1.Robyn, today I want to talk about what makes the perfect cycling…

Robyn, today I want to talk about what makes the perfect cycling destination. 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 longevity? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Welch and welcome to the Row Man Podcast. Welcome back to the Roadman Cycling Podcast and this is very much the Roadman travelling roadshow at the moment. My last podcast to you was from the jungle near Rio Claro in Colombia and now today on podcasting from Medellin Colombia. So the show and the little cycle across Colombia for me has concluded and I'm back as a somewhat steady base staying at a friend's house in Medellin. So it's nice to get back, have warm shearers, have the same bed every night, the ability to have clean clothes and yeah it's just it's heaven getting back after sort of four or five days on the road where you're wet chamis in the morning, going out the door trying to dry clothes at night. know yourself it's less than ideal but it definitely didn't take away from the experience and that five days travelling across Colombia it's it's five of the best days I've ever pulled down on the bike and the train and went from super super hard long days to really chill 40k spins but every day took in something completely different. So when I was thinking about Colombia and while I'm still out here I was contrasting in my mind's places I've been and I've been looking up with the bike and it's funny because I started out cycling to rehab a soccer injury and I always think happy Gilmore when he signs on for the pro golf tournament in the movie Happy Gilmore and he says, hey I'm a hockey player but I'm here for a golf tournament today. For a long time I actually thought about myself like that like I'm a soccer player but I'm cycling at the moment but my identity is well and truly shifted. In the years I've got to travel all over the world racing and training in some crazy, crazy places. And Columbia and South America is a place that I've wanted to come for a long, long time and obviously the history of Columbia, through the Aesies and now with the current crop it's back on everyone's radar and it's back on everyone's mind again. The stars lined up and I'm out here now and I suppose I'm evaluating it against other destinations that I've been. I don't know if you call this a checklist, more of a meandering pondrance of items. I think you should consider when you're thinking about where should you go for your cycling trip or your cycling holiday. So that's what I want to talk about today. And before I do, I want to give you the gentle reminder to head on over to patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore. Well, the link is in the boil as it always is. Netflix, Spotify, Amazon Prime, all these guys charging 5, 10, 15 Euro a month and are huge companies that if you subscribe or you don't subscribe, it makes zero, zero difference. Small independent creators and podcasters, it's not the same. It's not the same, but your donation really, really matters. I can guarantee you when you sign up for Jeff Bezos on Amazon Prime, it doesn't put a smile on his face. When you sign up and I see a Patreon taken in from me. It gives a little bit of a peppe of my step. It puts a smile on my face every single time and I'm going online and checking, okay, who was that? Right? Let me check on my own Instagram. Let me check out what he's up to. And it really matters to small podcasters and it really matters to me. So to everyone who's donated so far on Patreon, thanks very much. And for everyone who's about to donate now, thank you in advance. Links in the bio, So my little bit of extra headspace has given me some depth to think about what those make the perfect cycling destination.

2.Think you actually need to step back before we answer that question…

And I think you actually need to step back before we answer that question one step before that and say what is your motivation for cycling? Is it to have a bit of crack as we say in Ireland, a bit of fun with the lads? Is it friendship, social connection? Is it for fitness, weight loss? Is it for like a headspace or almost like a depression mitigator? Is it adventure to see new places or is it the race? Because they're all very diverse and different strands. And if your goal is entirely to choose a cycling destination, to give you the ability to prepare for races, that's maybe going to be a different place than if you just want to go somewhere to see beautiful sights and a sense of adventure. So I've tried to consider all of these in the list and you can weigh them up yourself as to what's most important for you. For me, terrain is super, super important and it's one of the first considerations I think about. I've cycled in Qatar, Doha and shout out to anyone in Doha. Woo! Because we do have a lot of clients out in Doha and it's a beautiful place and it's a rich culture and there's some of the other things I'll get into in a minute. we analyze Doha strictly on terrain. It's fucking pancake flat. You cannot get a little Roy's anywhere. And for me, if I'm going away on a cycling destination, I kind of want to have up hills, downhill, coastal routes, flat routes, you know, some gravel routes, mixed very terrain is very important. I think you should have that as a consideration. At the end of this list, I'm going to give you the top three places that I've cycled as well. So that's something to stay J-1-4. Mixed terrain I would extend to even a little bit of on road and a little bit of off road. I rode today and it wasn't a super long ride. I only rode about 60k this morning and a group of us went and we were lucky enough to have a local tour guide Thomas from Columbia Seitland, Great Guy and Thomas brought us in some of the local roads around Medellin, around the coffee district and one of the cool things that he linked up, sorry I would call them I suppose, tertiary roads, with little off-road gravel sections. Beautiful way to explore a little bit extra the country so it just feels a little bit more rural, a little bit more adventurous when you get a little bit of gravel. So for me that's important to have that mixture of tarmac and gravel. Is there iconic climbs in the area? If you're going to travel for a camp it's always nice to have like the big day. So over here in Colombia, the big day was all told the Lettras. When you go to France, the big day, it's up to Wales. When you go to Jourona, it's Roccocoba. When you go to Mallorca, it's Siler. When it's nice to have those iconic climbs, Tenerife is Mount Ada. It's nice to have that beautiful iconic climb. You know, if you go to, I don't know, Segovia in Spain, the cycling's nice, but there's no iconic climb in Segovia. So yeah, I think it's an important consideration. The presence of an iconic climb. Coffee shops is another super important consideration. Cycling and coffee dig out together, a little bit like Evanie and Ivory. You can't have one without the other. We love coffee shops, there's no way of getting around it. We love to start a ride in a coffee shop. We love to break it up and punctuate the ride by stopping at a coffee shop and we love to finish at a coffee shop and we love to talk about coffee all day long. So is there coffee shops, early open, early convenient, early cycling friendly, climate. You definitely don't want to be coming to Ireland for your winter training camp in January because it pisses rain. 90% of the time boardfall too won't thank me for this one.

3.That's the tourist board in Ireland

That's the tourist board in Ireland. There's great months to come into Ireland. January is not one of them. So think about the climate for the time of the year you're going. Availability of bike shops. If your bike breaks in transit like mine has, I smashed the big ring in my bike box. How do you smash your big ring in the bike box? I've wanted to heard bike box allens and the big ring smashed through the pillow that I had cushion in the big ring from the box, cut through that and smashed into the plastic box and flattened all my teeth. So I've had no big ring for the duration of this trip so far. Traffic density is another one and I'll throw into this as well. Traffic density slash how respectful motorists are because you could have high traffic density but motorists are a little bit respectful and I actually think definitely decline the iconic one here that I wrote last week, Letras falls into that. It's heavily trafficked compared to the other iconic climbs like Alpe D'Wes, Rocker-Cobah but the motorists are very respectful so although yeah, traffic's not ideal, Motors are respectful, you contrast that to the United States, a lot of traffic, all the motors are pricks. That's not a good mix, you don't want to be gone, you don't want to be gone there. Is it a cultural experience? And for me, this is a super important one and I'm nearly struggling with that, like, is it a sense of adventure into cultural experience? Because we're as beautiful as going to the UK is for, you know, a weekend to go to London and see a show or a football match. I don't really want to go to the UK to royad and I know we've a lot of listeners in the UK and I love roying in the UK when I'm over there racing. But for me to go over there for a weekend, it's culturally very similar. We're very similar to the Irish and the English. So I go over there, I basically eat in the same franchise restaurant, so I drink in the same coffee shops we have back home, it's the same climate, we tell the same jokes and I'll do it as that historical rivalry between Ireland and England. It is very a lion so for me I'd much sooner jump on a plane and go to France, go to Spain than I would, go to the UK for a week of cycling. And then the last one is it's the infrastructure around where you're going to base yourself. I'll rule out one place straight away with this. Tenerife is beautiful riding. There's an iconic climb Mounteda, you get the train and altitude. There is a few coffee shops around, there's a few bike shops around, but when you finish at the end of the day, there's just nothing about the place. There's no sense of I'm on holidays. It's not a place you could bring a partner, so if you're going to have your boyfriend or girlfriend and they're non-cyclist, Tenerife is just not a place you want to go. You contrast that to Gerona. When you finish and you're staying in the old square, the Barri Vale in Gerona, the old town, it's beautiful. We've got just an abundance of restaurants, cafes, narrow little streets, historical places of interest, close to Barcelona. It's a super place to finish. And if you take a rest day, there's so much stuff to do. You take a rest day in Tenerife, you have to sit with a pool and sun yourself for the day. So, okay, so there are more considerations in no particular order. It was just a bit of a stream of consciousness as I was sitting by the pool and I was reflecting on how amazing my experience is being in Colombia. I thought, well, what is it that makes it amazing and it's a mix of all those factors that I've mentioned. But for me, I want to talk and just mention in no particular order, my three favorite cycling destinations, you guessed that Columbia has crowbarred its way into my top tree favorite ever cycling destinations.

4.I've only scratched the surface here

And you know, I've only scratched the surface here. I've ridden what, six days, seven days, total in Colombia and it's scratched into the top tree. So that gives a idea of how magical this place is. It doesn't take all the boxes like, you know, boychops aren't super easy to get more so in Medellin now I'll be able to get access to a boychop. It has the iconic climb, it has the very terrain. Traffic is a little bit of problem here but it's a cultural experience and the sense of adventure is just absolutely epic out here. And for those reasons, I'm sticking it into the top tree. Also in the top tree, you guessed it because I rattle on about it all the time and I've mentioned it already on the podcast, it's Gerona. It's just beautiful and there's a reason why I don't pull out Homer Simpson had a great one that 89% of statistics are untrue and 92% of people notice. And that's kind of how I feel about this that, Gerona. I don't want to say how many pro cyclists are in Gerona. But there is a good chunk of the professional peloton called Jaronahum and the reason for that is it's the terrain, it's the coffee shops, it's the iconic climbs, it's the respected emojis, it's accommodation, the cultural experience, the sense of adventure, Jaronah has it all and that has to be in the top tray. And for me the last one that just takes so many of these boxes as well, it's anywhere around the Alp De Weiz area, what are you staying on Alp De Weiz, like Doza Alp, Borg the wass on anywhere around there is just so beautiful and it's access to just these wonderful wonderful climbs. Unfortunately it's not accessible 12 months of the year as there are ski stations so it's a summer destination so I'd probably put it in third place behind the other two in no particular order and yeah you'll notice I've omitted the resorts the Tenerifes the Mallorca's I just don't think they tick enough of the boxes for our magical checklist. magical, magical I would say comprehensive, cycling holiday destination checklist. Row Man, that's it from your roving reporter. I've always wanted to use the word in tripips and I feel like I could potentially call myself an intrepid roving reporter from Medellin Row Man. I'm going to chat to you again tomorrow. Thanks for listening. Before you go anywhere, our first ever Row Man Summit aired back in December. I brought together dirty experts and they shared with me their secrets on how to biohack your physiology, how to melt away body fat and smash your cycling goals, whatever that was. Since airing that back in December, I've just been in on days of my Instagram, DM's Twitter direct messages with requests to get access to this material. I had it locked up in the vault, but I've decided to open access to this material for you, the podcast listeners at the Roadman Podcast. So to get access to this, it's a one-point payment of €47 and you're going to have all the interviews, all those secrets forever. You're going to have the videos and the MP-Trees. In there I've got interviews with world-tore mechanics, nutritionists, sports psychologists, bike-fit experts and some of the legends at a sport like Tyler Hamilton and Pete Sten. Over 30 hours of content in this members area that I've created for you guys. So if you want to get access to that way to do it, it's to head on over to this URL www.roadmansomit.com forward slash 2021. I'll give you that again. It's www.roadmansomit.com forward slash 2021. That's numerical. The link to that is in the bio. Get it, check it out, learn it, take it in, because this is sure to set you on the right past for 2021.