439: The Importance of Small-Sided Racing with Team APS

0:00Hello and welcome to Fast Dog, your source for the science of endurance performance. I'm your host Trevor Conner here with Chris Case. On Fast Dog, we have covered just about every side of training and racing from periodization to interval work to the best intensity distributions. We've covered in detailed various intervals in how specific efforts create race specificity. From as that sometimes gives the impression that to win races, all you need to do is the right mix of race specific workouts. That leaves out a very important piece, practicing the art of racing itself. To give an analogy, you can teach a chess player all the theory and rules of chess, but if they go their first tournament without having done a single practice game, it's just not going to go well. This is something that four time national champion Fredi Rodriguez is giving a lot of thought to. He watched European soccer where coaches spent an enormous amount of time practicing gameplay with their athletes and realized that same approach could benefit cyclists. He called it total cycling race dynamics and at its core is something called small-sided

1:04racing. The idea is to get small groups together to practice short race scenarios to learn the art of racing. Fredi got together with elite coach and physiologist Michael Norton to create the team APS-PRO cycling around these principles. They brought together strong US racers who had never quite made the top pro ranks and have used total cycling race dynamics to help them break through that barrier. The team is now racing top races in Europe and getting results due to the leadership of Fredi and Mike. Today, they'll talk with us about these concepts, including the idea of ecological dynamics which it grew out of. Fredi will share his four core principles that he feels all cyclists should follow, and then we'll dive into how to build race expertise, including a deep dive into small-sided racing, and how to use it with your local team or club to raise your level. With APS racing, they apply this at the highest levels, but as just as the fact of a junior and amateur racers focused on local racing. So get ready for a tactical episode and let's make it fast. Mike, Fredi, welcome to Fast Talk.

2:05Hey, super excited to be here. Yeah, thanks for having us. Yeah, we're fans of the show and love being here and excited to talk about total cycling race dynamics and what we're doing with APS-PRO cycling. Yeah, thank you for joining us. That phrase right there, total cycling race dynamics. Never heard that before in my life. I made it up. Well, tell us more. We discovered because you sent that. I'm like, this is exciting. I've never heard of this. I immediately went to PubMed and then went, no. Exactly. So then I had AI look it up for me and it brought up a video of you doing actually a really interesting conversation about what this is. So. Well, to give you a little history on it, it's coming from ecological dynamics. I don't know if you ever heard of that. It was put together by Keith Davis over in England. It's a thing that kind of is developed over time from ecological psychology, complex systems theory or dynamical systems theory, all put together into one package, which creates this way of how we learn or how we interact with the environment. So it sounds crazy to think of it that it could be used for sports, but it's already

3:05being used in a bunch of other game sports. And I have adapted it and created total cycling race dynamics and made it into how we can use it in cycling. So it's a new, it's a framework, a set way of thinking, but it's just an idea. We were talking yesterday, a lot of us are already using these ideas, but this is going to give you a language of framework to better understand it, better teach it to other coaches, better work with athletes. That's what I'd love to tell our conversation last night and for our listeners, this is the first for us. You guys flew in to do this recording with us. So we really appreciate this. I'm sure you're taking the up here. Yes, in fact. So we owe you dinner last night. We took you out to dinner. You and I had a long talk about this and you were pointing out, this has been around for a very long time. A lot of the philosophy around this has been around. You said you could even tie this back to Taoism, but there hasn't been a framework. There hasn't been a structure put around it. And that's what you're really trying to do. Yes, I would say there hasn't been a structure in cycling, but if you look at football over in Europe, there's been a lot of use of it. That's how I stumbled on it.

4:07I was taking courses. My son was playing soccer. I saw this lag here in the US, I had a coach. And so I started taking courses in Barcelona, which I thought, okay, I'm going to go there. I'm actually going to have more on the physiological side. I'm going to help them understand more of the physiological side of stuff. And quickly I started learning all these different terms, like complex systems. And I was learning in Spanish. I was like, see, STEMAS COMPLECOS that, you know, Bacco City with a little bit of talk about, which is complex systems. Like, what is this? So I kept digging a little deeper. I had finally dropped me an ecological dynamics. And that opened up a number of can of worms. And I was now into Taoism, like putting it all together. And basically coming down to, it's just a way of how you think, how we already think, but it's giving us a better way to understand it. So since this is a new term to us, I'm sure a lot of our listeners are going, hey, what is this? Can you give us the two minute rundown? So I think Frey likes pressure. We'll give them one minute. Yeah, that's great. Because at the five minute time, I thought it was somewhere. He is fast, Freddie. That's right. It did not make it too long. Probably the biggest term you hear from ecological dynamics is perception action coupling, which

5:11is that whole idea is like how we think. It's like how perception comes in and how we make a decision and action from it and how it that keeps coupling, which means it's just repeating itself. And it's not like a process where you like you do one, then you do the other way. It's just flowing at all times. So that understanding and how you teach that and how you put people in that environment. So the biggest thing that we try to say from an ecological dynamics perspective is say, we are not coaches. We are designers of environments that put people into situations where they can learn. Because if we tell them the solution, it's imagine if you're taking a task and you say, hey, here's the answer. This is the answer I want you to get. So go figure it out. That doesn't really teach you. That gives you the answer. It's kind of we're doing that with sports. We're like, hey, this is the kind of wants I want you to do. This is kind of things like, and say we should be looking at it's like, we need you to put you in the environment where you have to struggle with it. So struggles good. It's not a bad word. We need to put you and get more tries in that situation until you start understanding it. So now you now have a learning model of understanding instead of just like, oh, it's a prescription.

6:12I have to do this every time. Can you give a good example from the cycling world to relate it back to what people might be more familiar with from our audience? An example. And I'm going to give it more like using both soccer and cycling. Imagine in the soccer world that you instead start coaching soccer players like we do in cycling. And okay, since we know you run, you have to do this much running in this many sprints. I just want you to turn a week, go out and run these kind of sprints, these kind of intervals, these kind of things. And then on Sunday, you're going to get together with your team and you're going to play this game. It's not going to work. They're going to be all lost. They're not going to know each other. But we're doing an cycling. So in cycling, we're basically asking is like, okay, you got to work on your VO2. You got to work on your threshold. You got to work on sprints. And then on Sunday, you're going to race with your teammates and put it all together. There's a loss of information there. So I always hear this thing where physiologists say like we do 2020s or 3030s because that's what happens in a race. Like no, decision making is happening in a race. You're making the decision because somebody's attacking or you have to follow and you have

7:16to put out an effort, which is something you decide because it was necessary to correct the action or make the action. And now you have physiological need to it. So it's coupled. And if we decouple it, then we're not really training the whole thing. So it's harder to get come together on the weekends. And especially now, because I actually love that riders are racing less because it's better for their physiology, but they're not getting the moments of play, of understanding gameplay, of racing play to put it together for more races on the weekend. So. It is very interesting that cyclists, at least sort of the generalized reputation of the cyclist is that he's out there riding by himself, training, doing his intervals up of hill or riding mile after mile by himself. And then yes, he's expected or she is expected then to come together with a team gel, have a rapport, understand race dynamics on a given Sunday. And then they go back and do it by themselves and all of their teammates are doing it by themselves as well. And then come together.

8:17And so what you're saying is you want to create environments where cyclists are playing or practicing together to understand race dynamics so that it's not a foreign con. They just have more reps, more tries in that situation. Exactly. And so what we call that in the ecological dynamics perspective is constraints led approach, which is basically creating an environment where we, the coaches can constrain it now. We can set the parameters for them to have the learning that we're looking for without telling them the answer, but the environment will give them the solutions to find the answers. So how we do that, it's through what we call small-sided racing. Small-sided racing. Small-sided racing or small-sided racing, which comes from the word used in soccer, which is small-sided games. Why go to Prado-Lucidos in Spanish? I see just fewer players on each side. You constrain the environment to a place where you can work on kind of hone in ideas that you need to work on. Let's give it a reality in cycling would be, let's say our team is struggling in crosswinds.

9:18We have a lot of riders that just don't understand it. We can go out and there and tell them like, hey, you got to line up here when the wind comes from the right, you got to sit on this side, or we could put them in an environment and say, we're going to create these five minute races and there's going to be three teams. And you guys are going to race and the wind's going to be howling and you got to figure it out. And you have your teammates to work with, you have your other teams to work with, other teams are racing against you. And now it's game time. You got five minutes go and it's going to be chaotic. They're not going to do it to you first, but if you give them multiple times to try it and just start getting ideas, oh, man, when I was right on it and I got right on the wheel, that made a big difference. Or when I'm in the gutter and I just jump around that guy and just try to find another wheel, that made a difference. They're creating their solutions and they're learning their solutions instead of being told the solutions, which is not really learning. Probably solving on their own, yeah. So analogy here, I mean, you hear people talk all the time about you watch the tour to France and there's a game of chess going on. But this would be a game of chess where you have players that are explained chess strategy,

10:21but never play until they're actually in the tournament. And the first time they actually ever move a chess piece is in the tournament. It doesn't matter how much you explain strategy to them, they're probably not going to know what to do. So these small side of games in that analogy would be you teach them by setting up different boards, different scenarios and go, okay, you're in danger here, your king's about to get taken. What do you do in this situation? Now let's give you this scenario on the board. What do you do in this situation? And just keep teaching them those scenarios so that when they're in that chess tournament, they go, I recognize that. What I would say to back up Freddie is at the camps, we really pick days and say, okay, we want to really create a controllable environment or an uncontrollable environment. And so it's really fixated on that where, and I'm to blame as a physiologist, hey, you got to do five reps of five and very systematic approach, which we need in training for the height and the ability. But it's just that we need this uncontrollable environment to the point now where athletes will be in that uncontrollable environment. And they literally, they tap out, they're like, I'm not doing my five minute power.

11:24And we're in the car and we're like, what are you talking about? You know, and so creating these situations and then what's really great in the camp is small side of games. And what I like about small side of games is everyone looks at cycling as this 150 kilometer event. And we kind of get grouped with marathon racing, but we're not really that. And so what we do is small side it is we make it 10 kilometers. We make it 10 minutes, seven minutes. Sometimes we do these races and we play it over five, six times in a session. And then it really creates this atmosphere where the players have to re strategize. They have to say, okay, well, that guy keeps breaking away. How do we neutralize that threat? And then the learning's there so that when they go into actual competition, it's not foreign. It's not like, oh, I can only go 30 seconds and then I have to rest, which crazy enough. I mean, athletes are thinking that either intrinsically or not, they're just creating this kind of facade and then cycling is not that. It's massively dynamic. And then we go into our files and training pigs after we've done that workout and see that

12:29we actually got better performance, other riders and the matches we were looking for. And the motivation is much higher. Yeah. And again, that's a this uncontrollable environment with these external factors. So you have a time trial. So it's very self driven. And then you have these kind of external factors where you're competing against fellow people. It brings out more. I mean, that was some of my first coaches. I always said, like, if you want to get better at sprinting, you have to sprint against somebody. You can't just go out and sprint. So it really allows this element where they bring out stuff. And I mean, what's cool from a data perspective is from the physiology and data, we need to hit these marks. And then we pitch this kind of uncontrollable small-sided game. Everyone has fun. We come back in post. We look at what actual performance and we're hitting all the marks that we need to do in this unstructured format. Could you go a little deeper into the concepts here? You mentioned ecological dynamics and things like that. Are there more core principles to TCRD? Yeah. I wanted to create more ownership and like, how did I envision sharing this?

13:32And one of the coaches that I've studied and enjoy watching how he treats his players as Steve Kerr from other warriors. And he created four principles of core principles of how he wants to see his practices, his games, what he believes what his beliefs are. And so for me, one of the big ones is, you know, the first one is called Coupled Drive. And I call that basically unity of caring competition. You know, we always talk about competition. It's a really important part of racing. But we can get lost in that competition because it's like, it's just competition at no cost. And I don't believe in that. That's not what I'm setting up these ideas for. I believe that we care. We love has to be part of it. And so when you put those together, it's a whole different thing. It's like, I am competing because I care to do better, right? I'm really involved in the process. It's not just when it all cost. And that's a big part that I want to bring into it was I'm teaching this, you know, and the second one is presence being present in the moment, not thinking ahead like, oh, am I going to win the race? I lost the race last week. You lost in the middle. It's like just focus on the moment.

14:33Stay in the moment. Stay with it. Create an environment where it allows athletes to be in the moment. So we're not trying to get ahead of them. You know, it's like, hey, why aren't you doing well? You know, it's like, you know, just, just keep going through the process. And then it's joy. All, why we all got involved in sports because we have fun. We're joyful when we do it. Enjoy is not just to be happy with it, but we enjoy the struggle of trying to improve ourselves. And that's a big part. And we forget people always think, oh, it's just about being happy. He's like, no, no, it's not about being happy. He's like, I genuinely want to do better. And I'm joyful when I'm doing better. I'm trying to do better. And that's my third concept. And then the final one kind of connects all three of those. It's flow. And we talk about it's like when an athlete's in that flow moment, when things are just going perfectly, how do you get there by having those three things in place? You know, we flow better. We're not thinking about the process. We're just doing the process. And it's like, it comes natural. I mean, you see Tade doing it. He's not struggling out there. He's not like, you know, suffering. You know, it's like, and we want to create that for everybody else. Everybody has their flow.

15:34So go to your flow. What that reminds me of is that an interview with Swain Tuff a long time ago about time trialing. And he said that on his bike, he used this really old cat eye computer where the only thing he could see was cadence. And he's like, I wasn't hunting a heart rate. I wasn't hunting a power. I was always hunting a feel. And when I had that feel, which was kind of that flow sensation, he's like, that's when I knew I was having a good time trial. Little tidbit about Swain too, that really impressed me as he has a tattoo on his forearm that says he will never be here again. And so to stay in the present, like Freddie's talking about, is it's huge because we're all eyeing up like, I need to get this contract. I need to do this. I need to do that. And we've had very top level athletes that get caught up in that game and then never reach the goal because they're so focused on the goal itself instead of the process and being present in the moment to get there. I think this probably relates to the name of the team APS, which is that stand for? Yes, Athlete Prima Sjempre. So it's Italian.

16:35I've enjoyed some racing and working with some teams over in Italy. It's like true from that. But it stands for athlete first always. And so Jeff Maccahone and myself and Freddie love cycling and we like the joy. I like that as well. The joy of cycling. So we said, how can we create this environment that as best we can put the athlete first? And what do they need to perform well? They need a good environment structure. They need a good support team. They need a good director and staff. And they have to have the confidence and people to talk to to make sure they're doing the right things and processing the right way. So yeah, we came up with this little brainchild and we've been having fun with it. For me, it's really exciting from a physiology standpoint. But also with my work with Freddie is we can literally just the next day apply it at a world level and see if it works or not. And it's been working really well so far. I love the title. I love the name. I mean, it just shows where your focus is at. One of my proudest moments, we have a rider, extremely talented rider.

17:36One of the most professional riders I've ever seen. I mean, eating, sleeping, his bike, everything's professional. I like him and it'll figure out who it is. But he only speaks when something has to be said. And so when he says something, I listen very closely. And so he's great, but he's been trying year after year after year and it's been at least eight years at this level, professional, continental level globally. Couldn't get the win. And this year he got the win. And he just performed literally last weekend, which got us the invite to Torbritten. And so that to me is like the evolution of this process where a lot of teams and I don't fully disagree, but they're going to say, you know, he's kind of getting older. And that's one of my pet peeves. I hate the age thing because talent is talent and needs to be nurtured and it has to have that confidence to come out. And age has nothing to do with that. You know, so that was a very proud moment to see that athlete succeed. And we've had that with a couple of guys on the team where you just see this raw motion

18:37come over. They've been trying so hard to achieve this. And now they've achieved it. And it's like, I can do this. That self belief is huge. So is there anything else about this concept you gave us your principles, anything else that we need to know about? I would say that I want to give a shout out to Richard Chinham. He's a senior fellow sport coaching at the University of Winchester, which he's also working with UCI coaching licensing. So he's the one that's teaching coaches how to coach this side of it, not the physiology, not the purification. So he's been working with us and he's one of his biggest things is play. So a concept that we want to incorporate into this is free play. Allowing athletes to just go out there and sometimes just like, we're not putting any rules, we're not putting any constraints, just go out there and discover, go out there and play, fail, try again, and have fun with it. That's something that he's brought to us and something that I believe about. So we need suggested it, like, I love it. And so something that I think is a big component of this whole thing because at the end of

19:38the day, we all do this because we like to play. Is this something that amateurs listening out there can incorporate into what they're doing to become better bike riders? I'll take that because I was honored and privileged to spend three days at UCI headquarters in Switzerland with Dr. Chinham. He is unbelievable. He was on the same project we're working with with the research and long-term athlete development until I got to know him. Then I was invited out and selected to go do that program. There's too many to mention how much I've learned in three days. But to put it in practice when we had an altitude camp with the APS team, I connoisse stole a bit of Richard and every day at the camp, either in the morning or the evening, I said, does anyone want to play a game? And that's kind of the joke when you're in this course is Richard's like, let's play a game. Let's play a game. So I got a stole that from him. And so by the end of the camp, the guys are like, are we going to play another game? And so one of the games that he brought is he took three tennis balls. He got together as a group and he figured out how to move these tennis balls for a duration

20:40of time. And the process of this game, every time that I've done it with all different groups, it happens the same way. There's a lot of noise. There's a lot of miscommunication. There's leadership issues. All of these things. But everyone has a smile, not all the time. There's a little frustration moment. But everyone really enjoys it. And what was crazy at our altitude camp is I tried to take time to organize. So we played this game two days later. We actually implemented it in a cycling. And what it was was we were doing some baseline drill. And there was tension for leadership. There was struggle. There was a lot of communication. There was yelling. There was different vocal tones. All these things happening. And what did that come out to? Compute to is that a slow baseline. Slow baseline. And throw these tennis balls around. We do this game. And then we say, what did we learn from this? Like, oh, we were most efficient when it was dead silent. And so I just left it at that. Three days later, they come back. And they said, we had the most efficient baseline ever. And I said, how much talking was there?

21:42None. So that's an interesting question for you. And I know you had brought this up. So are we in an era where we have so much data that the data kind of takes over from this? So it's so used to go out and do 30 second efforts. Go out and do five minutes efforts. And what's your 30 second power? What's your five minute power that they start thinking about racing in terms of now I need to go and do my biggest five minute. I need to go and do my biggest 30 second. If I do that, I'm going to win the race. Yeah, I'm supposed to think in those are tools, but it's the game, the strategy that wins. I mean, we see it in professional racing. How many times you see that guy is about to attack and he hits this lap button. He's basically calling it out. I'm about to do my five minute power. I mean, you know, you see it and then he hit it right, asked another down with Dernar pull. And they're resonating until the level that they're losing the idea of what if you need to go a minute longer. Michael always talks about, you know, the 20 minute power test. He's turned it into a 22 minute power test. Why? Because I want to see what the rider does because he's gotten so good at doing 20 minutes that

22:45he doesn't know what to do when he gets 22 minutes. So it's not to say that we need to bring this part of it, you know, when you break it down into, I always say it's like there's four dimensions of development. It's like you got the technical, you got the tactical, you got the physical and you got the emotional. I'm not saying we got to go 100% about this, but we need to balance it correctly. You know, I think it's off balance. Yeah. I mean, even from a data perspective, I mean, we literally have programs that will extract how many one minute efforts they did in the event, how many five minute efforts. And so from a training perspective, from a systematic approach, it really helps us make sure the athlete is hitting the right systems physiologically. But then there's this other element where now they're playing in this box and they don't know what to do once they leave the box. And so this is where it's training. And I don't think it's anything super revolutionary new. It's just we have the constraints on it, the kind of processing that we're trying to do. And I mean, let's face it, the other sports are catching up to us from a data perspective. We were ahead and not only collecting, but really analyzing data.

23:48And we can do certain things with it, which then backs up the confidence of the athlete, but it's still not the game. You know, a lot that we talk about is the three factors of cycling. And the first two everybody harps on and overanalyzes, but that's power. Then you have CDA or efficiency of aerodynamics. But then you really have gross efficiency. And so this is where we do these small side of games. And the guy with the massive power engine says, oh, you know, like my intensity factor was low and my average power was low. And we're like, how did you do in the performance of the race? Well, I won. Okay. So what is the problem here? Right. So that's working on that gross efficiency, which I don't know. Maybe it's not as like cool or something, but it's such a huge element in the sport of cycling. I want to ask you more about that, but it goes back to that whole notion that a lot of people struggle with is racing is not about how big a power you can put out. It's about how small a power you can put out and still be in the lead group. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. That is the way to think about racing.

24:48But yeah, Michael, I'm glad you started to touch on this because that's something really interested in these small side of games. This new approach of how to teach the athletes to play these games and understand the strategy and how to win versus how to put out the biggest wattage. Does that change how you analyze the data when the athletes send it to you? Absolutely. Like Freddie mentioned, we start to play this game of these time constraints. There's always self doubt in anyone. And one of the biggest struggles is that as a performance director, you have to reassure the athlete is ready. And that's it. And that's that mental game to have optimal performance. And so yes, we do, but we need to get them out of the box where when we look at things, I'll take a system like the anaerobic system and historically, okay, that's one minute. Like why is it one minute? Where is your eclectic breakdown point? Let's look at that. Let's see what your reoxygenation level is. Let's look at that. And then let's build protocol on that. Then once we do all this very scientific, personalized stuff for the athlete, we train

25:51that. But then we put them into an uncontrollable environment and you don't have 30 seconds to recover. You have 10. You have two minutes because that is the sport of the game. And again, creating this environment is really what's helped our organization this year to be more adaptable to actual demands of the race. The Tophosi Optics Moab cycling glasses are designed for athletes and outdoor enthusiasts who demand superior performance without compromise. Whether you're tackling a rugged trail, pushing through a cycling race or stepping up to the baseball diamond, Moab delivers advanced technology, comfort and durability in one sleigh frame. With Moab cycling glasses, you're not just gearing up, you're gaining a serious competitive edge. He believes great performance I wear shouldn't just be for pro athletes. Every pair is designed with premium features like lightweight flexible frames, hydrophilic, nose pads for a secure fit and shadow proof lenses, delivering performance and protection without the premium price tag. For more information, go to Tophosioptics.com.

26:54Let's bring this back to your team at APS Pro cycling. How do you integrate this into how you're coaching these young development athletes? One of the things that as I went into the journey of trying to discover how to do this, I created what I call 10 global cycling habits, which is it's a way it's not for the athletes to memorize this or it's good for them to have an idea what they are. It's more for the coaches to look for when they're creating this environment. You know, when first ones called Raise Your Head and Look, 360 degree vision, which is basically as we saw even at the Tour de France this last stage with Matthew Manorpole, his vision to be able to keep an eye on the four guys, it was critical for him to know when to go. Those kind of things, so visions are a huge part of cycling. It's not just in front of you, but it's also behind you. It's also around you. Second one, space and times, understanding space and times. Where space, when do I go to that space, when do I not go to that space? I'm not going to go into details about them. We can go on later. There's one collaboration, which is probably the one of the biggest things we do in cycling,

27:54which is part of drafting, which is like understanding how to work together as a group. The fourth one is called Gravity, which is Powered Away Ratio. It's understanding that some of us are bigger, some of us are small, some of us do better in the clients, and how do we use that dynamic? The fifth one is called Movement Always Forward, which is we're always trying to move forward, we're always trying to get to the finish line, which is positive space, also. The sixth one is Aerodynamics, it's Understanding Wind, Understanding the Dynamics, the flow of that. The seventh one is Body Between Near and Near Ponent, which is a big one for like, especially understanding how to control space. It's like I got to get myself in front of the other sprinter, so I can block that space, and understanding that dynamic. Then you go into what I call the more cognitive ones, which is don't show your intention, faint your intention, and pausing. They'll all work together, sometimes you also have three of them, sometimes you use one of them, sometimes you use two of them, but that's that gameplay. I understand that don't show on your intention. That's keep your poker face, right? What's the pausing? What do you mean by that? That was probably one of my favorites. You hear it in soccer a lot, and you hear about iniesta and these players that are very

28:56good at slowing down the game. You hear about in basketball, and cycling is the same thing. Sometimes if you're too reactive, you're not really giving yourself an opportunity to see what's going to happen. If you take a second, and it's like a split second, and something else happens, now you react to that. Or maybe a longer pause, and then there's a third reaction, and the whole situation's changed. I was understanding when to do that. One of the ones that I put a lot of video on about one of my championships, when I won my third national championship, I drifted to the right away from the three other guys, but as I drifted away, I was pausing because I wasn't going hard. I just opened up space. Assessing the situation. So once I kind of created that, like what's going to happen, I hid my intention, and then I showed my intention. What I really appreciate about the pause is we see this all the time with guys. This aggression, this massive focus on the offense of the game of cycling. There's a whole other side of cycling, which is the defensive. And if you're the smart guy playing the game, you love this athlete because they literally

30:00any little movement they'll react. And a lot of the times even growing up in cycling, you know, you were taught like, if you don't react right away, you're going to miss the move. That's not necessarily true because there's another 150 guys that are waiting for the move. And so if you start to bring in this, just pause for a second, the whole dynamic changes. And then you maybe get a free ride up to the break. Maybe the break gets neutralized. All these other elements come in and literally all it is is like a two second pause in the whole game changes. I actually love hearing that from you because you are one of the US's best sprinters of all time. And one of the best descriptions I ever heard of a sprint finish is it's not that everybody thinks it's that final 10 seconds. But it's really the 200 choices you have to make in the 10, 15 minutes leading up to there. So you're in position to do that big 10 seconds sprint. And you think of that as just rapid succession. And you wouldn't have the time to pause. But here you are saying, no, you got to pause. You got to think.

31:01I would go on brag a little bit when Freddie won his Euro stage. Yeah, it's cool. It's a Euro stage. But when you go back and watch the film and I'm lucky enough to talk to Freddie, but the process of how he did that where Betake was a dominating force. And Freddie kind of stepped back objectively and looked at, okay, how do I dismantle this to beat Betake? And simply for me, it was knowing the time when to get the jump. And then to pull it off on a world stage like that was really impressive. And that's where Freddie's knowledge is just great tactically astute. This is some of the things that he's thinking about three steps, 10 steps in advance. Whereas the win coming from one of the ones in the next turn, where do I have to be? But honestly, the Euro stage was really, really impressive. I mean, Betake was dominant that year. And I stand if I'm corrected, but I think you're the only one that got him in his reign there in that Euro. Yeah, I mean, Robbie won a stage on that Euro too, but we weren't there. It was just some chaos happened and he got in the way and come to the sprint part of it.

32:03But yeah, I mean, when I go back to that moment, I had multiple moments. Of working against Pataki and understanding his dynamics, his team dynamics. And he had a guy, Vello, that kept creating this sensation of like a low and a race. Like he was the last guy and he would, it almost felt like the speed would drop. And it was this moment of like hesitation from all of us and he created this wall of like sprinters behind getting antsy. And that's where we all lost the race. So I started feeling that over and over and I felt that pause. And I said, I have to anticipate that pause. And so basically in my mind is like the moment I feel that anticipation, that moment, I was like, this is not the moment. That is the moment. We talked about it. You said, sometimes you have to pick the wrong moment and I picked the wrong moment and it was the right moment. That's really cool. This seems like one of those things that would be very difficult to teach because you're talking about a very dynamic situation and reading the race and understanding the players and they change from race to race.

33:03When you take us inside, how that happens with young athletes a little bit. You know, we go into that long term athlete development model. It's like we want, first thing is we want kids to have a lot of movement, right? We want them to be exploring how they, how their body moves, playing soccer, playing volleyball, swimming, riding a bike, everything. To the point when they become a cyclist, we've got it. They already have a good foundation on movement. When we get them, we're able to start now working on ideas and say, now we're going to implement strategy. We're going to implement teamwork. We're going to implement all these different avenues to where you're going to have to explore. We want to run them through the scenarios. We want to create those environments. We're doing that right now in California with, we call it the early birds. It's literally a crit series and it used to be just one crate and kids would just get all to come out and race. Now we set them up in the teams, usually four or five riders per team. There's four or five teams. They get to pick their roles.

34:03They get to work together. We talk about teams. We're talking, we run different age groups, but basically from eight to 18 and we actually even do it with the Cat 4s. They get to also explore that at older age and put them into groups. Instead of what happens when cycling is for again and to cycling, it's almost like running. They just get to go their individuals. We want to break that individuality. This is a team sport. From the beginning, put you in the team environments and have to explore as a guru because that's what's at the end of the game. It's like at the end of the game at the ties level, you're part of a team. If you come from this very individual way of thinking, it's going to be really hard to integrate your ideas into this more collaborative way of looking at sport. I would say to Freddie's generation and also my generation, we would race up to 100 times a year. I know that's where I made my money. I had to race more to make a living. The culture has changed where the races aren't half now. Even the back half of this season in 26, we were struggling to find some quality events

35:06to send teams to. With our athletes, we really, really focus on the model winning. There's two components of that. You have to practice competition, not training. You have to practice the model winning. What we don't want to do is set a play a failure and then redo that play a failure over and over again. It's really important to have this motivational fun element to it from an early age to learn that and then learn these tactics that will eventually for us in long-term athlete development will set that rider to that zero stage when to say, I'm noticing this pattern. I know how I can enhance this pattern to succeed and that is the model of winning. One time ago, I read what's still probably my favorite article of all time. About once a year, I look for this article and cry that I can't find it. What kind of article are we talking about here? It was an article about the nature of expertise. They studied chess champions to understand how we develop expertise and really showed

36:12in the article, it's not what you think. One of the things they pointed out is what you hear in the movies all the time is that chess champions think 12 move ahead. Then they put chess champions up against the big blue or whatever was that computer that IBM made. It could play out in a couple of seconds, a thousand different game scenarios. It could think thousands of moves ahead compared to these chess champions. Yet the chess champions would keep winning. You go, how are they beating it? What they discovered was chess champions, the way they developed the expertise was recognition of scenarios, recognitions of situations. They played so much chess that they would look at the board and go, oh, you're about to go for my night or you're about to do this, you're about to do that. I recognize this scenario and I know how to play it out. Intispeciation. They don't have to think much about it because they just know the scenario and they know how to address it. That to me is what you're trying to do at the small side of games and you're talking

37:13about pausing in a race. But if you're in a sprint finish and you've never been in that scenario before and this is unfamiliar to you, that pause isn't going to be a pause. It's going to be by the time you figure it out, the race is over. You need to have that familiarity of, yeah, I recognize this. I just have this feeling. Both fields about to move left or this is going to happen and that's the expertise that you build from just repetition and experience. This is where I really, and we have fun with the constraints of the small side of racing. One of my textbook cycling, normal small side of it, you always get the really strong guy, always get the really strong guy. I already know what they're going to do to try to win the race because they want to win and they know they're moved to win the race. But then you come in and you kind of allow this constraint. Like, look, you can't attack unless this guy is with you or you're not allowed to attack until this point of the race or you're not allowed to attack. So we take that and then we actually put it into practice racing. So we scale it up. We have group riding and we have practice racing.

38:14You don't figure this out at the world championships. You have to kind of go off the level of competition. The small side racing also creates an environment naturally because what happens in a long race the stronger come out. But when these races are now five, ten minutes, it doesn't give enough time for the strong rider to show all their affordances. Now the affordance might be more to the tactics. And now the player or the rider that's not been left behind and it's now back in the game because it's still fresh enough that he could create ideas and do things. So it's creating as different dynamic if not just allowing it to be just about who's the strongest. And it's a mistake because all these strong riders end up losing the ability to think at a higher level because they tend to have only one card, which is I'm going to go hard, I'm going to win. They're not the strong legend tactic. Exactly. I love the story you told me last night about I'm giving away the ending and a race that you won, but you are up against world tour climbers. And there was a climb in the race and you knew I can't just strengthen my way through

39:17this. They're going to beat me up the climb and I'll let you take it from there. But that just shows incredible experience of knowledge of I don't have the strength to climb with these guys, but I can still win the race. I mean, you go see video of it. It was my last championship that I won at 40 and 40. I'm not just coming back. I wasn't even racing and I came back. So I knew my level of performance was not going to be at its tip, but I had a lot of good tactical awareness. I understood the competition. I knew where the kid and the young riders were and I told my team was with Jelly Bell. I said, Hey, guys, that hill's too much for me. It was about 12 minute hill at 10%. So it's like, it's a lot. So you guys are going to have to help me through it. I'll probably get dropped on it, but I'll come back. And I have even quiz them. What do you think I'm going to do on the last time up the climb? They're like, Oh, you're going to follow, right? I was like, Nope. And like, what? Why wouldn't you do that? Because if I follow these World Tour guys, they will blow me up. I'm a sprinter. But if I stay back and you guys help me get back in the game, now I have a chance. And I got to the point where I almost could jump across to lead guys, but I was going to lose my last teammate.

40:18And I had four or five guys around me. I said, I told my team to get on my wheel. I'm going to pace you over the top and we're going to come together. We're going to chase on the down hill. We got 20 K to the finish. That's what we did. Saving out one rider saved that race without him. I would have been out. That's that tactical knowledge as opposed to just, I've got to strengthen power my way out of this. And I've used that for many races. Other teams have used it. And so it's hard for me sometimes to watch what's happening in World Tour right now when a strategy could be used. I love the way Tata races. Like, this one of the smartest guys that I think he's one of the strongest, of course. He is the strongest. But what the other riders are not doing is like, if you've already tried that strategy and it keeps failing, wouldn't you want to try a strategy that you don't understand yet, but at least give it a chance. This is it. And Chris Horner and I talk about it all the time. It's like, why aren't they doing this? And I don't have the answer. I think you gave the answer. There's a tradition to the sport that they feel these guys feel like that's like, you know, like the sandbagging. You know, that's one of the terms I gave it to. What we talked about was at stage four or five, the Tormelay stage, where Jonas was chasing

41:24solo. And there was a group right behind him and he had a teammate in it and you're coming. You asked somebody, why didn't he drop back? And the comment you got was, let's sandbagging. You can't do that. Yeah. And you even heard her from the director saying, come on. Find it out. Come on. You can do this. When in reality, they already had the data said, you can't do this. Right. I'm hopeful. But you had a teammate behind you had Remco would want to extra teammate. You had, you know, he asked to support mathematically on that downhill. There is no way those guys should be losing time to Tadeh. Mathematically, there's no way and they did. That means they're not collaborative. They're not working together. Jonas is off the front by himself. Is he more interested in getting second? Maybe that's the reason I'm trying to think what they're thinking, but they're not willing to give this a chance. They're not willing to take. And I get it. The risk is you got to risk it. You might risk your second place to hopefully get an opportunity to win and you're not willing to give that up. And I think you even saw that and Remco's frustration in that stage.

42:26I mean, that's what really appealed to me. He didn't even have collaboration within his own team in that moment. And it was there five guys in that they should have easily caught Jonas and then it lessened the deficit. But there's so much interplay, I guess, that the collaboration is just not there. So good for Tadeh. He keeps wanting. It's good for Tadeh, but it shows you the background of their development, how they've been so individualized in their way of thinking that they have a hard time coming to that idea of collaboration. And this is what I hope these ideas will help. Every athlete has hit that point. You're training hard, eating clean and doing everything right, but your performance just kind of plateaus. It's not your effort. It's your metabolism. That's where MetPro changes the game. MetPro is a concierge level coaching platform trusted by elite endurance athletes and professionals alike using advanced metabolic profiling and real time data. Your MetPro coach builds a plan that's fully personalized, not a one size fits all diet

43:26or training template, whether your goal is to lean out for race season, improve power to weight ratios or recover faster between sessions. MetPro's approach adapts as your metabolism responds. You'll know exactly what to eat, when to eat, and how to train for your unique physiology. And right now, fast-talk listeners can get a complimentary metabolic profiling assessment and a one-on-one consultation with a MetPro coach to design your personal strategy for performance. Just go to metpro.co-flashfasttalk. That's MET-PR-O-DOT-CO-flash-FAST-T-T-A-L-K and start training smarter today. So how are you obviously doing this with your team? Yeah. And you aren't out taking them to Europe. You're taking them to some bigger races. How are you seeing this play out? Do you see them racing differently? Do you see a better race or out of them because of all this? Yeah, I mean, we're seeing it in all fronts. We're seeing it emotionally, too. We have some riders who are really talented riders, but hotheads.

44:27And these ideas have calmed them down. Help them rely on their teammates, work together better. It's amazing to see. It's like we've brought together guys, you know, and I get it. We're aspiring to make it to the next level and they feel that individual effort is going to be the thing. And we're trying to say, no, we need you to be collaborative. You're going to get picked because you could be a perfect player for that system that they need, not just that you win races, but you can collaborate. You can work together. You know how to do a lead out, how to chase down a breakaway, you know how to be part of a team. Yeah, some good stories or some good examples. I mean, you probably have a better idea of what we did at Ross and a level. Yeah. Like APS is a little bit of a crazy brainchild that we had this fall and how we first collaborated in this project was we were on a long term athlete development paper that we were trying to publish and really liked what Freddie had with his ideas. And I said, man, we kind of have this brainchild of this team. Let's try it for real. Let's try it at the world level. Not just talk about it. And so what's great about APS is a lot of the teams in this area, this continental professional

45:33area, they want to grow right away. And we want to grow, but we want to really perfect what we're doing. And so when we compiled the team, we weren't an under 23 team. We weren't categorizing. We said, we want to look at riders in the current peloton that we believe are really, really close. And they just need a couple of tweaks on how they think, how they race, how they prepare to go to that next step. And our shining moment is to really advance a guy to the next level, not keep him at our level and kind of hog the athlete. And so Freddie came to our camp in the winter and the guys took right to it. And I think what I like about our organization is definitely with Freddie's knowledge, we can take a guy that says, I don't get it. Like I'm doing this power. I've done these races. And Freddie and I could say, look, here's a perfect example. We're in a stage race and you're the climber. Yeah, I'm the climber. Okay. How did you do on the climbing stage, the Queen stage? I did really well. I got a top 10. I think that's great. The directors are going to look at that.

46:33They're going to scroll down the top 10. Like, yeah, okay, I kind of remember that name. And so we went back to the athlete and said, okay, two days before we had a criterion stage, yeah, how'd you do in the crit? I just saved myself for the climb. And that's where Freddie and I come in and say, maybe that's not right. You had a guy in the break. If you were up helping block with the other team and then you got a top 10 on the Queen stage, now the director is going to say, oh, this writer is very versatile. We can plug and play him in very different avenues. That's a struggle in the sport, too, because we have the Tadais and the Remco's that are these stars. But the other 200 dudes are very versatile, adaptable, plug and play athletes. And that's why they're getting jobs. And so that's a big premise of why we wanted to build this team in this organization. And doing some of these race dynamics, a lot to Freddie's help. We've had a phenomenal season. We won two stages at Hila, UCI race. We dominated the Ross tour of Ireland. So we got the overall plus a few stages. For us as an organization, it's just incredible because we knew these writers had that ability.

47:35It was just kind of the right chemistry, the right environment and the right practice that just that 1% just tipped it over. And going back to that sprint analogy, like they know what to do in those situations now. They're not thinking what should I do? Did you just like you said Trevor with chess, I know this move. I'm going to capitalize on this move. And so yeah, it's been an incredible project. I'm a little terrified as performance, but we have a massive back end of the season. We'll be doing the Vuelta Portugal 13-day stage race, the Tour of Britain, which is a 2.pro, which will be a big challenge for the guys as well as Philly, Freddie's race. So we're really excited to go do Phil Delthy and bring that classic back. And then we have a couple other races. And we're hoping to get one of our guys into the world championships in Canada this year. So we'll see. So earlier in the episode, Chris reference, can you do this with amateurs? I'm very anxious because obviously you're doing this with a lot of success with your team, but that's pros. So I'm thinking now about our listeners. Most of them aren't pros. How can they apply these TCRD principles?

48:35What are things that they can do? I mean, we're already doing that with the early birds in California. And our goal is to start broadening that program and sharing with others, creating a coaching curriculum that coaches can start accessing these ideas and how to put them into practice. So they could take it to their local group, create and group rides and start creating these small-sided races. And it's not that difficult. And it's a lot easier than you think. It's very intuitive. And it's just going to allow the coaches a lot more freedom to take the coach in a way, instead of just sitting there and telling people what to do. When I look back at it, like I was a track racer when I was a kid just because it was in my environment. I lived in LA. It was after the Olympics. We had a lot of funding and tracks. So I got a free bike to use. So I got a bunch of small-sided racing because track racing is that. A point race, a scratch race, a kilo, a sprint. You know, I did it all. Madison, you know, and when you have so many different ways of seeing racing, that's why I developed my ideas of vision because I was a three-lap sprinter.

49:37But I had to really scan and make sure when that sprinter went, if I was in on it, he was gone because I was small. And that's a place where you can do it. That's another place where people can discover it is on a track. But yeah, we need to start going away a little bit from this interval training to putting people into practice. And it's fun. When I asked the kids after one of the sessions and I said, how many of you guys have coaches? And they said, well, I was like about 90% of the kids have coaches. And I said, well, go tell your coaches that today you did five times five of VO2 efforts. And I said, okay, how many of you guys rather be doing that or this fun game? Yeah, basically it was everybody raised right now. And rather be playing this game all day long. They had it blast. So there's your answer. And it works across all categories. We did it with the Cat 4s and they had a great time. They learned a lot. And the moment that they got the most experience from bike racing because they got multiple time to try to step one big race. I would add that it's uncontrollable interval session.

50:37And so if you kind of maybe preface it that way with, I need to state, am I training program? And it's okay, yeah, we're going to do intervals. It's just going to be uncontrollable. And I think for amateurs, it's great. A long time ago I had a bunch of amateur athletes and I used to do a group ride on Tuesday night. And some of my non athletes would show up and I said, yeah, it's fine, more of the merrier, but they didn't get the concept. They said, this is so boring. It's a one and a half mile loop. That's exactly. And then they said, but you like, okay, I was in the break and then you called off the race after four laps. Exactly. And then it's like, okay, we're going to start again. Can you break away again? In the same play, work twice or maybe now people are know who you are. So you're not going to be able to break away. How are you going to change your strategy? So I think thinking like that with the bike clubs, where you track is great because it's a bit of a safer environment. And my favorite is point race. You know, anyone that's not from a track background, they're like, I got to win the last sprint. And you don't. And then, oh, should I go for the first sprint as long as you can recover to go for

51:39the next sprint. And so it's a really different way of thinking. You could do that on the road. Like I said, in a smaller circuit and shorter time periods. And I think, look, there's a lot of coaches. There's a lot of clubs teaching some skills. We talk about with USA Cycling Education skills and stuff. It's different at all levels. It's one thing to do skills at 12 miles an hour. And it's another thing to do skills at 30 miles an hour. And we need to kind of segue that to get that comfort of what the real game play is. Would you ever suggest that, say, there's just an individual amateur rider out there. He's looking to do better in his local racing scene. And he doesn't have teammates. He's just an independent rider. Should he go to the group ride and turn that into his playground? And if so, how would he do that safely? First thing is, ideally, it's going to be, we need to help that structure because it's going to be hard for an individual to come into an environment and say, hey, I want to create a game play because the real game play needs to be already. He's set up for them to be able to say, hey, you're a new kid.

52:41You're coming in and it's like, what do I do? It's like, oh, we're going to put you on this team. That's the environment we want to create. We want to be able to have these individuals come in and say, I don't know what I'm doing here. What do I do? Yeah, you're newbie. Let's put you here. You're going to be with this team and you're going to learn and just go through the process. And now, biggest thing in one thing, a big thing, and I hear it so much, especially now with social media here, all the coaches, like coaches, stop telling your athletes what to do. Then learn. You telling them what to do is not helping them. You think it is, but it's not. I would add to that scenario too, it's a process of learning. So if I'm a guy, I'm new to the area. I absolutely want to go to the group ride. I want to see what my local cycling community is like. Then once I establish that, I want to do a strengths and weaknesses analysis and say, okay, I'm a time trialist. I can always win from the break. Now I want to go to that group ride. Okay. Afterward, guys get up here or slice of pizza or something and you get to brag that you won the group ride after that. Nobody remembers. So it's a perfect place to learn from failing.

53:43And so I always try to push the athlete to say, don't break away. Have the lowest power out of the group ride. Be at the coffee or the beers afterwards and say, I didn't even really see you in the group ride. Were you in the group ride? Because that's going to really, and heighten your racing, it's going to make you learn how to be adaptable to the different situations. And so that's an easy plug and play. And again, that's not always every weekend. Some weekends were driven by extrinsic motivation. So you are a time trialist. How are you going to get better at time-trying? Well, attack. And now they're going to chase you and you will be motivated to keep pedaling hard. I think one of the most powerful things you can ask is a coach is to let an athlete fall down a little bit, make their mistakes and then just ask what did you learn from that? Yeah. I think it's a huge part of the process. Yeah. So this is a great concept, but I know this is a new concept, at least new to cycling. I imagine that you have your skeptics. Yeah, I mean, I think we need skeptics because everything we have to explore. It's like without the skeptic, you're not really having somebody question it.

54:46So it's, but it's skeptic in what direction is important is the skeptic willing to try it. Does he have an inquisitive mind to want to explore it and give me real feedback? And maybe I'm going to learn from the skeptic too. Go, oh, I didn't think about that. Let me add that. Let me subtract that. Let's work together on it. I think it's necessary to have skeptics. What types of things are people saying to you? Do you have examples? I mean, an example would be from a writer's perspective, is that mindset? I was like, I hate to say we live in a culture now where everything is regimented. Our street signs are infrastructure of like to try to get flow is very regimented and not flowy. You know, our education is not flowy. It's not inquisitive. It's more about learning to test, right? Our homes, our parents are over parenting to the point where kids are not able to just explore. So if we can bring that to the sport, so now we're getting all these kids that are like, what do I do instead of saying just go to figure it out. You know, we want that where they don't have that concept that I've been told forever

55:47what to do. And now they want their coach to tell them what to do instead of saying, oh, I'm in an environment. I'm just going to play. I'm in discover. I'm going to figure it out. And that's what you want. You know, we want that. We want to create that environment. We want to say in society, but also sport, we have a lot of traditions. And one of the things that we run into is I would say acute stimulus and acute stimulus leads to chronic fitness, which then leads to success if it's done in the right way. And when the first acute kind of stress comes in and you have a pretty developed writer, they don't like that. And this is stupid. I don't want to do this. But when they take a step back and they say, oh, maybe I need to do more of this. Maybe I need to think more objectively instead of in this very strict kind of pattern development way. It takes a lot. It takes a lot. And with APS, we have an environment that they're eager. They're listening. Let's try it. I think it's just really important to expand on that and continue learning and new ways of learning.

56:47Well, guys, getting close to our time here. So any final practical thoughts or advice that you have to kind of wrap this up? From my perspective, I'm just for me personally, it's exciting to be able to start sharing these ideas. When I was a racer, I was living these ideas. I didn't even know I had these ideas. And so luckily enough, I stumbled upon it. And now I'm able to start sharing with others. And it's just collaborating, giving yourself an opportunity to explore. That's what I do with my kids. That's what I do with the people that I work with. Bring people to this place where we're able to just explore. And I think that's what we're trying to do here with APS. We're giving these writers an opportunity to just explore. And it's opening up their minds, it's opening up their bodies. It's not mine. It's not body. It's both together. Embodied cognition, it's called. And we need to explore that a little deeper. Yeah, I would just say, I mean, I've been love recycling my whole life and the dynamics that it brings is just incredible. I mean, you have the athletic front.

57:47And looking Friday and I, we raised against each other 20 years ago or something. I never thought we would be on the same team together nurturing the next cohort of talent or even on this podcast together. So and even last night, again, thank you so much for dinner, Trevor. But few of my former teammates came out and that community build is so much, there's so much depth there that you can learn from cycling. So yeah, enjoy the process as they say and see where it leads you and keep pushing hard on those pedals, I think. Trevor, they just gave their take homes right there and now it's now you're on the spot. So you have to give us your words of wisdom from this episode. I get to start by just saying I was really fascinated by this conversation because I said coming into it. I looked up this concept. I'd never heard the terms before. I love it when we have an episode. I've never got to say I'm an expert on every single episode, but generally we're covering things. I'm like, yeah, I've read research on that. I've read about this. This was entirely kind of a new exploration for me and really fascinating, made a lot

58:49of sense to me. And I remember what I was coaching CSU very early on. I went to a race and watched the CSU cycling team, the B squad get into a breakaway. It was a nine person breakaway. Eight riders were from CSU, one rider from CU. And as they came into the finish, the eight riders from CSU all sprinted and chased one another and the CU rider won. And I remember the team, whoops, strengthened an issue because we just had eight of the nine guys in a breakaway. Boy, we need to teach you race strategy. And I didn't have any terminology around it either, but the first thing I implemented was a weekly, let's go do these small side of games. Let's go do these scenarios. And I told the team, we might not be the strongest team out there, but we're going to be the smartest. And so to me to hear somebody like you with your experience formalizing this, saying we need to do this, we need to bring this to cycling is really exciting to me because it is

59:55one of the most important parts that I think has been overlooked a lot. Chris, but you on the spot now. Honestly, yeah, the thing that I love the most here is that you're, I feel like cycling, like lists, is a general, probably a generalized take on it, but they sort of train the parts. They might do some cornering here and there they might then do their intervals on another day. Then they go for their long rides and things like that. And a lot of the time is solo. What you're talking about is putting all those parts together in the soup bowl, if you will, and stirring it up and saying, okay, the scenario is this, figure it out. Okay, now the scenario is this, figure that out. And I feel like a lot of people out there might go to the group ride and because they want to go hard, but they're not always thinking about the scenarios or how that's going to apply to the actual race when they get to that master's national. So taking all these parts and putting them into scenarios and allowing that pressure to make for problem solving, heightened problem solving scenarios is really exciting.

1:00:57I think the cycling world would definitely benefit from putting those parts together. Well, guys, I've never said this before. Thanks for flying in to come and record an episode with us. Yes, thank you. Thanks for having us. That's a big deal. Hopefully that sets a new trend and all of our guests come to the studio with us. Yeah. Well, Freddie's going to hate this. I'm going to share this evening. There's a Tuesday night race near Boulder. Yep. And I do the B race because I'm slow because you're trever and you don't know how to sprint. Yeah, I don't know how to sprint. Your body doesn't know how to sprint. I should say you're physiologically incapable of sprinting. But I am telling you, I am, I feel so bad. He's going to do the a race for all the people coming to do the B race because we're going to line up and a four time national champion. When top sprinters in the world is going to be lining up beside them in the B race, you still get to put the stars and stripes on your bands on your sleeve, right? I do, but I don't often. I've been kind of embarrassed to do it in a small period.

1:02:00Sure. I understand. I know a little fearful thing that I can see in their minds like don't crash ready. And that's my fear too. He's Boulder. This is this is not the average town that you're going to be racing in. No, I mean, I used to live here. So I understand the culture and that's one of the reasons we flew here because this is an amazing place to be a bike rider. So to go out there and ride with the guys and just I'm open to the experience and it's going to be fun. It will be fun. But I will tell you, if I have the strength tonight, I'm going to try to break away. I think it's half a lap up because I think I need half a lap for you not to catch me on the sprint. So Trevor, what I'm going to do is I'm going to basically, you know, let you sit out there and I'm going to have a good, I'm going to let you sit out there and sit out there and then right when we're in last lap, I'll catch you in the sprint. And then Chris and I are going to enjoy watching Friday of Trevor and beers cheers and hands aside minds. That's right. There is no scenario here where I went. There is absolutely none. It is just a question of how much I am barris myself.

1:03:02So this will be fun. That was another episode of Fasttalk. Subscribe to Fasttalk, wherever you prefer to find your favorite podcasts. Don't forget we're now on YouTube. Give us a like and subscribe there and help us grow our reach. As always, remember that the thoughts and opinions expressed on Fasttalk are those of the individual. Join us on social media at at Fasttalk Labs. For access to our endurance sports content and continuing education for coaches, head to FasttalkGlads.com. For Freddie Rodriguez, Michael Norton and Chris Case, I'm Trevor Conner. Thanks for listening.