PowerDots, one of those and it gets 15% off when you use the code roadman. put all that information over on roadman resources. Go out, ride safe and I'll chat, get tomorrow. 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 Kickstarter challenge. So regardless of where your fitness is at right now, this is gonna be the catalyst for making you faster and making you the leaner. I've created this challenge to take the guesswork out of everything. It's 14 days, 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.