Dialed Podcast 359 - Why you should do a time trial | Spring Classics | Spring Bike Check

We cover some really good reasons why you should consider doing a time trial, discuss recent bike races that include some outstanding results for a few American riders, and run through what you should be checking on your bike as we transition to spring. 

Fit, Healthy & Happy Podcast
Welcome to the Fit, Healthy and Happy Podcast hosted by Josh and Kyle from Colossus...

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Chapters

• 1:27 Intro
• 1:58 Backpedal
• 24:35 Leadout News
• 30:32 [Ad] Fit, Healthy & Happy Podcast
• 31:12 (Cont.) Leadout News
• 38:53 EPO Chain Mail
• 51:13 Why you should do a time trial
• 1:17:34 One Last Thing
• 1:24:39 MM

Transcript

Intro: [00:00:00] Shut up and sit down. Hell yeah! Hell yeah! Hell yeah, Batman! Our bikes love us and we love them back As we ride through the city by the cars like plaque On the teeth of the town we keep on singing We're unstoppable Oh, hell yeah! G N O Unstoppable kids, yeah Get your bike and go You are listening to The Dialed Podcast with Matt Lee Grant So Ian Gibson, Lance Hepler, and Jake Fonduring, one of the most important decisions you will make is to be in a good mood.

Intro: For every minute you are angry, you lose 60 seconds of happiness. So, crank it up and be happy, my friend.[00:01:00] 

Intro: Oh hell yeah, brother. You ye unstoppable. Mamas a GO. Unstoppable. Unstoppable kids. Yeah. Get your bike and go. Get and go. Unstop my pedal.

Intro: Hell yeah. Hell yeah. You doing it? Good buddy. Great job. 

Jake: Hi and welcome back to the Dialed Podcast. I'm Jake von Duering and I'm here with Lance frigging Heppler, 

Lance: Lance friggin’ Heppler live in studio. Welcome in studio, 

Jake: sir friggin’ ness. Sitting next to him, Sir Gibson. 

Lance: Ah, 

Ian: Hello, everybody 

Jake: whoa. 

Lance: Coming in hot. This group is caffeinated.

Lance: It's coming in hot

Jake: Sweet. You guys didn't bring me any caffeine, huh? I mean, did not. Last but not least, Mr. Matt LeGrand.

Matt: What's up, ladies and gentlemen of the internet? I don't know if I can follow that. No, in fact, I'm pretty sure I can't. If it's done. But here we are. Sweet. We'll try. Backpedaling. Who wants to go [00:02:00] first?

Matt: I always go first for all the things. Do it. Uh, I'm still on. Day 70 something. I think it's like day 76 or something. I'm still in, I'm still hanging in there, hanging on by a thread. Way to go. Some, some days I'm like, oh, my quad hurts or oh, my wrist hurts. There's this weird stuff. I'm like, yeah, so it's easy hour every day.

Matt: Easy hour. They're all like 120 watts or whatever. They're just chill out, but still that's something it's something that is something it is something Swimming swimming a little bit swimming about two or twice a week or so some it's going okay, not it's going okay running about Twice a week something like that every time I run.

Matt: I'm like super sore I'm not running enough to like get over the soreness factor. Yeah, but I'm running some And, so you just, you just remake the muscle sore, yeah, yeah, and I'm always like, well I'm gonna bike this afternoon [00:03:00] anyway, but I biked outside a couple of times, like whenever the weather's nice, I'll go outside, go for an hour, and sometimes I'll just wander around like, I'll go to Prune Hill, do like a loop and just like, only get like 10 to 14, you know, 10 to 15 miles, something like that, right, in a whole hour, in an hour, just chilling, and it's always like an hour, 

Ian: before it starts raining again, 

Matt: yeah.

Matt: Yeah, it's definitely if you're out there for too long, you're going to get rained on. So why would you do that to yourself? But then I don't feel quite as guilty if like biking inside when sunny out, there's a lot of, there's a lot of guilt. 

Lance: Yeah. 

Matt: Right. Yeah. What am I doing in here? It's not raining with my life.

Matt: I've been like watching some really crappy shows on, um, on like Netflix or whatever, just to like, you know, pass the time, get through my 75 days, 76 days. I 

Lance: think you're on 76? 

Matt: If I bike today, maybe we're on 76. Anyway, we're getting up there. I lost count a long time ago. Yeah. So, but yeah. Good for you, man.

Matt: We're getting there. Well done. Yep, yep, yep. Who's next? Who, who else wants to backpedal ? [00:04:00] Um, 

Ian: yeah. I, I spent a lot of times this weekend asking myself, what the hell am I doing? What am I doing? Yeah. What am I doing? for the . We went out to Pendleton, Oregon and we, uh, we, myself, Lance, and a bunch of other. Dial teammates 

Lance: actually.

Lance: We probably had 10 dialed people out there racing. 

Ian: Yeah. Uh, we went out to Pendleton, Oregon. We took part in the Real West Gravel, uh, put on by Mudslinger Promotions out there. It was a cool event. Uh, unfortunately hampered by terrible conditions. Full 

Matt: conditions. It was full conditions. It was, I was coaching track on Saturday.

Matt: It was gross out there. It's cold and Rainy windy. Well, 

Ian: it had rained, uh, throughout the night. And so conditions were. Very wet and very muddy and then for the first two hours, we rode uphill into a block headwind [00:05:00] for like two hours. 15 20 

Lance: mile headwind for a like 10 mile ish section of climbing. Yeah.

Lance: That was brutal. 

Matt: It'd probably be worse if you weren't climbing. Like I feel like the climbing slows things down, you're not like going super fast into a headwind which slows you down even more. And I feel like You also warm up a little bit when you're climbing as opposed to like when you're descending and freezing.

Matt: I don't know. I don't know. 

Ian: I was not cold. Right. I had my Gabber jacket on, which was perfect. And, um, uh, shoe covers and stuff, but, you know, looking at Lance and I, after the race had finished, we, there was not, uh, one single part of our bikes or bodies not covered in mud. It was, It was truly epic. It was like a, uh, an epic year at Paris Roubaix, probably, or the amateur old man edition of that, maybe.

Lance: The, the temperature was like 45, but because of the wind and the rain, it felt like 35. There were, there were some [00:06:00] hypothermic people that got pulled off the course. One of the, one of the race favorites in the beginning, uh, bailed at like mile 15 because of hypothermia conditions. Yeah. So there was a 

Ian: lot of people bail.

Ian: Actually. You had the choice to do the long course, which was 68 miles or the short, which was more like 48 miles. 

Lance: Yes. 

Ian: And how, tell, tell me if I'm, there was like 160 starters for the long course. 200. 200 of which fully half took the decision to bail out 

Lance: 103 of the 200 bailed. 

Ian: At mile 32 

Lance: and took the short smart, the smart people

Matt: Yeah. 

Ian: Yes. Including me. Like I, I, I got to the aid station where you had the choice and I figured, no, I'm gonna carry on. I'm, I'm not gonna give up. What would my teammates think? , 

Lance: and then I'm a coach. What do they think if I 

Ian: quit? And so I rode half a mile up the hill and then I screw this. No, I can't do this.

Ian: I rode back down the hill and then I thought, no, screw this. I'm gonna do it. [00:07:00] turned, turned around. And I'm like, no I'm not, I'm going back. So we stopped at the aid station. Another 

Matt: 30 miles just back and forth. Just back and forth up that little half mile climb. 

Ian: And then I screwed around, got the mud out of my shoes, got the mud out of my drivetrain, and I took the short route home.

Ian: And as it turned out, I was not alone. So, you know, it was just by that point, it was just, uh, it was bad. 

Lance: Ian ended up winning his age division in the short course, even with all that back and forth. Yes. Yes. Well done. It 

Ian: was five year age groups. It was no. But anyway. Uh, you know, in retrospect, 

Lance: it was 10 year age groups, not five.

Lance: It 

Ian: was type two fun. Like it was pretty miserable on the course, but we had some teammates out there. We had a good time. We had, we had a good time talking about it afterwards. 

Lance: We did all hiding in my van with the heater on. Yeah. Yeah. 

Ian: I want to go back to [00:08:00] Arizona. It's been a rough, it's been a 

Lance: rough couple of weeks.

Lance: That's for sure. 

Ian: Yeah. But I did feel my fitness bump from all the stuff we did in Arizona was, had made a difference. Like I was feeling pretty strong up until that point, but 

Outro: yeah. 

Ian: What you got to say about it, Hepa? 

Lance: Lance, I have a lot of questions for you. The season of humility continues on for Lance frigging Hepler.

Lance: First question 

Matt: for your back pedal. How did you hurt your back? Did you fall on the bike? 

Lance: I crashed, um, mountain biking in Arizona like 10 days ago. 10 days ago, I crashed, um, prepping for the Cactus Cup race. I was pre riding Cactus Cup's race, washed out. Crashed landed on my back and on my head ruined a helmet and right right and didn't get out of bed for four days Actually after that it was not three times.

Lance: Do 

Matt: you feel like you had a concussion? 

Lance: I did not have a concussion, but I have a dinner plate sized [00:09:00] contusion on my lower back Have you seen it Matt? 

Matt: No, it's it's gonna wait before before we start. Is this gonna be nightmarish? Okay, okay 

Lance: Look at my butt crack. 

Matt: Oh, your butt, your butt crack Looks like you failed to wipe, but your lower back is also the same purple color.

Lance: Yeah, it was not good. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lance: So that, 

Matt: that looks painful. 

Lance: Yeah, it, it, um, it laid me out for a while and I cracked a couple ribs and that's what really was kind of laying me out. And I think I saw 

Matt: your x-ray. Yeah. Or something. 

Lance: So, yeah, I posted a couple x rays just because I'm stupid and, um, yeah, I didn't have any other broken bones.

Lance: I was worried I cracked a couple vertebrae in my back because of how hard I landed, but that didn't happen. 

Matt: So, here's my question. Well, I've got lots of questions, but like, your back is got, already has issues. Correct. Like, really big stuff that could be It's a limiting factor in my life, yes. But this, this is separate.

Matt: Yes, there's [00:10:00] no overlap. There was no overlap. That's good. That's fantastic, right? Because like now it's like yeah, you look like poopoo, but you'll Your back looks bad. It'll turn around in a couple of weeks. It'll be fine. 

Lance: Yes, correct. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lance: Yeah, so The disappointing thing is like this was the race. I was like aiming for with All of my winter.

Lance: Yeah, Echo Red to Red. The Echo Red to Red mountain bike race. This happened the day before the race Ian just talked about. Um, it is near Pendleton, Oregon. It's in a little town called Echo. There was 500 racers there. It was a gigantic field. Really big fields. This was also my inaugural race as a Cat 1 mountain bike racer.

Lance: Which meant I started with the first wave. With all the Uh, Elite riders, all the other Cat 1 riders, all the, you know, so that was a whole different experience for me, so. Um, I was injured enough that I should not have raced. I should not have raced. But, I [00:11:00] drove out there, um, I rode around a little bit the day before, and I'm like, I don't feel terrible.

Lance: My legs feel okay, I don't feel terrible, even though Do you feel like 

Matt: there's You're not going to do any damage, like more damage by going and racing? I knew 

Lance: that I wouldn't do any more damage as long as I didn't crash again and, and spoiler alert, I did crash once because I got, I got blown out by a Oh, yeah, you're trying to pass me.

Lance: Yeah. Yeah. Junior's trying to pass me. Anyway, yeah, um, so yeah, so that made it a little bit crazy I really shouldn't have raced but I I am I couldn't help myself. I have an issue with racing impulse control impulse control One of my issues is um Jake probably knows this very well. I know That my racing can be taking away taken away at any moment Yeah.

Lance: One uglier crash, one big life disaster, something like that, the racing could go away. So if there's a race on the calendar and I'm close by, I'm [00:12:00] gonna go do it if I'm not really truly broken, right? As a 

Matt: guy who is kind of broken, and not super broken, but like broken enough that it's not fun to race, like.

Matt: I kind of see where you're coming from. Like, Hey, if you're at that fitness level, go, go race. It's fun. Yeah. Even if you're not like tip, tip, tip, tippy top, like it's still fun to raise. Yeah. Right. Until it's not fun to raise. It's 

Lance: not fun to raise. Tell us about, tell us about that race. So yeah, Echo started, there was, I don't know, 120 people.

Matt: I 

Lance: think there was a hundred and just over a hundred people in that cat one wave. And it started with a. A two mile neutral section and then a three and a half mile gravel road before you hit the single track and it was That that's when it's on is when you hit the single track And so this was a completely different race experience than racing in the cat 2 field.

Lance: Let me just tell you Because in the cat 2 field, um, even amongst the younger [00:13:00] people and the juniors I'm, one of the fastest guys and so I can get around things I can set pace I can set pace even at like at the, at the flag drop, or I can be in that front three or four people at the flag drop, right? Um, at this race, no freaking chance for me.

Lance: They are all a different level than me. So what happens They just all have that extra gear, right? Yes. It's like And they're You know, 30 years younger or 20 years younger and in the prime of their athletic more pop. Yes. A little more pop. So we, when we turned the corner and it went full gas when the race was on, I was sitting about, I want to say like 15th wheel.

Lance: I put myself near the front of the pack. Just okay, just just hang here as long as you can. And as soon as the race dropped I got passed by 40 people, like 40 people. They were going past me so fast, just [00:14:00] like swarming around me. And I'm like, what in the hell is happening? Oh my gosh. Okay. Part of it is I still don't feel good from the race, right?

Lance: Yeah. But the crash and the crash. And so I, I set heart rate. Prs, way to go for the Lord. Question mark. For the first 90 minutes. For the first 90 minutes. That was, that was not good. Anyway, um, I raced actually pretty well for, for about 90 minutes and then just completely imploded. Just completely fell apart and knew that, okay, I shouldn't be out here.

Lance: This is way hard on me. This is, my back is not ready for this. You, your back hurt during the, uh, it did. I had to keep standing and stretching and keep standing and stretching because it was, you know, locking up for me. Anyway, I did finish the whole long course. That's the other thing about this cat one field.

Lance: You always do the long course. I don't get to do the little bit shorter one, which I just way prefer. Um, this is [00:15:00] getting way too long, so I need to shut up, but 

Matt: Well, it brings, so you finished that one, and you immediately, so I watched the videos, right? So I 

Lance: finished that one, and I was like 18th out of 22 people.

Lance: That's in my field. Yes, 

Matt: and you immediately said That was stupid. I shouldn't have raced and 

Lance: I couldn't, I couldn't stand up straight. People agreed with you. Yeah, that was dumb. I went and like had dinner with our teammate friend, uh, Chris Handler, who's a doctor. He's like, yeah, dude, you should not race tomorrow.

Lance: When I 

Ian: saw you Saturday evening, he was like a broken man. 

Lance: It was so bad. And what did you do the next day? I, I did a three and a half hour gravel race. It's like, makes no sense whatsoever. It makes no sense. Like, so. Okay, yeah. It, this is hard to explain. Nope. Can't explain it. Can't explain it. It's not hard to explain.

Lance: It's not hard to explain. It's unexplainable. Can't explain it. But then you 

Matt: did okay, 

Lance: right? I actually did really well, which is also a sign. silly, which is to think about, but, but I didn't, [00:16:00] I didn't race it either. I think that's the key, right? You wrote it. And I knew it would be easier in my body just because it doesn't beat you up as much as mountain biking, because you're not using full body as much when you're just.

Lance: You know, gravel racing. And so, I spent the first 60 minutes of that, of the gravel race, at the front of the short course. Okay, I was doing the short course. I had planned to do the short course. We had a separate start than the long course people. The long course people started two minutes before the short course people.

Lance: And so, um, I wasn't mixing it up with all the super fast elites who started in the long course. So, the short course start wasn't nearly a start. And for me to stay with the front 10 guys, that was actually not difficult for the first 10 miles. But, um, as soon as it turned into the headwind and started going uphill, and I knew that, um, I'm broken and I should not be racing, I literally just like Turn the throttle off just said okay.

Lance: I'm just gonna cruise here. I'm just gonna cruise I'm [00:17:00] just gonna go at tempo pace for the next whatever 10 miles. It was no the next two and a half hours 

Matt: so Today's we're recording this on a Tuesday. That was on Sunday. I was on Sunday. How are you feeling? How's your back feeling now? almost Better.

Matt: Almost 

Lance: better. Almost better. I feel significantly better. If I punched you in your kidney, HOO HOO, you'd be fine. I would not be fine there. But I didn't, um, I, I, I don't know how, the, the, the gravel race turned into a, like a mud slog fest, and I do quite well in the slog. And I also do okay with descending, and there was tons of descending at this race.

Lance: I think you got some sort of KOM or something like that on it. I was like second on one segment. But it was also, there was a railing tailwind on one of these downhill segments, and so yeah, I was kind of ripping it 

Ian: off. There was a section where I was literally riding the brakes all the way down, and Lance was at Full gas out.

Lance: I was [00:18:00] spun out. Spun 

Ian: out. 

Lance: I was spun out with my dropper seat dropped, um, like laying down on my, on the top tube. I wasn't, I wasn't, I wasn't doing that, but I was like, I was like all the way down, just kind of ripping down the hill trying to finish it. But yeah, anyway, um, yeah, I, I, it wasn't as big of an effort, even though I placed like.

Lance: 18th overall out of 240 people who did the short course, but again, I just was not racing. That's just a No, 

Ian: I placed 15th. 

Lance: Yes, you did. 

Ian: Out of 200 people. 

Lance: Yes, you did. Yeah. Ian beat me by like a minute and a half, which was great. So that's was working hard. But he started two minutes before you. He started two minutes before me.

Lance: So you guys didn't see each other? No. I never saw him. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lance: Did you see anyone from the team? I did. I, I, uh, I caught up with, uh, I, I ran into John Hatfield and Aaron Sander. And Tom Counts was, um, also in my [00:19:00] group at the beginning and he stayed with the front people when I turned it off. So. 

Ian: Tom had a great race.

Ian: He did awesome. Yeah. Cool. 

Lance: He ended up fourth in his age group. Good job, Tom. Yeah. Like 

Ian: eighth overall, I think? Yeah, 

Lance: like eighth overall. So, way to go. 

Ian: That's great. 

Lance: Anyway, so lots of crazy racing this weekend. I'm glad you're feeling better. I'm feeling a lot better. Um, my, my like recovery numbers have been trash for like seven or eight days.

Lance: This morning it was finally normal. 

Matt: Your, your whoop score? Yes. Give me a number. 

Lance: It was 55 this morning. Right, it wasn't like under 20? No, and yesterday it was 9. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lance: 9 percent recovery. 

Matt: So maybe take it easy for the next couple days until some shiny, something shiny shows up and you'd like sprint for Oh, you mean like a time trial this Sunday?

Matt: Well, that's, that's all the way until Sunday. That's all the way until Sunday. I was thinking way before that, but yes, time trial, time trial on Sunday, time trial on Sunday. Jake. What's up guys? How 

Lance: is [00:20:00] Florida? Jake is here with us. We should have introduced him. This is Jake Vaughn During. He's been away 

Jake: for a while.

Jake: Disney World. Yeah. I'm kind of the reason why we didn't get to do a podcast again last week. Sorry about that. But, uh, we're all back. But yeah, I went to Florida. It's fun. Did lots of things that I'd never done before. Seen things that I'd never seen before and got to enjoy some sunny weather. I think I wore sandals and shorts and t shirts every single day.

Jake: Fantastic. That was glorious. Um, have you ever seen a manatee before? 

Lance: No. Did you guys go do a manatee experience somewhere? 

Jake: I went and did a, um, a kayaking trip in an, what was it? The silver. Silver Springs. Silver Springs, yeah. And yeah, there's a bunch of manatees. I saw a bunch of those. That was neat. Saw alligators for the first time.

Jake: Yes. This is real 

Matt: life in the wild kind of stuff. Alligators freak me out. They freak me out. I mean, I'm from Alabama and you'd think I'd be able to wrassle an alligator. I will piss my pants. If I'm because here's the thing like I I'm just this guy that goes out running on trails and stuff That's where the gators are.

Matt: Okay. 

Lance: I was [00:21:00] doing a gravel ride in Florida one one time riding along a dike and just after getting some spooking Alligators, like off the banks as I'm riding down the dike and I'm like, do not crash, do not freaking crash. You're fine as on your bike. Stay on the bike. 

Matt: Do not, like, it's like, it's just like they're gonna take your toes off.

Matt: That's what, I'm so freaked 

Lance: out. Jake, sorry, we're hijacking. No, 

Jake: it's all good. Um, yeah, it was, it was really fun. I mean, we did this, uh, it was like a, a clear kayak adventure kind of thing where you rent these kayaks and you go. You can see through the bottom. You see through them, so you get to see everything.

Jake: And it was not hot and humid the whole time we were there. It was actually pleasant, which was really cool. There's manatee everywhere. You're just seeing all these fish and stuff swimming underneath. It was really quite fun. So I had a blast doing that. We did the Magic Kingdom. Um, fun, but I'm glad that's over.

Jake: Too many damn people. Parks are crowded. Yeah, we did the, what was it? We just did two days. We did the Hollywood. Hollywood Studios the first day and that was okay. I mean, it's there's not very many rides, but there's a couple that are [00:22:00] pretty fun Just again a ton of people go good Tower Terror. They had coasters good rock and roller coaster was pretty sweet So I hadn't been in that park before I didn't bend up Disney World since and and um 

Lance: and the Star Wars land is 

Jake: in 

Lance: Hollywood, isn't it?

Jake: They have a few rides there. Okay, they don't have all of them It's not like it's not like Disneyland where they've got the whole land They've got things kind of broken up all over the place. We did the the I don't know, the redone Star Tours version that's now Star Wars. Oh yeah. Oh dude. I'll never go on that again.

Jake: It's 

Lance: a, it's a That 

Jake: will jack your vestibular system up. I'm, I'm stout when it comes to that kind of stuff. It doesn't bother me. And I'm like, oh crap, I need to close my eyes, I'm going to throw up. 

Lance: It's a virtual reality ride. I don't even, um I have to look away as I walk past the entrance to it, so I don't run 

Jake: into it.

Jake: And then they had another one there. I can't remember what was fun. There was a little bit of that in there, but it actually had a ride that moved around and that one was actually pretty well done. Had fun then. And then the second day we went to, um, the Disney World and the Magic Kingdom, if you will, and rode just about everything.

Jake: We [00:23:00] got there right at the opening and we stayed until they kicked us out of the park. So it was from like, I think we got there at like 8. 30 in the morning and then trammed up and we got to come in at like 9. And then we rode rides from 9 in the morning until 11 o'clock at night. That was a long friggin day.

Jake: That was a long day. Some cool rides there too. Have you been on Tron before? I have not. 

Lance: It was not open last time I was there. So cool. 

Jake: It's pretty cool. It's stellar. The line's too long, but it's a great ride. Yeah. Any biking? Um, I rode on the trainer and, well, they had like a recumbent bike there at the little complex that we stayed at.

Jake: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I knew that it was going to be a week that was going to be hard to get on the bike, so I kind of had this, it was almost a 10 week buildup from the start of the year, just kind of getting back on the bike and I just said, right, I need to keep pushing and get right up to the start of this vacation and that will be like a quasi recovery week.

Jake: I knew that I was going to be walking a ton. I think I Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Do you ever track your steps? Yes. I think that Disney World, the one day Granted, I mean, you're waiting in a lot of lines and you're standing on your feet the entire day, but I think I still got something like 25, 000 steps.

Jake: I don't know what that [00:24:00] equates to, but, um, it's a big day. It's, it's a lot, lots and lots of walking. So, and, uh, yeah, I had that whole buildup, which I've been feeling pretty good on the bike and came back and, um, have been trying to get back on West coast time from East coast with my ridiculous sleep schedule.

Jake: That's been a little bit of a challenge, but, um, back to riding on the trainer again. So need to get outside and ride in real life. One of these days. Uh, yes. In real life. I've heard it all stuffy. It's overrated. IRL. I've heard of this IRL. Someday 

Ian: I was dreaming of riding on the trainer. 

Jake: Anyway, that's enough of that.

Jake: Let's move on.

EPO Chain Mail: Don't do that. 

Matt: But do that. But do 

EPO Chain Mail: that. 

Matt: But that's not very nice. All right, champ is here. 

Lance: We are, yes, there's been a whole bunch of racing to be talked about. I don't think we're gonna, um, talk about all of it, but a [00:25:00] couple of big things. Paris Nice happened. Eight day stage race. Goes from Paris all the way to Nice and won.

Lance: And the Americans 

Matt: are back. 

Lance: The Americans are back. Won by our own Matteo Jorgensen, the Idaho boy that, uh, rides for Visma Lisa bike. So 

Jake: that was fun. I mean, I didn't watch a full race on any of them, but I watched all of the recaps. We're anywhere from like 8 to 12 minutes long. So you get like a good chunk of it.

Jake: I just haven't had time and I'll do that when I'm riding on the trainer, it gets me all pumped up and it was just so fun to watch. I mean, between Mattel and then you've got Magnus Sheffield too. Magnus 

Lance: Sheffield won his first, like, UCI, um, stage race, UCI race as a pro. So that was very cool for him to win one of the stages too, which was just fantastic.

Lance: They've had 

Ian: some, uh, extended highlights stuff on YouTube. Yeah. It's been pretty decent coverage. 

Lance: There's like a seven minute show. And then there's like a 22 minute show if you want to see more of it. But holy cow, the racing was, was really good. [00:26:00] So Jonas Bingo was there. Him and Mateo were hoping to go one, two, but Jonas crashed.

Lance: Yeah. And they did not catch the crash on video. There's no video of it, but he messed his hand up somehow. And so he ended up pulling out the next day. So, but 

Matt: before that, he didn't look good. 

Lance: Well, the day he actually got dropped on a climb was post was the day of the crash. Was that post crash then? It was post crash, but the day of the crash.

Lance: Alright. 

Matt: Cause I was thinking, I was thinking that he Was not looking good and mostly dropped out because of not feeling it. 

Lance: No, he's he's on it He his build up is working really quite well. 

Matt: Okay. Yeah, because that was my hot seat question is Jake you know 

Lance: Jake has gotten caffeine for all of us in 

Matt: this weird situation where Jonas Jonas's build isn't looking good.

Matt: Who's their go to guy [00:27:00] Mateo? It's gotta be my show. He's or sep Seps, I've heard of 

Lance: him Sep is training. Yeah, he hasn't really he hasn't raced or do they 

Matt: do they say both of those guys go maybe in which case American, we need an American Eagle squealing going on in the background. Caw, caw! In the background.

Matt: America takes over. And then we just gotta go all hardcore. Visa Lisa, Visa, how do you say that? I don't know. Visa Lisa bike. The Bumblebee team. Go yellow, red, white, and blue. Yes. It 

Lance: was like we got an American team. Yeah, so that was really exciting to watch. It was, it was pretty crazy. So, uh, Jake, any other thoughts on Perry Nice at all?

Jake: I'm just, I don't know. I am excited to see some Americans that are actually starting to have a good showing. I'm hoping that that translates to, you know, more Americans getting excited and the ones that are kind of good saying, Hey, that could be me. Kind of a thing. I probably won't meet or amount to much, but I don't know.

Jake: It's just kind of fun. But, [00:28:00] um, you're seeing some teams that are good. Getting to look pretty strong right now. And you're seeing some people that could very well have a really good spring and lead into some good, good racing for the grand tour. So we'll see. 

Ian: I was listening to the Geraint Thomas podcast the other day, and, uh, those guys were saying that those one week stage races like Paris Nice are probably the Most challenging races of the whole year because there's no off days.

Ian: Really? There's no off days. The pace is generally higher. The weather, especially this year was terrible. Um, it, it basically doesn't get any more challenging. It's full court, full bar racing the whole day, every day. 

Lance: The other race that happened during the same week was Tirano Adri Adriatico? Yeah, that sounds right.

Lance: Adriatico. Adriatico. Tirano Adriatico. It goes across Italy, basically, from one coast of Italy to the other coast of Italy. And so another, it was a seven day stage race, and um, Who [00:29:00] ended up one, it was the person they thought Yao Alameda or Juan, Juan Ayuso. Nope, Yao Alameda was in Paris. Names are too close.

Lance: Juan Ayuso. He 

Jake: is looking strong too. The UAE, I don't know how you're going to stop them this year. Even at the, uh, the Visma Lisa bike guys. I don't know how they're going to stop them. 

Lance: Juan won't do a stage race the same time that Pogacha will. Is that what he said? No, it is kind of what's known about him.

Lance: Okay. He He wants to be the guy. He wants to be the guy, so he's He's better off being the team leader at the other race, at the other stage races that Pogacha doesn't go. Sure. Because I think he was on the team last year and then still I would, 

Matt: I wouldn't be surprised if it was in his contract that he's like, leads, that he leads the team, or whatever it is.

Lance: He's only 22 or something? He's really young. But he, but he took third in the Giro as a [00:30:00] 19 year old. Mm hmm. So yes, he has some talent. Got some chops. Yes, he got some chops. And he won this. Not fairly easily, he won by 35 seconds, but, but, uh, he won the stage, there was only, it only has like one like climbing stage, and he won that stage pretty handily.

Lance: So, the crazy part was, Felipe Ogana was second. 

Jake: He would have had a better finish too, had he not had the mechanical in one of those days. I, I, he might have been inside 3k, so maybe he didn't lose much time, but he had a chance to get some time there. Could have made it a little bit more interesting. 

Ian: Yeah.

Ian: So there was one ferocious attack by Ganna. Did you see that? He came from like 15th wheel or something and just the acceleration was stunning. You know, he was so strong. 

Lance: Well, I mean, he's one of the best time trialists on the planet. He's on the bike, held the hour record for a while. He's got 

Ian: a punch as well.

Lance: He's got a punch and he's a big guy. So the fact that he climbed that well at a stage race, kudos, man. That's pretty fantastic. [00:31:00] It's kind of Wout esque a little bit. Yes. And Pidcock raced very well as well. Yes, he has started off hot, so way to go, Pidcock. Do 

Matt: we know if his team's gonna be one of the, whatever They're on the bubble car, wildcard teams.

Matt: They're on the bubble for the tour, right? For the tour. But he, does he want to do that? I wonder if he, I wonder if he wants to do that. 

Lance: I don't think he will be in the tour this year. I think that's kind of the rumor that's been floating around. Cause if he's not in 

Matt: the tour, then his team's not gonna make it.

Matt: It's all, it's all on him. Yes, 

Lance: it's all on him. Well, we'll see. That'll be fun. Cool. Interesting. Uh, those are the two big things I wanted to talk about. That's it. Sweet. Anything else? 

Ian: What's coming up this weekend? 

Lance: Milan San Remo is coming up this weekend. That race is on Saturday. Um, the first monument. We can watch that on the max 

Matt: probably.

Matt: I don't know. We don't know. Okay. I 

Lance: think that's, that's my guess. The first, uh, it's the first monument of the season. Strade Bianche, we didn't talk about Strade Bianche, but, Strade Bianche happened a couple weeks ago, but it is not, uh, [00:32:00] one of the monuments. Official 

Intro: monument. Um, 

Lance: Milan San Remo is, um, uh, a unique race because of its length.

Lance: It is almost 300 kilometers long. It's a 180 mile race. So that's what makes it Um, so difficult and that's why they make it a monument. And 

Ian: everything's decided in the last 10 miles. 

Lance: That's correct. And there's two main climbs, um, in the last 10 miles, the Suppresso and the Poggio. Neither of those are difficult, long climbs.

Lance: They're short little kickers. But because they come at mile 170 or 165, it makes it, it makes them the deciding factor. So, that should be a very exciting race to beat, to, to watch, because, uh, Pogacha will be in it, and so will Vanderpool be in it. And those two guys are super exciting to watch. 

Ian: What's your predictions, then, on this?

Lance: Well, um 

Matt: Pogacha goes at, like, mile seven. [00:33:00] Pogacha. He's crazy. You're probably not wrong, Matt. He's probably crazy, 

Lance: he's 

Matt: crazy. 

Lance: Pogacha's best move is to go, not on the Poggio, which is only, like, five miles from the end, but to go on the Suppressa. Yes, to press and try to get away, uh, from the group, but he's going to be so marked that it makes it difficult.

Lance: Um, he was close last year, but he got caught. Actually, yeah, he got caught and he actually tried to sprint it out. They ended up third or fourth last year in the sprint, if I recall. I don't know why I'm remembering that, but because there's no super big climbs, um, generally, a sprinter wins this race if they can make it over the Poggio with the group.

Lance: And if that's the case, then this is a, this is one for Philipson or Mads Pedersen. Those two guys. I 

Matt: think, um, MVP potentially would be. I think, like, you get, you have that last kicker, Poggio, climb, like, [00:34:00] I think that's where you go, if you're him, and he's punchy enough, you can get a little gap and hang. 

Lance: I think I heard Johan Bernil say you need 15 seconds over the Poggio to make it to the end.

Lance: It's funny how well they know. Yeah, if you get a 15 second gap over the Poggio, you can hold it. 

Ian: And then you've gotta be an incredible descender to hold people off. 

Lance: Correct. 

Ian: Um, and then when you get to the bottom, I think there's something like two Ks left. So then you have to hold off your chases at that 

Matt: point and 

Ian: hope they're not organized enough to chase you down.

Matt: I think that like someone like MVP can get 15 seconds on the, on like the Peloton, like on the pack, especially after it's been thinned out. But I don't know if he can get 15 seconds on everyone, but I don't think he'll have to. That's my prediction for the race. Yeah. Yeah. All 

Ian: right. Pedersen was climbing so well the last day of Paris Nice, so he's looking super strong.

Ian: He's looking great. [00:35:00] He's a great pick. And then Philipson, um, in, uh, recently showed that he's, he's far more than a sprinter as well. Also. He's got a lot of endurance. Philipson 

Lance: defending champion. He won last year. 

Jake: He came from nowhere last year. As a matter of fact, I think, didn't, um, MVP kind of lead him out?

Jake: And we're looking, thinking MVP. And then all of a sudden Phillipson kind of pops in the screen. Wait, where, where did he come from? And then he just went by everybody. If I'm not mistaken, that's how that played out last year. Um, for those playing along at home, if, uh, if it already hasn't happened, you can watch it on max and it will start at 5 0 5 AM Pacific time.

Matt: I think Pogacar wants this one like worse than any other race that is on his calendar. I think he wins this one. No, we got a no over here. Who are you gonna pick? Phillipson? Phillipson. 

Jake: Hmm. 

Matt: That's a good pick. I'm picking MVP. I don't think Pogaccio will get him. 

Jake: You can't beat Taddei. He wants this and he's gonna get it.

Jake: He's gonna do something special and nobody's gonna be able to answer it. Do something stupid. He was pissed last year. Between his [00:36:00] form and fitness right now and his just killer instinct and then you couple his teammates in there that are gonna be able to help mix things up a little bit. You might see the sprinters have a hard time being there in the end on purpose because they want to make separation and I think that's how it's going to play out.

Jake: Taddei did bounce off the tarmac 

Matt: two weeks ago. Yes. He's fine. He did. Okay. And he still won the race. He crashed and still won the race. 

Ian: Last year he tried. He went on the Chiopressa. Yes. And 

Matt: I think all he 

Ian: did was blew off. His teammates and all the other sort of second tier guys. And he didn't manage to get any separation over the rest of the favorites.

Ian: Maybe he 

Matt: can send some teammates up the, up the field, you know, like send them off ahead somehow. I'm sure they've got a plan, but they need to listen to my plan, which is send a couple of teammates out, you know, off above in a breakaway somehow. I don't even know how that's possible. And then just drop the hammer on the Poggio.

Matt: Catches, you know, right [00:37:00] in with the team, like obviously if he breaks on the pojo, if he breaks his team or whatever, whoever he's got with him at that point closes, I think that's a potential way for him to win it. I'm very excited to watch this one this weekend because I do think that this is a race that he is extremely excited about going after.

Matt: I mean, he's probably kind of, at least this first half of the season focused his training on this particular race. So, um, I'm glad that we have some, Some discussion amongst us a little bit of divergent opinions on who's gonna win this one I think I'm just 

Ian: kind of bored of Pogi winning everything. Yeah, anyway, there's enough climbing for 

Lance: him There's not enough hard for him.

Lance: Yes. It's just the 

Jake: distance. 

Matt: This is why they have the race. Yes, that's correct We should so we we have bets or we have we need some sort of like Betting on this stuff. Coffee. Coffee. Beer. So 

Jake: if Matt and I win, Lance has to drink two cups of coffee. 

Lance: And the loser gets a close up shot of my ass crack. Oh, I [00:38:00] already got 

Matt: that though.

Matt: Done. All right. So that 

Jake: means that Pogge loses. The stakes 

Matt: are high. The bets have been made. Everyone loses in this. Everyone loses as far as I can tell. Got it. 

Jake: Cover art, maybe? All right. Sounds good. Anything else champ? Champ out! Champ out! Let's do this. 

Matt: Oh, I like this. I did it 

Intro: with nothing but my own blood, sweat, 

EPO Chain Mail: and tears, and extra blood.

EPO Chain Mail: People don't. Yeah. You know, this is a sport with literally hundreds of dollars on the line, and dozens of fans that Stakes are medium. Come on, how do you beat a man on drugs if you're not on drugs? Wait, did you just admit to being on drugs? The E. P. O. came in. Send us a text with your questions. Forward this podcast to 15 people and you'll lose 10 pounds overnight.

EPO Chain Mail: What does the E. P. O. stand for? 

Matt: Email. You've got me. From an electric post office. From an electric post office. Okay, gotcha. Thank you. 

Jake: All right, our first one, we've got several of them, and [00:39:00] we've, I've actually had somebody say, no, don't make it shorter, I like that, and I'm like, uh, all right. Okay. All right, the first one, uh, comes to us from Joplin, Missouri again.

Intro: Wow. 

Jake: Question, or not question, it was more of a statement and then followed up by a question. Lance claimed to be calling in from Arizona, but it sounded like he was a news recorder reporter in a cave in Afghanistan. Related, any mobile phone and carrier recommendations? Not really cycling specific, but we can make it cycling specific because some of you guys ride out in the middle of nowhere.

Jake: What service do you use and does it work well when you get out in the middle of the boondocks? Okay, 

Lance: in my defense, I'm on the Verizon network and I was using AirPods in my ears, uh, so that's why the sound wasn't good. And I was at a trailhead, my wife was hiking, that's why I sounded like I was on location.

Lance: How's the gravel riding 

Jake: in Afghanistan? Is it good? No, 

Lance: it's terrible. You gotta look out for the landmines. So yeah, I have uh, Verizon and it treats me great. Ian? 

Ian: I had, I have AT& T which is great up here [00:40:00] where I live, but in Arizona I could not seem to get more than a couple of bars anywhere. 

Matt: Ian had trouble like all over Arizona.

Matt: I feel like AT& T is great here and it's spotty a lot of places. I just feel like. I don't know. I feel like it's not quite as consistent as Verizon. Verizon's more consistent, 

Lance: I feel. Throughout the, yeah, I don't know. I've had few trouble. I'm, I'm off grid a lot, and, and Verizon tends to hold on a little bit longer.

Matt: Do you have a newer iPhone, cause the, they have this, like, satellite bit, which, it's like It's huge, because I was pushing a couple years ago for you to get one of those Garmin inReach things. I was like, you need this, don't die. And now I feel like you don't need it. Yeah, 

Lance: the new cellphones, you can actually send a location and a text via satellite.

Lance: Is there an 

Jake: extra charge for that though? 

Lance: There is not yet. 

Ian: When you say new cellphones, starting with what? I 

Matt: have the 16. Yeah, I want to say iPhone 4. 15 and 16, maybe. I think it is 

Jake: the 15 because I got a notification once that I could send something via satellite. I was like, [00:41:00] Hey, what's this? Yes. So yeah.

Jake: Um, if you go to 

Matt: the 14 pro and I'm not sure if I can do that or not, we'll see. 

Lance: The, um, um, It kind of came up in the news actually just yesterday, um, The satellite being able to send location because there was a skier at Mount Batchelor that fell in a tree well and he sent Yes He sent an emergency text via satellite that, hey, I'm in trouble Unfortunately, he did not survive, but they did 

Matt: find him iPhone 14 or later So it's 14 or later.

Matt: Yeah, so it works on mine. I think that's a huge feature I think that's it's like it's kind of almost like a little byline feature that they don't even mention on phones But like this is pretty important for those of us that cycle. 

Jake: So we all have iPhones Do they have that feature on Android as well? I have no idea.

Jake: Not that I know of. Yeah. No. Hmm So it's good that Garmin 

Ian: inReach is a great product, but you have to, you have to take in a subscription for that. 

Lance: And 

Matt: like 

Lance: the cheapest subscription is like 15 bucks 

Matt: a month. Yeah. And Apple basically said this is going to be [00:42:00] free for the first year and then they just haven't made it, they haven't charged for it yet.

Matt: So that's been, where are we at? We're like two years that they've had it. So they actually, there's rumors that they're going to bring it to the Apple watch ultra as well. The Apple watch ultra three. So that would be handy. You know, it would be handy. Yeah. Handy. If you're going biking without your, your phone and you, I don't know, we all kind of carry our phones.

Matt: Oh, but like 

Lance: in some of these races, if you're in some of the gravel races, if you're gravel racing and you don't take your phone with you, because a lot of times you don't. What about on Sunday? 

Matt: You had your phone? 

Lance: I did have my phone. Yeah. What about on Saturday? I made the 

Ian: decision not to take my phone with me.

Ian: Okay. Yeah. I was running out of pocket space. Yeah. Figured there'd be so many people around that. 

Lance: What about 

Matt: on Saturday? 

Lance: I took my phone too. I'm, I'm gonna be taking my phone in every race I'm doing because I'm catching footage. 

Matt: Well, you have your GoPro. I'm a big time YouTuber now. I just need to use that camera.

Matt: I'm a big 

Lance: time YouTuber, so I do have my GoPro, but sometimes I find something else I want to [00:43:00] film and I use my phone to do that. That's 

Matt: YouTube stuff, man. 

Lance: That's YouTube stuff. 

Matt: YouTube. It's killin us. It's killin 

Lance: me. That's why it's, my door's blown off. That's the only reason. I'm too busy with YouTube. The only reason.

Lance: I need a good story to tell. You 

Matt: were so close. You were, you were like, it was gonna come down to a sprint in the bite, and then it was like, oh, except for the YouTube stop. And then you got 18. Yeah, I got 18. So close. Alright, that was, we did not answer the question. Let's move on. Well, I think we 

Jake: kind of did.

Matt: No, we went right past the answer. Let's go. 

Jake: Alright, two more questions. We'll get through these really quickly. Based on how top riders have performed in the Spring Classics and early season tours, who seems to be the most fit right now? And can anybody make up enough fitness before the Tour de France to challenge Todd Apogacha for the golden shirt?

Matt: No. Todd is the most fit right now, and it's more clear than ever after seeing, like, Yonis. Well, and I thought Yonis was actually kind of crumbling, but it turns out that we think it was from the same day. From that crash. But yeah. The 

Lance: day he [00:44:00] lost time was the day that he crashed. And 

Matt: hurt his wrist or whatever.

Matt: Fifty miles earlier. He did not look like himself. 

Lance: No. 

Matt: So. I think 

Ian: it's going to be more interesting in the coming weeks in the Spring Classics. You'll see more sort of one day oriented riders. Um, you'll get a, a true picture of who's actually fit or who's in, who's in form. Cause it takes a lot more than a, somebody who can climb to, to win a spring classic.

Matt: Right. Well, you've, if you're racing 300 over 300 kilometers on Saturday, 290, 290, if you're racing 290 kilometers on Saturday, you gotta be in decent shape. Yes, right? Like the people that are contending for the win in that race are gonna be fit. Guys 

Ian: I'm impressed with right now, Philipson, Pedersen, Pitcock.

Matt: Yep. 

EPO Chain Mail: All 

Matt: Mateo. Yeah. 

EPO Chain Mail: Mateo. And Mateo, yeah. Yeah. Looks good. 

Ian: I don't, I don't know if Mateo's gonna be a contender in the, in the springtime though. I don't even know if he's 

Lance: gonna do it. I doubt it. Right. I bet he's not. He'll do them. Wout will do some of them. MVP [00:45:00] will do Yeah. Yeah. Most of them. I mean, Tour of Flanders and Roubaix, those are two huge races that, that every Racer wants to win.

Lance: There were, there even, they caught footage of, uh, Taddei Pogacar doing, like, a section of the Ehrenberg forest, which is part of Père Roubaix. And so then, he doesn't have Roubaix on his schedule, so then all these rumors fly that, oh, he's gonna do Roubaix, and he has said in the past that he needs to be five to eight kilos heavier to be competitive at Roubaix, because the cobbles just beat you up so much.

Lance: Do you think that he 

Matt: could ever sweep? Sweep the 

Lance: classics. 

Matt: Has anyone ever, I mean, has, has anyone ever done that? Probably. 

Lance: Eddie Merckx. 

Matt: Eddie Merckx is probably like, Eddie Merckx is probably the person that's Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, we'd have to go back and, that's a good like Google, Google search away.

Matt: Someone's yelling at the radio. So we 

Ian: got all of them except for one. I can't remember who it was now. Belgian guy. 

Jake: What was that? Did you backfire over there? Yeah. [00:46:00] Sorry. 

Intro: Alright. Alright. 

Jake: And then our last question. I don't know if we answered that question or not. But, I don't know. We never do. Toddy. Toddy is going to be Toddy.

Jake: Uh, last question. I haven't been riding my bike all winter. Before I head out On a sunny spring ride, what are some things I should check? That's a good 

Matt: question. 

Lance: Uh, tire pressure, uh, tire consistency, like make sure they're not cut or bleeding anywhere. 

Jake: If you're running tubeless, gotta change out the sealant.

Lance: in there. Uh, check your, check your chain, make sure it's lubed a little bit. 

Ian: Drive, train, batteries. Yes. Topped off. 

Matt: Yeah, I would kind of like go just have a look at your tires, make sure like they're looking Good. Like go ahead and just give 'em a wipe down. Maybe if sometimes there's just dust on them.

Matt: Absolutely. Just kinda wanna give em a little once over and make sure there's nothing. Absolutely. 

Lance: Check your brakes before you head down Hill for the first 

Jake: time. I would recommend wiping off your disc rotors or wip 'em off [00:47:00] the brake tracks. If you're riding REM brake, make sure that those things are nice and tacky and with things with ice alcohol.

Jake: Yeah. That works. Yep. I got 

Ian: my gravel bike ready to race, uh, this for this weekend and I hadn't ridden it all winter and so I, um. I deflated the tires and topped off the sealant, tubeless, uh, tubeless tires, right? Yeah. Oh, 

EPO Chain Mail: yeah. 

Ian: Topped off the sealant, put more sealants in there, inflated them, inspected them, lubed the drivetrain, um, charged my SRAM ETAC batteries.

Ian: That's what I was going to say. Charge 

Matt: all the batteries. 

Ian: Um, check the brake pads. That's what I did. Good 

Matt: to charge the batteries now if you've got a sunny ride coming up because you don't want to be like, what happens to me is I'll be like, dang it. It's like, I'll just charge this up for five minutes before the ride or whatever.

Matt: You just, then you're worried about it the whole time. 

Jake: I think for me, me personally, if that were me in that position, I hadn't ridden my bike all winter. The biggest thing is just the tubeless tire, tire sealant. Um, that's going to be the one thing that [00:48:00] probably like just dried up in a pool at the bottom.

Jake: And it's just going to be like going around. Plus you're not going to have it, you know, keeping the seals nice and tight. So you could potentially lose air when you're out on your ride. Uh, that's probably the big thing for me. Other than that, yeah, just go ride your bike. I think that's it. You guys have any other feedback on that?

Jake: No other 

Lance: feedback, but I missed something I need to share, or Champ Bailey missed something. Uh oh, uh oh, 

Jake: Talk Champ. 

Lance: Our own teammate Kylie Hannell, not only did she win the Elite Race at the Echo Mountain Bike Race, Echo Red to Red, And she also lined up at the Rio West gravel race and won that race as well in the elite in the elite field She won overall first female in both those races this weekend How did she stack up 

Jake: beat her 

Ian: dad 

Lance: and she beat?

Lance: Yeah, 

Jake: did they race in the same race? Well, or did they look at times and compare them that way? 

Lance: No, the elites actually started two minutes before the rest of the [00:49:00] Fields. Sure. Did. So I do believe that her dad caught her and rode with her for a while, I'm pretty sure. 

Jake: She's so strong to go chip off the old block.

Jake: Yeah. Fantastic. Cool. Well, any, what were there any other teammates that had any kind of, uh, notable finishes anywhere? Other podiums for either one of those, I don't think you alluded to either of those other than Kylie didn't, 

Lance: um, 

Jake: her, 

Lance: her dad, uh, Chris took third in the men, 50 to 59. Good job. Um, behind two former national champions.

Lance: Uh, Christina Gray, um, was, she won the women's, uh, uh, 50 to 59 and she was second female overall as well in the long course. Now there were 

Ian: behind Kylie, right? Yes. Right behind 

Lance: Kylie. She was. So they want to do it. Well, she was 30 minutes behind Kylie. That's still, that's awesome. But 

Ian: well, she had a mechanical as well.

Ian: Christina didn't. 

Lance: And so many [00:50:00] people bailed and didn't do the long course too. A lot of people bailed out. So, super good results there. Tom Counts was 4th in Tom Counts is in my age group. He was 4th. I was 7th. He smoked me. Way to go Tom. So, that was exciting. Oh yeah, and then 

Ian: Gary, Uh, got um, 1st in his age group.

Ian: Yep. Cool. I got 1st in mine. 

Jake: You guys crushed. Good, good showing for the team. One of these years, I'll be out there riding bikes with you again. One of these years. It's coming up soon. All right. I think it's time to move on. Let's do our topic for this week. And it's kind of timely, if you will. Time trialing.

Jake: It's, uh, coming up this week, the Michael Myers Memorial Time Trial. Is, uh, the race that we put on Ian is our race director and we were kind of talking about that a little bit before the show and the topic kind of came up about time traveling in general. So the question is, why should you do a TT [00:51:00] all the reasons why you should do a TT?

Jake: And if you're listening to this, and we will have it out well in advance of the TT, um, consider coming out if you're a local to do the time trial, especially if you're on our team, damn it, come on out. Um, so do you guys want to just take it from the top and give us like some of your best reasons why you like doing TTs?

Ian: Well, let's start with, uh, let's start with the fact that it's an, it's a. It's not an intimidating race to do it. If you're new to pinning on a number to going bike racing, it's a great way to get that experience to get the race vibe without sort of the dangers involved in a crit or a road race or gravel race, you know, it's, uh, 

Lance: You still feel the race energy of being in, you feel the race, energy, the of being 

Ian: there, but it, it's a, a solo effort roll up at the start 10 you just racing against the clock.

Ian: So [00:52:00] it's a great introduction 

Matt: Yeah. To 

Ian: racing. 

Matt: I remember one year we had like a whole bunch of triathletes show up, like we had a massive dialed group. I think we set a record, I think it was. 

Jake: My memory serves me corrected was 56 or 58 teammates that showed up to that one race, which was unreal. Pretty cool stuff.

Jake: That's fantastic. Yeah. 

Ian: Well, this year we're last I counted, we had nine signed up for dialed cycling. I'm sure there'll be more. This 

Jake: race is pretty notorious for people signing up late. Um, when is, when does late registration end? 

Ian: Thursday, 8 PM. 

Jake: Okay. So this should be up before then, but we do have to have registration.

Jake: You can show up on site. You can get. Registered out there. I think that opens up at seven 30 in the morning, if I'm not mistaken. And first racer goes off at 9 AM, but it's all based on what category you're in. So depending upon your category, you can come and check it online. Cause it'll be posted up on our website, the adult cycling team.

Jake: com. And you can see where you would technically slot in based on what category you're racing in. Do you want to talk about the [00:53:00] different categories? And this is another good reason why you should do it because it's a pretty diverse thing. It's not like you're going in there and stepping up against the.

Jake: The elite of the elites and you've got to go race against them and you're not going to have any chance you're racing based on your category group. So, you know, one through five, and then we've also got, and it's the biggest categories out there are the Eddie categories, which are, you don't get to use any, um, time trial specific equipment, no aero equipment, you get to ride your road bike.

Jake: And you don't get to wear a skin suit. You don't get to wear an arrow helmet. You can race wheels that are, I think we changed our rule for our race up to 50 millimeter depth dish. Give or take, give or take. Yeah, ish in there. We're not going to come if you're a 52 exactly. And we made that decision because a lot of bikes these days come with bikes with that wheel dish depth.

Jake: And we just didn't want to tell people you can't do it because that's what your bike came with and you don't have another wheel set. So we kind of expanded that a little bit, but there's a lot of options for everybody. 

Ian: Yeah. You know, time trialing over the last. A few years has built significant barriers to entry because [00:54:00] just little tweaks on your bike, on your wheels, on skin suit, helmet, all of these things make a, make a difference of seconds.

Ian: And when you add that up, it can be five or six or 10, 20 places in the results. And so kind of developed into this arms race and a lot of people geek out on that. But it's a, it's a. Good thing to try and get as sleek and aero and fast as you can. However, a lot of people can't afford that, you know, especially juniors, especially there's, there's, there's a lot of cons to that as well.

Ian: So at our time trial, we're offering the best of both worlds. You can compete in the traditional TT categories in the morning. We have different ages, like 10 year age groups, I think. 

Jake: Yep. 

Ian: Um, And then in the afternoon, we're doing these, as Jake said, Eddie class races, which essentially you use your [00:55:00] regular bike.

Jake: Sure. 

Ian: It can be an aero road bike, but it's. Designed as a road bike. 

Jake: A drop handlebar bike or you can ride a flat bar bike if you want. You just can't ride in an aero cockpit. 

Ian: Right, exactly. So yeah, we've got, um, we've got a lot going on. I mean, back to the reasons for time trialing though. Um, my second point would be.

Ian: To test your own fitness. You, your biggest competitor is last year's version of yourself. So although course conditions change every year, you know, the barometric pressure, the wind, everything is different. Uh, temperature, you still get a good idea. You can look at your power numbers and say, yes, my winter training has paid off.

Ian: I've been doing things right this year. I'm in good shape or no, I need to tweak things. Or, you know, how, how do you feel about your performance on the day? Because there's no. Everybody gets the same conditions basically, or at least the peers in your start group, [00:56:00] your age guys will have the same conditions you do.

Ian: So it's really comparing yourself against, against yourself from prior years or. 

Jake: Yeah. I, I really love the idea that you can go out there and you can really test yourself and look back at your power numbers to see how you did. You know, there are so many people that will come out of a winter and say, Oh, my FTP is fill in the blank.

Jake: And I honestly, I don't really care. That's such a. Subjective thing anymore, and it can be inflated or deflated. And there's so many different ways to test it. It's just like, it almost feels like it's lost some of its validity, but you can't lie when you have to go out there and race against the clock.

Jake: And granted, it's not going to be your traditional, um, FTP test, if you will, but I'm sure that there's probably something out there if you do a 12. Well, it's a 12. 2 miles, so 20 K bike race. And it takes you somewhere between 28 and 34 minutes ish, you know, or more or less, depending upon what your fitness level is.

Jake: You can kind of take a look at that. You can take a look at your numbers and you're like, all right, this is where my fitness is at. 

Ian: Absolutely. And I, 

Jake: I know me personally, the, the [00:57:00] best year I had on the bike in terms of like the way that I felt and my fitness, I started off the season with the best power numbers that I'd seen at that time trial.

Jake: Um, it was. Prior to Michael's passing, but I had the best power numbers and I'm like, alright, this is pretty good. I adjusted my, my training based on those numbers and my fitness stayed pretty high and I had a really good race season. 

Ian: Yeah, absolutely. I was talking with one of my clients last night and We discussed exactly that nobody really wants to do an FTP test and all of those protocols you use are, uh, they vary that there's, there's a lot of, um, room for error in, in the FTP testing protocols, whether you're.

Ian: Doing it outside, doing it on a train is a big difference, but go in and look at the results from a TT effort and extrapolate that out to an hour. And you'll get a pretty good idea of this is [00:58:00] the fastest I could go, right? The best I can do because you're, you're. You have that competition going on, you want to do, you push yourself harder and you can really look back at your data and go, this is my FTP now.

Intro: Sure. 

Ian: And so many people, like you said, have an inflated idea of their FTP. What does that do? It means every training session is harder than it needs to be. And it's not targeting what you're trying to target. You're riding above your actual. Physiological threshold, which is not doing what you want to do.

Ian: So, 

Jake: yeah, another thing that I really like about it too, is it teaches you how to pace like it, it really teaches you how to pace like you, if you come out the gate too hot and you get to like for our race in terms of like doing the turnaround and then you just start to fall apart. Like, yeah, you got to learn how to come out and, and, and try and have a little bit of a negative split if you possibly can, but you don't want to finish soft because you came out too hard.

Jake: So you got to figure that, that part out for yourself. [00:59:00] That pays big dividends in a lot of different ways, because when you learn how to pace yourself, when you actually go to do some of these more, you know, proper road races or a crit race, if you ever get yourself into a position where you're in a break or you've got to lay down some serious Watts to put some gap in there and to hold the field away from you.

Jake: You're going to, you're going to know what that feels like, and you can, you can draw back off of that experience and say, all right, I did it there. I know I can do it again. And a good example would be that same year that I had that best effort. We did the Barton park road race and I remember breaking away.

Jake: We've talked about this before on the past and it wasn't supposed to work out this way. The first time up the wall in this circuit race, we had to go around six times. You know, I, I, I gapped and I didn't have no plans of trying to make that stick, but you know what, it's stuck. And then I had to, I had to learn how to just stay in that position for almost was an hour and 48 minutes.

Jake: I think is what the race time was. I was solo. So I had to draw off of the fact that, all right, I've done this before. And as our good friend, Dr. Chris Hannel would always say. Don't give up until they catch you, you [01:00:00] know, just keep going. So like I had that tripping in my, in my ear. Cause he'd said that to me so many times.

Jake: And the other part of me was like, you've done this before. You can make it happen. I think that full almost two hours, my normal was my normalized power, average power, whatever. I think it was the normalized power was over 330 Watts for that hour and 48 minutes. It was just ridiculous. 

Ian: But you, it gave you confidence having done the time trial.

Ian: You, you had, you have a better, um, Idea of what you're capable of. Yeah. Perceived exertion. Yeah. Where, you know, without even looking at the power, you get a better feeling for what your body can actually do over the long run. 

Jake: Sure. Yeah. So yeah, there's, there's a lot of little things that you can draw off of from that.

Jake: Um, that little like go out there, make yourself hurt and suffer in a time trial. And again, kind of sounds sadistic, but when you're out there and you're actually doing it, you're, you're hurting, but it's not that terrible. Like, cause you're like, I got this, I got this. And you're just like chipping away at the miles.

Jake: And you're like, I'm a little bit closer. Just keep doing it. And if you break it down into smaller palatable sections, you can [01:01:00] like really convince yourself to put out some pretty big efforts. 

Ian: At least you don't get covered in mud . 

Jake: What else have you guys got? Yeah, you're, what's it again? Random. 

Ian: When you look at your data after a time trial, if, if you look at your data after a time trial, it's, if you see that your normalized power is right close to your average power, you did.

Ian: Right. You've put in a, you've done it right. Done it. Right. You've got a consistent effort. Yeah. I mean, let's talk about tech, you know, there's more to time trialing than just going out as hard as you can. Sure. And you alluded to this when you talk about negative split. So the biggest mistake is going out too hard.

Ian: And this is a mistake I made down in Tucson. It was a super short time trial. Like. Only, well, it was less than five miles. It was like 

Lance: four and a half miles. Yeah. Eddie style. No, no time trial equipment. 

Matt: So were they strict about the wheels or anything like that? No, 

Ian: well, 

Lance: as long as you 

Ian: were in this. 

Lance: They look, if they looked at your bike and it [01:02:00] looked like a regular bike that you were good to go, you could wear an arrow helmet.

Lance: They did let people wear full on arrow helmets. But 

Ian: being such a short race, you know, the temptation is just get on the pedals and drill it. Yeah. And I did for like. Three minutes. And then I started running out of gas and then my heart rate was through the roof. And then I had to kind of freewheel and stop pedaling.

Ian: And I never really recovered. So you go into the red, you overcook it. It's hard to get back on track. I think 

Matt: that there's probably some value in going the first leg. We're talking like the first quarter mile, like, like drilling that a little bit, right? Because you need to get up to speed and it's worth putting in a bigger effort than your average for that block of time.

Matt: And then I think the most ideal way is literally trying to keep that IF value as tight as possible and just keep it pretty even. It's really hard when there's wind in different conditions and different things like that, but man. 

Ian: Yeah. And then you could say that, you know, if there's a downwind and a upwind section that it's better to.[01:03:00] 

Ian: Put a harder effort in against the wind, you're going to make more of a difference than if you have the wind at your back or if you're on a hill, you know, to drill it on the hill 

Outro: and 

Matt: there's little things, 

Ian: but yeah, a consistent effort. And Mike Myers is, uh, the, the time travel coming airport, it's, it's 12 point something miles, 20 Ks.

Ian: There's not a lot of hills. Not a lot of hills, no. Not a 

Lance: lot of hills. It's like, it's like 12 feet of elevation gain. There's no hills. It's dead flat. 

Matt: I think there's an ant hill in there somewhere. There's 

Lance: a, there's a bridge, not a bridge, but there's a little rise next to one of the, uh, uh, one of the, uh, uh, ramps, like boat ramps.

Lance: There's a little rise on the backside, but that's it. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lance: Literally, it's like 12 feet. 

Matt: It's nothing. It's awesome. 

Lance: Yeah. 

Matt: It's a great place to get out there and test yourselves, which is why you're doing a time trial to begin with. Right? I mean, like if you have a coach, your coach is going to absolutely love having real race data.

Matt: [01:04:00] Yes. You know, you're not doing an FTP test on a hill. You're not doing an FTP test in your garage when you forgot to turn the fan on. It's a real world scenario and you can extrapolate that data out. And this test is probably 30 minutes, right? And so that's enough volume. It's not like 3 4 miles. It's enough volume that you can extrapolate that out.

Matt: 30 minutes, we think? 

Ian: I still have not broken through 30 minutes. I've done 30 minutes and 10 seconds or something like 30 minutes. As a coach, 

Matt: you can look at that and be like, okay, I can, you know, I don't know if you would want to use 20%. You probably want to use somewhere between like 15 and 20 percent or something like that to be like, okay, this is a good FTP value.

Matt: Although doing it's hard to really push yourselves on the flat like that. It's a good place to test yourself for sure. But there's no stop signs. There's the turnaround and that's about it. Yeah. 46 feet of elevation. 46 for 

Jake: the whole 12. 14 miles. Too hilly. Too hilly for you. 

Ian: Jake, talk about, um, or somebody, let's talk about how it [01:05:00] came about the history of this.

Ian: I'm 

Jake: going to talk about one more thing then we'll get into that real quick. Um, one other thing that you can definitely work on and I'm I have a little anecdote here as well is just how to get yourself more aero. You might think you're aero until you get up against somebody who is way more aero than you.

Jake: And you're like, damn, that, that makes a big difference. So in that particular race that I was talking about, it was back when it was called the Jack Frost time trial. I raced in the Eddie category and I raced against good friend, Dr. Chris Hamill. And he and I had a little friendly bet before that race.

Jake: And I was not going to let him beat me. And I, I think I narrowly beat him by. It was maybe 10 or 15 seconds at most. I can go back and double check this in a moment. But, um, I put out and I'm looking at Strava. I don't have the actual power numbers. You know how Strava likes to bastardize their power numbers.

Jake: So I'm not even quite sure what the actual numbers are. I have to go pull it up on my old Garmin account. But anyhow, the average power that I had was 364 watts for that race, right? And I finished the time with like 29 minutes and 51 seconds. That was, those [01:06:00] were my metrics. And I beat Chris by, again, it was just, Seconds it was not much his average watts if I remember right we're floating right just over 300 watts So I was over 60 watts higher than him and beat him by just mere seconds And that goes to show you how slippery that guy is in the wind.

Jake: Yes, but to my point, there's only 46 feet of elevation gain Again, yes, he's a lot lighter than I am, but we're talking about a flat road race a flat time trial You should have smoked him. Yeah, so Again he's way more flexible, but he is just so slippery in the wind And it was at that point in time, like I kind of already knew that, but that was like a big slap in the face.

Jake: Mike, I got to start working on my position. I got to work on getting lower and figure out how to get more streamlined and aerodynamic. You know, you can't just brute force your way through these things. If you want to climb the ranks and get even faster, if I could figure out how to find handles position on my bike with those Watts, that would have been like.

Jake: It would have been game over. Yeah. You know, I wouldn't have lost, um, for the, I wouldn't have taken, I [01:07:00] think that year was like my third or fourth year taking second place in a row. And that particular year I got second place by three seconds. So 

Ian: it's a, it's a good thing for heavier guys cause it's more about absolute power than that.

Ian: Then what's per kilo. Yeah. But it's also about your CDA. 

Jake: Yeah, that makes a big difference. So you can go out there and you can take a look at all of the parts and things, and then you can go find some similar people size wise and you can look and see how they, you know, stacked up against you. And then, you know, you got some work to do.

Jake: How do you 

Ian: like to get aero in your, in the Eddie class? Do you ride on the drops or on the hoods? 

Jake: On the hoods, bent elbows, bent over. Yeah. So forearms. Exactly. You can't do the puppy dog paws or whatever it is, but you can definitely just kind of tuck everything in and not go down in the drops. I did go down on the drops just a couple of times just to get like a little reprieve.

Jake: And that was to actually get through some of the turns as well, just cause you want to be a little bit more in control there. But, uh, yeah, that was, that was me. Yeah. So yeah. Cool. All right. So [01:08:00] your, your question was how did the Michael Myers memorial time trial come about? Well, it used to be the Jack Frost time trial for a long time for, I think that was like 30 plus years.

Jake: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's quite old. There was a, a club, a bike club, if I'm not mistaken, Beaverton, maybe I don't remember. Beaverton Bicycle club, I think is what it was. Whatever they did that for, for many, many years. And then the, the gentleman who was doing it. If my memory serves me correct, don't quote me on this, but if, and if you know, correct me, but he was kind of done and he was ready to move on.

Jake: Didn't want to do it anymore. And then, um, our friends over at zone five, the, the previous, the, the, you know, the original zone five crew, uh, the Davids took over the race, I think in God, it might've been 2015 or 16, somewhere in there. And then they did it for a lot of years. And then the last year that we all did it under zone five.

Jake: Was I think 20, 20, 20, it was like, it was the only race that we had at COVID. And then at that point in time, and we'd, we'd lost Michael already. Um, we lost [01:09:00] Michael in November of 2018, um, zone five was pretty much kind of done as well. And they decided to move on. And that's when Scott Schultz took over zone five.

Jake: Um, Scott, I don't think really wanted to get into the road game because they had a bunch of road races that they did and we saw this as a perfect opportunity for us to step up and to honor Michael, um, after his passing, because that man loved him some time trialing and my God, was he fast on a TT bike?

Jake: Holy crap. Could that guy lay it down in? He just crushed. So we thought whatnot. What a better way, what, there's no better way to honor him than to have a time trial that he loved. Granted, it's just a small little local time trial to get, you know, sometimes two to 300 people that show up there and name it in his honor and just, you know, just keep honoring Michael.

Jake: So 

Ian: yeah, I mean, for a lot of us early on in dial cycling team, the original sort of group we had, that was our first meeting or experience with Michael. It was for me. 

Jake: Yeah. 

Ian: [01:10:00] You know, just coming up and, and introducing himself and being so encouraging and, and, um, enthusiastic and stuff. And so, you know, I tended to equate Jack Frost time trial with Mike because that was the first time I met him really.

Ian: And I was. I was so impressed with, with how open and friendly he was and everything. So it seemed very fitting that we should take over that race to honor that guy. 

Jake: Yeah, you know, I kind of, I did, but I didn't, uh, Jack Frost has a long storied name, right? And it's just been around in this area and everybody knew what it was.

Jake: So we kind of came in and just changed the name. And people still kind of will refer to it as Jack Frost from time to time, but it is kind of neat to see people now more identify it with the Michael Myers memorial time trial. But I don't know, I still kind of feel like there should be some way that we kind of pay homage to the whole, you know, original Jack Frost, but the fact that it's Michael Myers, I'm happy with that.

Jake: That's good. For sure. It's a 

Lance: good dude. [01:11:00] The first time I ever did Jack Frost was in 2016. So, um, and I think that was my first year too. And I'm in the, I'm in the master's men 40 to 49 field and I'm on the return. I am just, I'm feeling so good and so fast. And there was a bit of a tailwind and I am just like screaming at like, you know, screaming at like 28 miles an hour thinking I'm just crushing it.

Lance: And I got blown by, by some guy going so fast, he just like, just like, I must've been his like two minute man. He just smoked by me. And I'm like, am I doing out here? This is a mistake. I hate this race. That was Michael Myers. 

Matt: On his Trek speed concept. Yes. He blew past me. He got low. 

Lance: I think it 

Jake: was 2017 that you must have done that lance.

Jake: I just looked it up. 

Lance: It was 2016. Was it 2016? I was on Belgium [01:12:00] bike bio racer back then. I was on a different team. 

Jake: I know that you were out there because that was the first time I ever met you in person. Yes. And we've talked about this before. I was in the start house. I don't know. There was one person that was getting their countdown, one person behind them.

Jake: And then it was me and I'm standing there and I really don't know anybody. And I was racing on a different team at the time, actually with Ian on a monster media. And I'm standing there just kind of like getting in the zone, getting ready to do my first official Oregon bicycle race. And I hear this. Are you Jake Fonduring?

Jake: I'm like, huh? Who the heck knows my name? Nobody knows who I am. And I look over and it's this guy and he comes up and he's like, I'm Lance Hepler. Nice to meet you. I'm like, Hey Lance, I think I, we follow each other on Strava or something like that. So 

Lance: we were just, I was Strava stalking you. That's all it was.

Jake: So yeah, that was, uh, it was kind of a good place. A lot of us connected there and met each other for the first time, but yeah, that, that year I, I got second place as well. I didn't, I, I didn't realize that you actually raced that day. You did? I think so. Cool. How about reasons you don't want to do a time trial?[01:13:00] 

Intro: It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. Is there any reason 

Jake: why you shouldn't do a time trial? And there's Gibble showing us a little TT photo action on his Pinarello. 

Ian: March 6th, 2016. That's right. 

Jake: Yeah. Well, no, the race was actually on February 21st, 2016. That's probably just when that came out from Hot Foot Photo.

Jake: That's right. Yeah. Why would you guys not want to do a TT? Besides the fact that it hurts like crazy. 

Ian: That's the fact. I 

Matt: think rough weather is probably less enjoyable to participate in for sure. At least you're not 

Ian: covered in mud. 

Jake: Yeah, that's true. Have you guys done that race before when it was absolutely miserable?

Ian: It was pretty 

Jake: back 

Ian: in 2016. It was raining. I believe it was a little bit rainy. It was, it wasn't too bad. 

Jake: Yeah. I've 

Ian: last year it was super windy, right? 

Jake: Yeah. We had one year where it was just magical weather. I think it was that year that we set the record. It was something like low sixties. And for that race [01:14:00] in late February.

Jake: That was like, where did this weather come from? Can I order up some more of that? Um, yeah, but that race though, there's always some sort of weather. It seems like it's threatening something. And we've had years where it was supposed to snow and it just like, it kind of held off or never like came to fruition and it just didn't happen.

Jake: And that can definitely affect the numbers. But when we used to do this race, it was the very first race in the calendar. And granted this year was pushed back just because of a scheduling conflict, but it generally is the first race of the year. And if you're going to do racing, bike racing in the spring here in the Pacific Northwest, you're going to be confronted with crappy weather.

Jake: It's just, it's not if, but when it's just going to happen, it's a good time to go out there and understand too, like what it feels like to race in those kinds of conditions and what kind of gear you need to wear and how much or how little you can get away with. 

Ian: Yeah. And, and you start. With your peers.

Ian: Right. Everybody in your age group, um, starts within 10 [01:15:00] minutes of each other. Yep. And so everybody's exposed to the same conditions as you are, you know? So if you are miserable, at should be, you know, that you're not alone. Mm-hmm . Uh, this coming Sunday, I believe the, from what I see right now, the rain's gonna hold off until the evening.

Ian: So we 

Jake: Yeah, that's what I was reading as well. It just could be good. Cloudy, upper fifties, chance of rain in the evening, so we should be unscathed. Oh, that'd be great. Upper fifties is a. Great temperature. Yeah. Yeah. Like once you get warmed up, that feels good and you're not gonna be too hot. Especially like if it were to be mid to upper sixties, that might not sound like a lot from certain parts of the country, but when you're used to it being 40 and you're outside training, for those of you guys that ride outside still, um, , when it jumps up that much, it can really wreak havoc on you.

Jake: Yeah. As a matter of fact, going back to the Barton Park race, I remember one year we did that at Grand, it looked like a, a team, team race, uh, a team ride rather. Um, I remember. That time and one other time it jumped up. It was a mid April race and it was something like low eighties and so many people cracked and fell apart because they just were not acclimated to that, that warmer [01:16:00] weather.

Jake: But anyway, go out there and do it. Any other reasons why you wouldn't want to do 

Ian: it? When it's cold outside, when the weather, when it's a clear, cold day, the air pressure is higher. You'll go slower. 

Jake: Oh, 

Ian: right. 

Jake: Yeah. 

Ian: So the air is more dense. 

Jake: Yeah, so when the 

Ian: temperature goes up, you might, you might set a faster time.

Jake: There you go. So what you're saying is you've dialed up a pretty good set of conditions for everybody to come out here and do the race. Um, what can we expect when we get out there? What's it going to be like out at the race? What's the vibe going to be? What's, it's always a good vibe at our races. I think we've got a raffle that's going off.

Jake: We've had a lot of, uh, different brands step up and send products. So we'll have cool stuff there. We've got a bunch of swag for podium prizes. It should be a lot of fun. We'll have music and. Just fun things. It's a good time to come out and check out. If you're local, come out. Say hi. Boys, anything else you want to talk about with respect to TTs?

Jake: Okay, we're moving on. One last thing. One last thing. Matt, you want to start us off, bud? 

Matt: Um, yes. [01:17:00] I have been a little bit slow to post videos. Just, I don't know why, but it's taking me more time than it should. I'm posting a video next on the Garmin Instinct 3, which is, uh, it's nice because I have the three different varieties of this watch and that's kind of what we're going to do.

Matt: Compare and contrast a little bit of the different options that you have. There's an AMOLED version and a memory pixel version. The memory and pixel version has solar. Um, so you get a lot more battery life with that one. And so that's the video that's coming up. I was hoping to have it done by tomorrow.

Matt: That's not even going to be close to happening. It'll probably be like Friday before I get it done. And the video after that will be the, um, Apple watch bands in their potential to cause cancer. Ooh, yes. Because of the PFAS chemicals that they use within their, some of their watch bands. That's a good, that's kind of a fun one.

Matt: It's a fun video. It's, it's a. kind of get to work on that. So cool. That's it. Yeah. 

Ian: I [01:18:00] usually finish out by plugging the upcoming races, but since we've just spent 30 minutes doing that, I'm kind of lost, but people 

Matt: sign up. Where should people go to sign 

Jake: up? Obra? Obra. Obra. org. Obra. 

Ian: org. Slash schedule. Slash March.

Jake: Yeah. Or you can just go to Obra. org and just find your navigations and make your way there. 

Ian: I wanted to reflect on Sunday and how cool it was to be out there with our teammates. You, a lot of these people we don't see that often, but you have a, um. It's a great time of bonding with, with people that you have something in common with and, uh, it's, I would love to see more dial people out there at these races.

Ian: I know we have a really big team. Um, it's just fun. I mean, you know, I'm sure the mountain bike race on Saturday, there was even more of us out there. 

Matt: I think we 

Ian: had a reasonably good showing out at, um, Pendleton, but, uh, it's so cool. [01:19:00] And, um, yeah, come out and race with us. Yeah. That's all I got to say on that.

Lance: Hippler. I don't want to miss teammates that, that raced well this, uh, weekend. Uh, Cameron Berglin, um, she won her, uh, age group at the mountain bike race. Echo red to red 

Ian: Tim, 

Lance: uh, Tim Dorman won his race at the, uh, mountain bike race. And, uh, Chris Surratt was just off the podium, he was fourth, but again, we had almost 20 people out there at the mountain bike race and about 12 at the gravel race, so thank you very much.

Lance: If you want to see some footage of either of those races, I did post YouTube videos about both of those. Uh, so Channel's awesome, channel's 

Matt: crushing. 

Lance: I don't know if it's awesome. It is, Lance. I'm still working, Lance working. That's enjoyable. 

Ian: Lance. I just watch it to see me 

Matt: it. It's good that you're staying consistent and making videos and you're doing a really good job.

Jake: You're doing a fantastic job, my friend. Thank you. Those, I, I actually have, like, I, I, I, I will check now almost daily, just [01:20:00] to make sure that like, oh, did he post something today? Or I'm just like. Kind of hanging like, how's this injury doing? And like, I don't get to see you when you're gone. And I'm so fricking busy that I don't even think to call you or text you and see how you're doing.

Jake: I'm like, I'll just watch this video while I'm riding on the trainer of why I'm sitting on an airplane for six and a half hours and see what's up. So, but you're doing an awesome job and they just keep getting better. And I just want to keep encouraging you to keep doing that. I'm trying, you're doing a good job.

Jake: And I love like the little like educational bits that you put in there that you kind of talk about, like the things that are native to wherever you're at and you know. That's just little tidbits like that. You're being yourself and if you're kind of finding your way, I really think that you're doing a fantastic job.

Jake: Where can people go watch these and where can they subscribe so you can get to that monetization? You're like creeping up on 600 of them. I'm close to 600. And you started with not very many. So I started 

Lance: with 20. 

Jake: Yeah, that's great. 

Lance: So, so that's good. Yeah, I just, it's just on YouTube. Search my name, Lance Hepler, H E P P L E R two P's and uh, you'll find me.

Lance: Cool. 

Jake: Good job, dude. Keep it up. Thank you. I'll try. [01:21:00] Um, my one last thing is gonna be a hot seat question for you and for listeners. Ooh. Should we drop our PG rating? 

Lance: Dude, we, how, 

Matt: uh, 

Lance: Fuckin A. 

Matt: Oh. 

Lance: Jake's got a run at it. Dammit, now I gotta edit. Um. I 

Matt: think we keep it. You think we keep it? Yeah, I vote keep it.

Matt: Keep the PG rating. Ian, what do you say? How are we gonna get the Disney sponsorship, Lance? But it's not coming. There's so much money from Disney. I just gave them so much money. Are we PG right now? We're 

Ian: PG, yeah. I'm not trying hard enough, then. Yeah. 

Jake: Oh, when you do try, that just means I have to edit more, so.

Jake: What do you say, Lance? No, I don't think we keep it. You think we should just drop it and be after hours kind of thing, or? Yeah, cuss this thing out, man. So, here's my thought. Like, I really don't care. It's just not like I'm, like, trying to be, like, Mr. uptight, prim and proper, but for a long time, I'm like, we've got juniors who I believe listen to the podcast?

Lance: Yeah. 

Jake: But I'm not sure if they actually do. That's also true. I 

Lance: don't know 

Jake: [01:22:00] either. I have no idea. And I don't know if it And they 

Ian: probably all go to public school. I mean Yes. 

Jake: Yeah. They can handle cursing. That's true. Yeah. So, I mean, I'm not talking about us just coming in here and F bombing all the way through the whole podcast.

Jake: Too late. Have you listened to one of our podcasts? Shut the fuck up, dude. No! No, seriously though, but would it, would it change the dynamic? Would you guys have a little bit more fun with that? Maybe? 

Lance: Maybe. 

Jake: Maybe not. I don't think it 

Matt: would change us a bit. I 

Lance: don't think it would change. We're pretty ingrained in how we do this.

Lance: We don't hold back 

Matt: any, during any conversation. No. No. 

Lance: I mean if it comes out, it 

Matt: comes 

Ian: out. Just do it right now. 

Jake: Well, if it's happened in the past, I've always, pretty much, I don't, there might have been one or two that have slipped through just because I didn't catch one up, but they usually get edited out.

Jake: But anyway, how about this? How about you guys send us a little text message on the podcast, the EPO thing, and let us No, yes or no. Like, and tell us why too. I'd be kind of curious to hear that. If you want to hear some of the real conversations that we have [01:23:00] before the podcast and some of the hilarity that comes out of that and some of the verbiage that comes with it, that are pretty fun.

Jake: And we've got some funny songs that get left out because I'm like, Oh yeah, I made that, but we can't 

Ian: podcast bloopers. 

Jake: Let us know though. 

Ian: Cool. All right. Well. 

Matt: After hours. It's been dialed out for half an hour. We haven't done one of those in a while. Totally different podcast. 

Jake: All right. Well, that's enough of that.

Jake: We'll, uh, be back next week with another one of these. Thank you for listening. Until then. Bye for now.[01:24:00] 

Michael Myers: Hey Chris. Say hi. Oh, that's so sweet. He's kind of an all star of the group. He's masters. Right there, that's Chris. That's Chris Weirdman right there. He's got more wins than anybody else on the team. He's a badass. Uh oh. There's a leader right there. That's Jake. Alright, Jake. Oh, they're picking up pace right there.

Michael Myers: Yeah. There's Whitney right there. He's my teammate. That's right. And there's Kim. She's sporting it right there. Very nice. Thank you, Kim. There's Gino. Say hi, Sean. Thank you, Sean.