Lydia Tanner: Mountain Bikes, Meditation, and Muesli

Mountain biker Lydia Tanner has won two collegiate national championships and raced internationally with Team USA. She is a long-time coach at Boulder Junior Cycling and content strategist at TrainingPeaks. You may have read some of her gear reviews in Bike magazine.

Colby once coached Lydia, and in this interview, she recalls her apathy toward training and riding during that period of her racing career. Lydia reveals why she was struggling so much at the time: Sadly, she was dealing with the all-too-common issue of an eating disorder. That, in combination with a myriad of serious injuries and concussions, eventually took its toll; she got to a point where she didn’t touch a bike for years.

Now, the bike is all about adventure for Lydia. She and Colby talk about some of their epic rides in the past, including Lydia’s 500-kilometer, 40-hour ride.

They emphasize the importance and struggle of finding and understanding one’s identity outside of sport and career. As coaches, they discuss the issues with training young girls to be aggressive with their teammates and training partners.

This and much more on today’s episode of Cycling in Alignment.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lydlovesmud/

Lydia on Bike Magazine https://www.bikemag.com/author/lydia-tanner/

Episode Transcript

 

00:13

Welcome to the cycling and alignment podcast, an examination of cycling as a practice and dialogue about the integration of sport right relationship to your life.

 

Colby Pearce  00:25

Oh, hello there listeners, your back. That even means that someone’s tricked you into listening to this podcast, or that you actually enjoy my ramblings. You’ll enjoy today’s show, no doubt with my amazing guest, Lydia Tanner. Lydia is an intelligent, insightful and introspective woman. She takes time to share some of her philosophies about racing. Why she has chosen to compete and stop competing at times in her Racing adventures and she’s very open about some of her struggles in the sport. If you want to reach out with comments about today’s episode, or just yell at me or compliment Lydia, make the keyboard Madrid’s cycling in alignment at fast labs.com. And I’ll do my best to respond in a timely manner. Disclaimer, I’m currently experiencing an email landslide of epic proportions. So it’s not you, it’s me. But I’ll do my best hang tight little camper.

 

Colby Pearce  01:50

I have always had good conversations with you and we’ve worked together and obviously we worked together a long time ago. But then more recently, when you came in for a fit, it was like, it just seemed like we had some big flow and good ideas and good philosophical ideas to discuss about cycling and, and in particular I listened your podcast with Dave. And I felt like that was a great episode. But to me it was just like we just painted the surface. Yeah, of some of the things that I’d like to get into. I felt like he asked you a lot of really good questions, and you had great answers, but I’d wanted more, I want to unpack some more long form long form. So, Lydia, welcome. Thank you. Thanks for taking the time to come in today.

 

Lydia Tanner  02:31

Yeah, it’s good to be here.

 

Colby Pearce  02:34

It’s a nice, sunny day here in Boulder, Colorado, hot, hot 90, but it’s a dry heat,

 

Lydia Tanner  02:41

as always, right.

 

Lydia Tanner  02:43

Which I Learned is actually better for sweat.

 

02:45

Why is that?

 

Lydia Tanner  02:46

Because the gradient helps with evaporative cooling better. So if it’s dry out, your sweat works better than if it’s humid out.

 

Colby Pearce  02:54

I would agree with that. The downside being when we’re in Breckenridge or whatever that everybody Every exhale you take, you lose moisture out your breath. It’s the equivalent of leaving your refrigerator open and trying to air conditioned your whole house with it. Right? Yeah. So when we’re doing our Super Bowl, epic mountain bike rides up and wherever, and fulfilling feet of elevation, and altitude. I learned the difference between this only recently.

 

Lydia Tanner  03:20

Really, what’s the difference?

 

Colby Pearce  03:21

Well, altitude technically is when you’re flying an airplane. It’s when you’re up in the atmosphere. elevation is wh en you’re on the planet Earth, but your distance from the center of the Earth has changed or grown or shrunk.

 

Lydia Tanner  03:33

So like what if you’re on a mountain and you like jump into there?

 

Colby Pearce  03:36

Then you would be starting at a high elevation and adding some altitude?

 

Lydia Tanner  03:41

About amplitude.

 

Colby Pearce  03:44

If you jump in yell really loud. That’d be amplitude, I guess. Yeah. So nice. Have you been about making much? No, not even a little bit?

 

Lydia Tanner  03:56

Yeah. Yeah, I think we talked about that a little bit last time because I forgot that you were a mountain. You forgot Yeah. Even though you like, got me to do the epic and and told me all about it and gave me all the beta I totally forgot.

 

Colby Pearce  04:09

I’m sorry. You know, that’s how the human mind works. We compartmentalize things.

 

Lydia Tanner  04:12

Yeah, yeah. And I think I just always think of you as like a track racer and like a writer and yeah, fair point.

 

Colby Pearce  04:17

Yeah. Make the sacred crosses for a while to tell us about yourself.

 

04:22

What do you want to know?

 

Colby Pearce  04:24

Who are you tell us everything.

 

Lydia Tanner  04:27

That’s a big question. The

 

Colby Pearce  04:28

little bits, the big bits. You grew up here in Colorado.

 

Lydia Tanner  04:31

Yeah, I was born here in Colorado grew up doing a lot of skiing and mountain biking. I was actually really committed to being a ski racer, as you do when you grew up in Colorado, but I blew my knee two years in a row had two ACL surgeries. And while I was rehabbing that my physical therapist and Trombley told me like you should just be a mountain biker because I was riding a ton of stationary bike to rehab that knee the first time around with the injury. I was like Oh no, you know, I’m still gonna be a ski racer. And then I blew my knee again after like five days back on snow and I came right back to and she’s like, you should just ride bikes. Yeah. And so that kind of got me started and yeah, I A got really serious about it really fast. There weren’t the same sort of pathways I think for juniors into the elite ranks back when I started, so it was kind of a rough go of

 

Colby Pearce  05:24

1. However, when you start mountain biking

 

Lydia Tanner  05:26

12 but then I was 15 when I started racing, okay, yeah, 15 and 16 were the years I blew my knee. And yeah, so it was it was that sort of like, you start racing, and you’re really good because you’re 15 and there’s like four people at the races and then they send you to Europe, and it’s really gnarly. And so, yeah, it was it. I loved the experience of it. It was it was great to travel. It was great to learn that I can be really really scared and still ride fast. And that you know, I can be in these really fast Eliminating heavy situations and still pull it off. I think that’s a really valuable thing to learn when you’re a kid. But ultimately, I was like, way too, like, I didn’t have any perception of like, context or balance, and I was way too into it. And I got like, way sucked in and it wasn’t good for me. So I ended up kind of stepping away when I was like, 2223. That was just I think around when, because I started working with you when I was what 21

 

Colby Pearce  06:28

I’m a terrible chronological person unless it happened in my own life. I can relate it to my own racing career, then that would require me to know how old you were

 

Lydia Tanner  06:36

settling for. I think you’re still going for a Masters record at that point.

 

Colby Pearce  06:41

So 2013 No, wasn’t that No. Yeah, it was. Was that reason? Well,

 

Lydia Tanner  06:46

my lot, so I raised the World Championships in 2010. Okay, um, no, as a you 23 Ah, okay. But I did my first World Cup that year also as an elite and that was it was amazing, but it was really I heard I started working with you, I think right after that. And I was already like pretty fried if I remember, and I feel really bad for hiring you because I think it was pretty rough. I just remember being like, my power meter never works. My heart rate monitor never worked, always got lost. I was run into construction. I was like, Oh, yeah, like, I was going through my training log, actually, last year to like, see what I’d been doing back then to see who was really that hard. And I literally don’t think I’ve ever completed a workout that you gave me. I think I just always had like, some reason why I couldn’t do it.

 

Colby Pearce  07:34

And I think we went through a pretty good run like that.

 

Lydia Tanner  07:36

Yeah. But you’re so patient with me and you just were like, okay, you know, you got to do what you got to do. I think at one point, I sent you a picture of my foot which had gotten really frozen on a bike ride. Because I was training in Montana and I my foot was like, like AC white, purple and was like coming back to life and it looked horrendous and I was like, Kobe needs to understand this. Yeah. You’re probably like

 

Colby Pearce  08:01

Yeah Tanna will kick your ass. Colorado’s brutal but Montana’s nother level.

 

Lydia Tanner  08:06

Yeah, I lived there for seven years. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, that was the that was the end of bike racing for a while for me. And I just kind of had to relearn how to be an athlete, which was, like, took a lot of soul searching and a lot of ego honesty and had to be really sedentary at times just to see what would happen. And like, I got really into climbing because it’s a really intentional and mindful sort of activity. Like I think everything about bike racing is about ignoring how you feel but like everything about climbing is about tuning into like every Minish show that you can feel. Hmm,

 

Colby Pearce  08:45

that’s an interesting statement.

 

Lydia Tanner  08:46

Yeah, the times when I’ve tried to, and I know you’re probably gonna disagree with ignoring what you feel in your bike racing but

 

Colby Pearce  08:53

Well, that’s it as a coach, I try to teach my riders to look inward while they’re riding. In training and racing, for sure, I think that’s ultimately the goal. For me the goal of any sport is connection of its unity of mind and body with intent. Yeah. And you do that by looking inwards.

 

Lydia Tanner  09:10

So scary.

 

Colby Pearce  09:12

Oh, so right about that. Any people it is scary.

 

Lydia Tanner  09:16

It’s super scary because it’s really painful. And it involves like a lot of like, realistic talk about, like your abilities, which sometimes isn’t like really what you want to know about yourself.

 

Colby Pearce  09:28

So okay, great statement. Let’s, let’s examine, you get into sport because you want to be a competitive athlete. You want to prove how good you are. But then the more of the sport drives you and the more elite and you get towards the more you you travel or progress towards the elite end of the sport, the more you’re forced to look at your own abilities and come become connected with yourself and look inward. You see what I’m there sort of a dichotomous path there in that sense because the further you go towards the higher end of the sport, the more competitive comes and the more truth comes out. I mean, this is what I think is beautiful about the bike. Yeah, you see people’s personalities come out while they’re racing you can see it on their faces. Yeah, they’re that the demons come out. Yeah, you sponge the demons now

 

Lydia Tanner  10:12

and I remember you telling me that at one point you’re like I love looking at photos of people racing you’re like cuz you can always tell exactly who they are on the bike and I my my immediate reaction to that was like that my photos are terrible. Oh, I was like, I bet I look like I’m just dying inside. I think the the higher level you get in the sport, the more honest you have to be about where you’re at. Because to make those improvements you have to know like, without ego where you are, right. That’s, that’s scary. It’s hard.

 

Colby Pearce  10:42

Isn’t that what makes the sport beautiful, though?

 

Lydia Tanner  10:44

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cuz when you see someone who can do it, they’re like a superhero, I think.

 

Colby Pearce  10:50

Mm hmm. Yeah. In the sense that they can look themselves directly in the mirror and see what’s there and be honest about it. be okay with it.

 

Lydia Tanner  10:57

Yeah. And I think you get that sense from elite athletes that in any sport really like that they’re kind of they know themselves really well.

 

Colby Pearce  11:07

On the flip side of that, we could say that if the athlete looks and looks at themselves, honestly and sees through their own layers of bullshit, when they’re at the highest level of sport, but at the same time they begin to identify with that self, then if that is taken away from them, they can have real challenges. Right?

 

Lydia Tanner  11:30

Yeah, but I think that everyone has a self outside of sport. Well, I hope so.

 

Colby Pearce  11:36

I know what I hope you’re right. What I’m saying.

 

Lydia Tanner  11:39

Well, I know because I’ve been there. I didn’t think I did. And it took me a really long time to like, dig into what I was outside of bike riding. I think everyone has something there. I think there’s there’s always a bedrock there. I think it’s hard especially when you get a lot of your self worth and community and validation and And what have you from your sport? And I think, yeah, I think if you’ve only ever had success in a sport, it’s really easy to just be like, yeah, this is who I am.

 

Colby Pearce  12:10

Right? So the problem there being Of course, that just like anything, sport is impermanent,

 

Lydia Tanner  12:16

right? Because we all get old, we all get old, we all get injured,

 

Colby Pearce  12:20

we all get injured. Yeah, we all can’t go as fast anymore. Don’t get a contractor don’t get invited to go back to the next national team camp or Now, of course, if you are clever enough about it, you can just parlay it into a job as a director or a coach, or a whatever and keep your identity sort of alive in that sense, but from the other side of the fence, I suppose.

 

Lydia Tanner  12:39

But then it’s like, is your job your identity?

 

Colby Pearce  12:41

For some people? I would argue it is. Yeah, I mean, there are there are directors I know of men in particular who pretty much live the exact same life they did as a racer. The difference now is only that they’re doing the same races they’ve always done. But in a car instead of on the bike. They’re having the same adrenal load. Same cortisol only they don’t have the physical release of it. Yeah. Instead they go to the hotel bar And drink a beer after every stage and then they swap tends to be the result.

 

Lydia Tanner  13:12

Yeah. Do you think that they’re happy with that?

 

Colby Pearce  13:15

Couldn’t tell you to be like,

 

Lydia Tanner  13:17

like, Is it just perpetuating that like satisfaction and identity and community and validation? Or is it? Is it like holding on to something too long?

 

Colby Pearce  13:26

Right. Great question. Yeah, I would imagine there’s some both in there for a lot of those people. Yeah, probably depends on how at peace they were with their own racing demons. And also, if they’re still practicing this sport, I mean, someone who truly loves the sport and wants to treat it as a practice will see it from all different sides, and perhaps be able to look at it through the eyes of the athletes, they’re now directing or assisting or sports sciencing or whatever they’re doing, and still play the game. In that sense, find ways new ways to solve problems, new ways to, to geek out on the technology or new ways to find tactical solutions to problems they couldn’t find. When they weren’t racers, if they’re coming out from that angle, perhaps it’s still an area of growth for them and their wives. Yeah. But if they’re doing it because they got married when they were 24, and they basically didn’t know their wives for the 10 years, they kept racing. And then they went home one winter went, Whoa, what did I do? And then they sign up as a director to run away from their wife and kids then or the themselves.

 

Lydia Tanner  14:21

What do you think is like a better trajectory as you lose that ability to get validation slash communities? You know, so self from racing,

 

Colby Pearce  14:34

you’ve already touched on this point. I mean, ultimately, all the tools we have are within Yeah. So if you’re looking at for external validation through sport doesn’t matter if it’s through sport or through likes on Instagram or podcast listens, or whatever you’re working towards, and then that external validation will eventually evaporate. it’ll eventually change it will eventually shift or go away and less You’re I don’t know, Tom Cruise. Yeah. So, or Angelina Jolie but

 

Lydia Tanner  15:06

more beautiful by every day, right?

 

Lydia Tanner  15:10

I don’t mean Tom Cruise.

 

15:15

disagreement, Tom Cruise? No.

 

Colby Pearce  15:18

More of a Brad Pitt guy myself.

 

Lydia Tanner  15:20

Oh, yeah, he does get better every day to

 

Colby Pearce  15:22

Well, I’ll say it this way. What we’re looking for is validation. You’re only gonna find validation within yourself. Hmm. Well, that’s your bedrock. That’s your to borrow your term. Yeah. I mean, you have to rely on your own foundation. You have to rely on your own sense of self insecurity and self love to know that you’re good enough to go out and express your best potential on whatever you’re doing. So if you don’t believe in yourself or you think that only a coach or a teammate or a race result will get you the approval that you need to be the person that you think the world wants you to be. Then you’re gonna be, well, you know, like the old colloquial saying goes, life will give you the lesson until you pass it. And when you pass it, you move on to the next one until you pass it, the lesson will be repeated.

 

Lydia Tanner  16:10

Yeah, I think there’s lots of ways people get validation. And being your own bedrock is awesome. I think it’s hard when you’re getting lots of validation externally. Right. You bet. And I think I think racing is a great tool to learn about yourself. And I think in like a really healthy way, it can give you those tools so that once you reach the peak of that trajectory, you’re really well set up for life. Right. But I think more often than not, people get more dependent on the validation than they need to right or that they should hate saying should but yeah,

 

Colby Pearce  16:45

yeah, we’re on the same page on that word, and so well, right. I mean, okay, let’s, let’s have a thought experiment. Let’s imagine that you are laying on your deathbed. You’ve got some painless, peaceful passing coming up. And you reflective, you look back on your life. Are you gonna be like dammit, I wish I would have won that bike race to train harder? Yeah. I mean, maybe if you are the handful of people we can think of who missed an Olympic gold medal ended up with a silver by a fraction of a second or if you’re Shelly olds and you flat it out of the break in London.

 

17:25

Yeah, right to

 

Colby Pearce  17:26

paddle or having some like horrible mistake. I mean, it’s possible you could look back on that moment and go, Oh, I got screwed. Yeah, but we all have moments where we got screwed in life. It’s just that some of them were like, I had the world’s most perfect cup of coffee and the cup, the cup, the bottom of the cup fell out and it went all over my lap. And that was just like, that was the best cup of coffee I’d had in a long time. I hadn’t had one in a month or whatever. Not a big deal, but and then other people miss gold medals or get in traffic accidents on the way to a job interview or who knows what or maybe they lose that super smokin hot girls phone number and then She’s gone forever. Yeah, we all have moments like that. But really what I’m getting at is when you’re laying on your deathbed, are you gonna look back and say to yourself, like, how are you going to look upon your life and judge your own existence?

 

Lydia Tanner  18:14

Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s kind of the point I got to with racing is I was like, I know, I will not look back on you know, wishing I try and look back on the sport as a whole. Like, what it gave me as a tool in my life, right? And what I learned from it that I could carry into my relationships and to my family and to my community, right. I really think the sport has a lot more to offer than you know that rock and metal is those are great moments in their memories that we you know, if we have a few good ones, it’s awesome. But I think the the larger hole is what’s more important, and I think it’s a tool I think of it more as a tool now.

 

Colby Pearce  18:53

So what what tools did racing give you exactly to deal with relationships or work?

 

Lydia Tanner  18:58

Oh, man. Well, a lot of how not to bee’s knees. Okay,

 

Colby Pearce  19:03

how do you how do we not be?

 

Lydia Tanner  19:06

I would I tend to become overly like my tendency is to get really sucked into racing because I’m really competitive. Yeah. So and it took me a long time to realize I’m neither happier nor faster in that place like, I am a mess. So it’s a weird thing that as you’re like, this is my natural tendency, but it’s something I need to not do. Right. But yeah, I mean, I think any anything in life is like that if you get too sucked in or you become too dependent on it, it, it makes you sacrifice other parts of your life that are really important. So

 

Colby Pearce  19:41

I think astrologically that would be termed yourself node. Right? I don’t know what that means. So it’s sort of like it’s, it’s pretty much what you described. It’s a thing that you can really get invested in and really devote a lot of time and energy into and it’s got a powerful draw for you. Yeah, but when you sort of fall that draw to the to the nth degree, it becomes natural. constructive, it actually starts to undo you apart or, or really starts to not serve you. Right? It’s not a positive end, it sort of takes you down. Yeah, that’s a, that’s a South node tendency. I think when people recognize those in themselves, that can be a little bit instructive. You know, I’m, like, well, a simple example would be like a bowl of cashews for me might be a self node. These are delicious. And there are not very many foods that all tend to eat unconsciously. Yeah, but if there’s a whole bowl of perfectly roasted and salted cashews next to me, like all sudden, it’s like, oh, why did I really eat that whole bowl of cashews and then there’s a little lump in my stomach. More of a

 

20:40

sounds pretty dark, right?

 

20:44

It’s like exactly the same thing. These are my strong look.

 

Colby Pearce  20:50

More of a metaphor than a direct example. But um, I mean, I okay, to be more, more direct. I’ve had some self note while so. specific days of training on the bike. I recall training in I think one year I was at super weak and the day got canceled. Super weak for you young uns out there is what tour of America’s Dairyland or Toad used to be called, was pretty much the same races in the same courses except all the credits were 100 k long instead of an hour or an hour and 10 minutes or whatever they are. And all the guys who were rejected on the tour like didn’t make their tour de france team would come over to meet American girls and drink beer and stay in host family houses in Milwaukee and smash American quit racers especially 18 year old yacht crush souls especially skinny 18 year olds like me. So I don’t know I think maybe this is 98 I remember being out there and one of the days got canceled because it was super stormy like tornado warning. So I was like, Well, I’m not gonna miss a day training. So I bought training. And I put on some terrible I went through a pretty bad 80s like techno music like European house music phase and

 

Lydia Tanner  22:03

that’s mandatory when you’re 18 and road racing,

 

Colby Pearce  22:05

is it? Yeah, okay. It makes me feel a little better. But it just had this relentless beat you know, and it was on repeat this is the day of MiniDisc players. Also for you young uns who don’t know what that is. I won’t talk about going uphill both ways with snow and stuff but suffice it to say that as much as I love air quotes my iPhone it’s a lot more accessible in terms of things like storage and music, but I don’t remember the name of the band doesn’t matter but it was just just picture like someone beating a metal pail with a frying pan and then add some synthesizers and wick and then put that person on acid and then record what they made and then that’s what I wrote to for six hours Yeah. Now probably pretty effective for you know, a one hour workout but for six hours in a row, I came home and I was just I was like a skeleton like I just kept going and going, Oh, it was like riding to a metronome. Yeah. That was a very south node, right? Like I probably went about twice as far as I should have. I almost died because I pretty much rode right through the middle of a tornado. Dumb ass. And I just throttle myself. Yeah. And, and I remember being really depleted and empty for the next few days. And probably it was a combination of just the kind of constant pace of that ride. And I probably didn’t eat enough and I don’t know all the groceries really close because of a tornado. So the point being is that that’s one instance of sort of South node behavior that you go down the dark path a little bit and something you think superficially will serve you and it ends up actually being your undoing in a way for sure. On a much bigger scale. It sounds like you maybe wrestle with that, as we all do, I think

 

Lydia Tanner  23:43

Oh, for sure. Yeah. I don’t know if it’s a bigger scale. That sounds about the same as me.

 

Colby Pearce  23:47

Well, when you take that same pattern and multiply it over, you know, a month or two months, then you end up really depleted really, yeah. hormonally depleted, right. And negative energy balance.

 

Lydia Tanner  23:57

Yeah, right. Especially when you’re not eating Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I have I remember that ride for me was a, it was a race and so VISTA It was after nationals and it was a race that was just like a local race. And at that point, I weighed like 112 pounds. And I was so hungry and so dizzy, I couldn’t finish the race. I like stopped in the middle of the race and my coach didn’t even say anything. She just like handed me a sandwich

 

Colby Pearce  24:27

just made you eat food. Yeah, yeah. Did you eat it?

 

Lydia Tanner  24:30

Yeah, it was able to eat the sandwich. And I’m glad I was able to I realize that. There’s definitely people who struggle with it more than I did and would not have been able to. So I feel lucky that I had enough of a grip on it. But yeah, it’s it’s, it was a rough one. I remember that.

 

24:50

Yeah.

 

Colby Pearce  24:51

So do you feel like you’ve struggled with body image or watts per kilo kind of mentality and racing A lot.

 

Lydia Tanner  25:00

Yeah, I it’s a weird thing because I think that it’s like an unspoken challenge that every teenage girl deals with when she has to do a sport where she wears spandex. Yeah, I think every female who tries to get into cycling contends with this. And especially when you’re like 14 or 15. And your body’s like changing a lot, and can be really different every day, it seems like and, and it’s not doing what you want it to and like i think it’s it’s just this really, really vulnerable point for many women in the sport, ad, you know, regular teenager in securities into a sport that values strength to weight ratio and puts you in spandex every day,

 

Colby Pearce  25:43

where you’re on display all the time.

 

Lydia Tanner  25:45

You’re constantly on display doing scary things. Right. And yeah, I think it’s just kind of perfect storm. I I know that I am not alone in that situation. I think lots of women have dealt with it to different degrees of openness. But yeah, it basically rocked me for a solid two years. I was I was so overtrained and so depleted that, like, after I stopped working with you, I didn’t touch a bike for two years. Really? Yeah. Over that time, it was like a lot of like, making batches of cookies and eating the entire thing. You know, just like an eating with friends and cooking with friends and going on really big adventures and making sure we ate a ton afterwards. You know, like, I think I had a group of friends who I really think was instrumental in helping me like make peace with like the way a normal athlete’s metabolism should work. Because none of them had any hang ups about it, because they were all mountaineers. They were wearing like baggy clothes. They don’t care. Right. You know, it’s not cool to be skinny when you’re mountaineer. You want to just be able to go for like eight hours, right? Right. So it really helped me shift my whole mentality from I want to be as skinny as erina caliente Eva whose socks were baggy, too. I want to be able to use my body for eight hours and not get grumpy and sad. You no need to nap, right? Feel like I just I went, I edged into that hole that I know sucks in a lot of racers, and I was lucky that I had like people will pull me right back out. But yeah, and I know it’s like a very common thing.

 

Colby Pearce  27:16

You know, looking back on it. I probably didn’t. I probably didn’t suss out that issue quite enough with you. I don’t think I had the instinct to feel that enough or ask the right questions. Yeah. I know later working with like Abby, Mickey, for example. She She told me a couple times that at one point she walked in my office and I literally just looked around was like, Girl eat a pizza right now. Yeah, because she had I could see that she had just gone a little bit too far. And

 

Lydia Tanner  27:45

well, they’re really fucked up thing is that I’d walk into rooms and people would be like, Oh my god, you look so great. It looks so great right now. Right? And I mean, it was literally like, not menstruating hadn’t eaten anything but dry noodles that day. Like it was bad.

 

Colby Pearce  28:01

And that’s that’s a challenge, isn’t it? I think part of what really contributes to that problem is, is watts per kilo. And that’s poignant right now because so many people are swifting I know you don’t do that and I don’t do that. So we’ll just treat it like that character in Harry Potter whose name you can’t say. Voldemort. That one. Okay, yes.

 

Lydia Tanner  28:25

Does not Voldemort

 

Colby Pearce  28:26

is definitely Voldemort. Swift is right there with should in my world. Ah,

 

Lydia Tanner  28:31

yeah, I can I can see why you feel that way.

 

Colby Pearce  28:35

What are bikes meant to do?

 

28:36

ya get you places. Thank you.

 

Colby Pearce  28:38

Yeah. Where how many kilometers Do you ride when you stand somewhere for three hours? Hey, donut.

 

Lydia Tanner  28:43

Yeah,

 

Colby Pearce  28:44

right here. Yeah, I’m and to be fair, swift has its place. I know people like it and probably people having fun. As Phil Gaiman says, if you’re riding a bike and doing it safely and having fun, you’re doing it right. I’m done with that. That said, I have a rash of people coming into my office. Training studio, my fit studio here like, Hey, I don’t know why but my whatever insert body part here hurts more than normal and my is acting up more than normal. What have you been doing? We talked about this Yeah, trainer syndrome. Like, yeah, it like locking a bike into a trainer takes all the things that are bad about cycling and magnifies them and makes them worse.

 

29:18

Yeah, so moving in. But

 

Colby Pearce  29:22

to steer back to watts per kilo, like when you’re writing Swift, and you’re looking at your model watts per kilo, which is just a mathematical model of literally your weight against your power, which has almost nothing to do with real world riding, even mountain biking, which has very, very little dependence on aerodynamics, but there’s so many other variables in a mountain bike race. I mean, how technical is that sport? How many factors are there in the performance outcome of a race? Otherwise, we would all just have mountain bike races? Yeah. And I’m sure that’s not far off. I’m probably not. So so I think that that but okay. What’s the basic problem there? Like? The the assumption is that when you push on one lever, things get better if you add watts, okay? watts per kilo equals speed. If you can either add watts or reduce kilos more, most people try to do both. They train really hard and eat less. Yep. Well, okay, that’s a teeter totter. Yeah. Right. So you push really hard on one level and you’re gonna get reduced performance on the other. Yeah, that’s how it works. But it’s also a 50,000 foot view. Because weight is not the indicator of an athlete’s body composition. Right. I mean, an endurance athlete, a good endurance athlete who is well trained and training in 90 degree heat like we are at admission.

 

Lydia Tanner  30:40

Such a thing,

 

Colby Pearce  30:41

don’t touch anything. But stay hydrated. Yeah. A good endurance athlete can have their weight swing easily two or three kilograms. Oh, more than 24 hours. Yeah, right. Why? Because you drain your glycogen. You ran out the towel and it becomes dry. Yeah, and light, and it blows away in the wind. But then you eat a bunch of food because you’re smart. And you know that you have to refuel. Yeah, stuff that you just used up. And carbs are stored with water. Yep. And when you’re hot, then your blood vault when you’re training in the heat, then your body sucks up more water to increase blood volume. Yeah, so two or three kilograms, which is like four or five pounds in irrelevant units. For those of you out there who don’t know what kilograms are. That’s a big swing and weight and people can get on the scale when they’re looking at the watts per kilo mentality. They’re looking at their metrics with that mentality, and they think more weight is bad. Yep. Then they’re led to an erroneous conclusion, which is, oh, I’m five pounds heavier than I was yesterday. I need to not eat breakfast from where I go right far

 

Lydia Tanner  31:44

right. The more I’ve learned about energy availability and energy deficiency in sport, the more I’ve found that like making that decision is so much more detrimental than just being hungry. Like it sets off this crazy cascade of hormonal effects that Basically negate your training for the day. Yes. And maybe the next three days, right? Like, if you’re so messed up and it takes like, like a deficiency of what, like two or 300 calories before your body basically kicks into emergency mode, especially if you’re a woman. Right? Right, which is, I had no idea that it was that easy to upset that balance. And it’s really interesting as I’ve like, you know, made peace with being puffy sometimes, right? I’ve realized that that exactly what you’re saying happens to me, like, I’ll go for like a big weekend or a big, like marathon race. And I The next day, I literally have cankles and it’s a horrible feeling. You’re like, oh, man, like, I just did this big thing. And I look terrible, right? It’s like negative reinforcement. Yeah, I don’t feel good. I guess I should, you know, and, and my, should I pass

 

32:48

back?

 

Lydia Tanner  32:48

Yeah. Right. Like, should I be like beanie or today, right. But in my past world, I’ve totally would have been like, Oh, God, I gotta I must have overindulged after my race. I should probably, you know, be done and like, right extra hard today right? But now I just realized that it’s part of the process and it goes away in like a couple days and I feel fine, you know, and then I’m rested and I’m ready to train again. Ready to go and you feel great because

 

Colby Pearce  33:11

I feel great went through that hyper compensation.

 

Lydia Tanner  33:14

It’s a it’s a wild thing to actually recover and to go for a ride and feel recovered. Like I don’t think I’ve ever actually got that when I was racing because I was always in that like insecurity spiral.

 

Colby Pearce  33:25

Yeah, yes,

 

Lydia Tanner  33:26

but yeah, I had this big ride this weekend puffed up.

 

Colby Pearce  33:31

Yeah, did you take a day off like I saw your Strava doodles or something? Yeah. Did you go to Winter Park?

 

Lydia Tanner  33:37

Yeah, I went to Winter Park and then back.

 

Colby Pearce  33:39

So how many hours was that each way

 

Lydia Tanner  33:41

way there. It was like seven and a half and the way back was like six and a half. Anyone over Rawlins. I went over birth of the way there. So we went over because boulder Canyon goes we had to go over Logan mill and Sugarloaf Yep, to birth it. And then the next day we came back over Trowbridge. Awesome. That’s beautiful. Wow. Yeah. Oh man alone or anything? No, we got super lucky. I think last time I was up there we got held on and I didn’t have any gloves so I had to buy these like hilarious wool mittens from the gift store. My dad and I were wearing these like wool mittens on our way down. But no, we literally had storms in every direction and we could see them and it was snowing and it was raining and there was lightning. And we just stayed in this like perfect magical bubble of okayness like the roads were soaked. It was sunny where we were nicely for the whole red and then we got a tailwind from hygiene all the way home. Wow. Yeah. Which never happened. Well

 

Colby Pearce  34:34

done. That doesn’t happen a lot.

 

Lydia Tanner  34:36

This is gonna be like a very locals only section of the podcast.

 

Colby Pearce  34:40

Everyone will appreciate the basics of it. Anyway, storms in the tail one on the

 

Lydia Tanner  34:44

Yeah, eight hours at the end of the big weekend. Anyway, totally puffed up. I’m coaching so I had to go do some rides coaching that I took Wednesday completely off. And today I feel amazing. And I was like, Oh, it’s so cool to like know that I’ve adapted to that training. know, and it’s such a simple thing, but I think if you don’t feel good after a couple days, like you’re, you’re too tired, you need to rest more.

 

Colby Pearce  35:07

Yeah. The analogy I like to use with that is it’s as if you’re swimming in the ocean, and endurance athletes become chronically addicted to dunking themselves. So think of every big load, whether it’s in the gym or intervals or race or whatever, pretty much you’re getting dunked, and you’re getting, the bigger the load, the heart of the dunk is. So you’re underwater, you can’t breathe, you have to cough for air and I think the chronic trainer, the chronic cardio, the endurance addicted or what was the term you used, you said you were sort of in that paradigm of constant load. But you had a phrase for it

 

Lydia Tanner  35:40

insecurity spiral,

 

Colby Pearce  35:42

that’s a great one. When you’re in the insecurity spiral, as soon as you come up for air and you take a single breath, you’re immediately concerned about making enough gains or gaining enough ground on your competition or preparing for your next race. You just dunk yourself immediately. Yeah, and you repeat that process over and over again. Yeah. And, look, there’s a balance here. I mean, that’s how you make gains and training at certain points. But if you do that endlessly, then you eventually drowned. Yeah, but you’ll at least become depleted. And really chronically tired and grumpy and you’ll become, you’ll probably end up in negative energy balance, because it’s really hard to eat when you’re almost drowning all the time. Right? So I prefer every once a while, I say, look, you know, for a few days, we’re gonna go up on the beach and just take a nap and watch people play volleyball or whatever. That’s how things are going

 

Lydia Tanner  36:31

or whatever is restorative to you. Right? Like, you know, maybe it’s a hike, right? Like, I like to go for a hike with my dog. And yeah, I think it took hanging out with a different kind of athlete for me to realize that that sort of, like, masochistic, like, you know, no pain, no glory sort of training paradigm didn’t work for me. I think it does. For some people. I think some people have a higher top For being dunked. But I think like, I don’t know, I don’t think I have a great tolerance for being done, I think actually need quite a lot of recovery. But when I give myself that it can be quite fast. Like, it’s it’s an interesting thing. Hmm,

 

Colby Pearce  37:12

that’s a great insight that you had into your own physiology that way that takes, that can be a hard lesson to learn. Yeah, I think you’re right. I think there are people who are more tolerant to dunking, but everybody needs their beach nap. Yeah, right. Yeah. I mean, we’re all humans. And

 

Lydia Tanner  37:30

we all know that that athlete who’s like running on like, pure negativity and hate, and they can be like, real strong. And maybe for like a season or two. Yeah, right. But they never stick around for that much longer. No, and I think. Yeah, and I mean, I think that’s like, my focus as an athlete and a coach going forward is like, what is the most sustainable practice of this work for me? Right. And so that means lots of snaps. Yes. Good.

 

38:00

Good.

 

Colby Pearce  38:00

Yeah. I mean, I think that’s one of our most important bonuses oni as coaches is to I like, what do we all do as athletes, we get lost bumping into trees. And yeah, coach has to look at the whole forest. Right. And you’re constantly refocusing the athlete to that long term view.

 

Lydia Tanner  38:18

Well, and we’re constantly looking up that chart like the Coggan chart about watts per kilo are constantly looking up like the, you know, how fast Should I recover? If I want to be approached or a certain you know, how fast you need to recover? Right? And so you just try to make it so

 

Colby Pearce  38:32

right. And try to fit that mold. You’re saying? Yeah, that’s funny. I just did an episode The other day on formulaic thinking and why it doesn’t work for the individual. Yeah. Be another example of perhaps how that applies.

 

Lydia Tanner  38:44

So is that like a coach’s role you think to like, expand that more?

 

Colby Pearce  38:49

Well, yeah, I do. Like just

 

Lydia Tanner  38:51

slap it out of your hand and be like, stop looking at No.

 

Colby Pearce  38:55

That’s one way to handle it. I mean, ultimately, any coaching program has to be applied to an individual and one of my favorite expressions that I repeat ad nauseum is God is a novelty generator, like what works for Lydia won’t work for Susan and may not work for Mary or may or may not work for Joe. But you’re all individuals, everyone’s going to respond differently and training. Ultimately, no matter what any coach tells you is a black box problem. We are putting an input into a mysterious black box where weird stuff happens that we don’t totally understand. We understand a lot of it, but we don’t understand a lot of it and then outcomes this output. Yeah. And then there are all the problems of the output. First of all, how do we quantify the output and how do we evaluate the output? And are we looking at power looking at watts real race results? Are we looking at RP or we’re looking at ponies seeing on your read? Right? That’s a trick. That’s a very good one. Isn’t it? Number of ponies identified? Yeah, number of wild animals? Yeah. So we look at these metrics this output and then we decide how did our input do? Did we did we write an effective training program? Are we totally off base to this person crash and burn are they smashing watts all over the place? Happiness, watts. And then we modify the input based on the output and also based on the feedback of the athlete. So each of those black boxes is unique to the person, because they have their own physiology. It’s also unique to the season. It’s even unique to the day, month and year. So I’ve had athletes many times come to me and be like, Oh, man, I went so well back in insert historical period here. Yeah. Can we just make the same program? Well, sure, we can. But yeah, there’s about a zero percent chance that it’ll work the same because you’re a different human. And you’ve gone through different things. So all of your cells are different. All of your cells are different grow new ones. Yeah. One of the important jobs the coach, well, three important jobs we can outline one is trade out the forest for the trees. Two is apply a program to each individual rider and try to figure out how they responded to that program. Every rider will respond to every program differently. And I think the third onus of the modern coach, which I’ll go ahead and say a lot of coaches I haven’t quite figured this out yet. And this is a relatively new paradigm. Well, actually it isn’t. But unfortunately, it just hasn’t caught on yet is how hard we can push the recovery button. Because even when you were racing as a younger Raider, and when I was certainly racing, we thought of, we thought of training in terms of Yang or nothing. We had no concept of applying a yen modality to actually enhance the recovery of an athlete. Absolutely, yeah. So you were either on your bike smashing yourself to oblivion, or you were on the couch flipping channels? Yeah,

 

Lydia Tanner  41:32

like, zero. Yeah. Right. Is that so? I’ve been wondering about that. Is that like,

 

Lydia Tanner  41:38

was that just the 90s? Or the 80s? Or is like, do we just know more now? Or were we just being ignorant back then?

 

Colby Pearce  41:46

I think it was both. Yeah, we know more. the only the only other recovery modality we can think of that was applied regularly back then was massage. Yeah, right. The one person you knew who went out and did something weird, like acupuncture, or Cairo was like, well, dude, are you a hippie? What Yeah, like, everyone else just got a massage if they were on a team that gave them massage, or if they could afford massage, which wasn’t many bike racers, yeah. Occasionally every once in a blue moon, you’d find a writer who was like, Hey, I bought this thing called a foam roller. And then people got those little sticks, they would rub their own quads for like eight minutes before they slept, which is sort of like a drop in the bucket really, in of, of like, municipal water, not even good water. Yeah. So now we know so many things, right? We know all the things about lymphatic drainage, and hot cold therapy or ice baths. And we can debate lots of science about whether or not they air quotes work or whether or not they’re worse for you than not. But I think the the big point, that’s not really where I want to go with it, the the point I’m trying to make is that we have a lot more ammunition on our pile of pushing down the other side of the teeter totter, to actually enable an athlete or empower an athlete to actively monitor or actualize their own recovery methods instead of just laying on the couch waiting passively for their legs to magically heal, which they will eventually assuming you’re giving the body good quality water and good food and you’re sleeping. The body is the perfect healing machine. Yeah. But most athletes are a little impatient to let that process happen on its own curve. And they also want a sense of empowerment about their stuff, especially if you’re full time athlete, you’re being paid to your job. Yeah, playing around feels like you’re not working. It feels like you’re even though you’re not you’re actually resting you’re doing arguably the most important part of your job.

 

Lydia Tanner  43:35

Right actually adopting, right, yeah, yeah, I mean, I think a lot of those things are really just ways to carve out a mental window to be like intentional about your recovery. So you’re like, this is the time when I’m recovering so that when you’re when your day is over, you can look back on it and be like I recovered today, you know, when you when you sit on the couch, you look back on it, you’re like, Oh, no, I just like didn’t do anything today. Game of Thrones. Yeah. So I think it’s I think it’s it’s both like You know, having that sense of empowerment but also, like being able to understand that you’re doing something a little more purpose to your day?

 

Colby Pearce  44:10

Yeah, aimless. Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s fair. Yeah. I think that’s fair. I think I, I do believe that’s one area of coaching that is pretty crucial as educating athletes about that. Like I said, push the recovery button. Recovery button. Yeah. So I like to teach a lot of Paul Chuck’s principles, and one of his most fundamental teachings is his six foundational principles. And those are eating, drinking, sleeping, movement. Thinking breathing. Pretty simple, right? So thinking comes down to meditation. For most people, do you have a meditation practice, Lydia?

 

Lydia Tanner  44:55

Oh, man, I wish I could say I do.

 

Colby Pearce  44:58

Have you played with one or tried so I have

 

Lydia Tanner  45:00

Yeah, and I think I think when I am in a really good place, I do have like time carved out for stuff like that. I like to do crafts like to work with my hands. So like, I’ll paint or all, I had had like a massive embroidery project like an old lady last year, it was awesome. So when I have a project like that, I think it’s really easy for me to carve out that time. But I don’t know I’m sure other people have been struggling with this. But quarantine life doesn’t really lend itself to carving out that time really well, when you’re living and working and breathing in the same space all the time. It’s just feels weird to sit down and meditate. I don’t know. It’s hard for me right now. And I’ve noticed that my mental state is not super good because of it like I can I can objectively say I’m not in a very good mental place right now. With like, acceptance. Right. And there’s definitely things I could do for I think, you know, this this whole world right now is hard for people.

 

Colby Pearce  45:55

There’s a lot of challenges out there right now.

 

Lydia Tanner  45:56

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I think so. It’s just like accepting that and then some of it is, yeah, maybe trying to be more proactive someday.

 

Colby Pearce  46:06

It’s so interesting to hear to talk and have conversations with people about how the quarantine her COVID has impacted their lives. I mean, with everything you can imagine from people who are out of work and stressing about where they’re going to find their next meal to people who are working from home but have more time and are bored.

 

46:25

To homeschooling. Right?

 

Colby Pearce  46:28

Yeah, parents who now have to deal with navigating their children while trying to work from home. Right. to people who are working in hospitals and are having pay cuts, bizarrely enough.

 

Lydia Tanner  46:38

Oh, yeah. A lot of hospital folks who got laid off, which blows my mind, because I have elective surgeries anymore. Yep. Yep.

 

Colby Pearce  46:45

I can’t add all those numbers up in my head and understand how that makes me. Yeah, yeah. For me as a personal, you know, business owner, running I think three businesses now I don’t know I kind of lose track depending on where you draw the line. And then as a creative person who’s always He’s kind of got my own projects going on, I found myself busier than ever. For me, this was a chance to like, put the pause button on fit work for a while and catch up on some things and take some classes and do a lot of that stuff. And then my calendar just exploded. And I decided to start a podcast also, given the opportunity to start a podcast, yeah, I feel like creative people, and people who run their own businesses have been busier than ever during this time, because suddenly, they have time to actually sort of make all these long term projects happen. And then inevitably, most creative people maybe tend to overestimate the number of hours in the day relative to the number of hours you can actually do things. I’m consistently make that error. I could smash this and this and this. Yeah. So that’s been my own experience with it. But I found your comment really interesting about not wanting to leave your space Ah, actually on the way here, I made a detour and locked my bike at the base of sunshine Canyon and then walked up to the Red Rock Did some Tai Chi on top of the rocks?

 

Lydia Tanner  48:03

Oh, you know, that actually reminds me actually did that last night too. I shouldn’t say I haven’t been meditating because I’d like to sneak this and I sat by the rocks out there for a while last night. But uh, that’s funny. I totally forgot that I did that. I was like, No, I’m in a hole. I’m sorry. Go on. Good for you didn’t meet ginger. No, that’s great.

 

Colby Pearce  48:21

That’s great. I mean, I know meditation for some people is probably a daunting idea. And it’s, some people probably just consider it like batshit woowoo stuff. And that’s, that’s okay, I get it. For me. I think as a Western person who grew up in Boulder, Colorado, it can be a bit daunting to sort of think that I’m going to undertake some practice and suddenly live like a monk and be able to quiet my mind. It’s a little bit of a misperception about meditation, especially for someone who did grow up in the United States. As a white male in the US, in Western culture, is what I’m getting at. Like we don’t. The mind is like an ocean, the oceans never at rest. It’s just a question of kind of how wavy it is and how whipped up and angry it is or how peaceful and calm it is. But they’re always waves happening, the mind always moving. One of the fundamental practices of meditation can be to observe those waves. And when you observe them, then you realize that you are not those waves. Your life force isn’t necessarily the thoughts that are traveling through your head. They’re like happy little. They’re just wait, Whoa, look at that wave was an interesting wave. Where did that come from? The reason I bring this up is that I think meditation can be a really crucial practice for someone who feels like sometimes they can’t escape their own dome. Their own skull.

 

Lydia Tanner  49:59

Yeah. I’m sure a lot of people feel like right now,

 

Colby Pearce  50:03

I would guess that a lot of people feel that way.

 

Lydia Tanner  50:05

Yeah. Have you seen like a lot of that with your clients? Mm hmm. Yeah.

 

Colby Pearce  50:09

Yeah. And, you know, this goes back to coaching the individual as a unique person. as coaches, we have to meet the client where they’re at. I mean, you have to kind of get to know someone a bit and work with them for a month or two before you bring up certain topics. I mean, some people you’ll figure it out right away, and maybe they tell you, you know, off the blocks, like, oh, I’ve been meditating for 10 years, okay, then we know the conversation can start at a certain point, right? But for someone who’s never even entertained that idea before, if you hit them with Hey, man, I want you to an hour of you know, sitting in full lotus a day and you know, try to open your third eye and look at the stars and tell me what kind of rainbows you see. Then you’re maybe not said you can

 

Lydia Tanner  50:48

do that. I didn’t know that this is an option. This is

 

Colby Pearce  50:51

an option. There all sorts of things. You can do

 

Lydia Tanner  50:56

like level zero,

 

50:59

level zero. meditator there is no a level zero. I’m just on the waves.

 

Colby Pearce  51:04

That is the perfect place to be.

 

51:07

Yes. I mean, that’s like the rule of meditating. Right, wherever you are is the right way. Exactly.

 

Colby Pearce  51:13

Which kind of also goes back to your journey as a racer. I mean, as a young Junior when you began racing mountain bikes, what how old were you when you first went to Europe?

 

51:25

Gosh,

 

Lydia Tanner  51:27

I want to say 17.

 

Colby Pearce  51:29

Yeah. And that was with the national team. And you raise some they just sent you probably to some cool Yeah, for answer.

 

Lydia Tanner  51:36

Yeah, we lived in a hostel like house a bike house in certain and Germany. And we did the Swiss racer bike cups, which were like a step below World Cups. And like, that’s like where the the World Cup racers would go and they didn’t ever race that weekend. And it was it was so hard. Yeah.

 

Colby Pearce  52:00

But you were drinking from the fire hose in terms of learning, I’m sure.

 

Lydia Tanner  52:02

For sure. Yeah, it was amazing. I remember on one of one race I did. We were in Bern. And it was a really, it was like in a city park and you drive up and you’re like, Oh, it’s gonna be no, no sweat, and you get in and it’s just the scariest shit you’ve ever seen. And, like, just terrifying falling drops inside hills, and it’s all muddy. And there the whole course is line, like four people deep, you know, it’s just like, it’s very intense. Yep. And I’m prewriting with my teammate, and she falls and she breaks her arm. Oh. So like, we have to wait for the medics. They don’t speak English. They keep calling her arm, her ankle. they inject her on the trail, and like cart her off. And I’m like, Oh, well, I have to go start a race. And it’s like, nothing really. Nothing really rattles me on a bike after that. Like I can pretty much look at anything and be like, yeah, I’ll try it. I had to do this. There’s this drop in that race that I I didn’t ride on the pre ride and I was so scared of And I walked down every time and every time I tried to walk down it I fell because it was so steep and muddy. Like I would fall with my bike and then just slide down. Yeah.

 

Lydia Tanner  53:09

And they’re literally like German kids just standing at the bottom pointing at me and laughing. Oh, boy. But then as soon as I was in the race, and I had a wheel to follow, I wrote it every time you

 

Colby Pearce  53:19

just did what we did,

 

Lydia Tanner  53:20

which is an amazing thing about racing and riding with other women. I think it’s like, if you see someone do it, you can do it. Right. And, yeah, it was, I mean, I can’t even there are so many instances like that and racing out there that just, like, changed my whole perspective of the sport, like every minute. Right. And and what I could do and what I was capable of, and But yeah, I mean, it was I was also getting like, you know, third to last, I was getting pulled after like two laps. Right? It’s just it was like a real, real shock to the ego.

 

Colby Pearce  53:52

What an amazing opportunity to learn so many cool things, though.

 

Lydia Tanner  53:55

For sure. Yeah, yeah. And just like experience like it’s So funny that mountain biking started here, but it’s so much more popular there. You know, people are there, like people who clearly do not know any of the racers are there, right? They’re not your family

 

Colby Pearce  54:10

members and all your competitors, the actual spectators,

 

Lydia Tanner  54:12

the actual spectators, they’re there on a date. They’re smoking cigarettes, right? Like, it’s like, it’s like, Hey, baby, you want to go to the races? You know, like, it’s a totally different it was just yeah, physical. So I’m always grateful for that experience. It’s pretty wild.

 

Colby Pearce  54:26

What came up for me there just now as some discussions I’ve had with people about the psychology of women and in comparison to the psychology of men in terms of competitive fields and peloton and how women, psychologically almost tend to sort of when they’re competing, they’re thinking about their competitors. In a sense, it’s like you’re a tribe. And women are are in a sense, there are times one woman described that they don’t want to, they didn’t want to be too aggressive too early in the race because they didn’t want to make some of their competitors look too bad or feel too bad if they beat them. So that’s why women’s races tend to kind of stick together at least in a road format, more or less. Yeah. And that came up for me when you were talking about Oh, as soon as I saw, you know, someone affirmed me go over that drop. I knew I could do it, which maybe is directly comparable, it just brought it up. Whereas men are basically all trying to stab each other in the throat from the gun. No, it’s like, and you can tell they could battle the death, right? It’s just so interesting to look at the psychology of how those play out and yeah, then after the line mineral Hey, buddy, how’s it going?

 

Lydia Tanner  55:28

And actually, the line women are like, right? Like, I’m not talking to you, right? chop me in that corner,

 

Colby Pearce  55:36

right? Because it’s like a more of a violation of perhaps of that camaraderie or that interact. I’m

 

Lydia Tanner  55:42

so glad you brought that up. Because I was just so I was I’m coaching this group of girls, young women who are 13 and 14 right now. And it’s really interesting watching them because they like we did like a fake race the other day because no one’s racing, right. So we did like a little time trial. They’re all The, the, you know, top three girls had all kind of caught each other and they’re all riding together. And, and then they’re going into the final sprint, which was like a road into a corner. And they’re all just riding together and I was like, stop being so nice. Like, like don’t be This is not the time to be nice, like be nice to each other afterwards right? Like you’re here to make each other faster right now, right? You’re not here to be nice to each other and, and I felt really aggro about it. But I also feel like it’s a really good lesson to especially when they’re younger and they’re in a group they’re really conscious of how what they’re doing affects the other people. And I think it’s to everyone’s detriment. Because Because the consequences are so high, right? Like, if you beat that girl in that sprint, she’s gonna be mean to you next week, right? She’s not going to talk to you afterwards. She’s gonna make a different friend, right? There’s this like weird dynamic right? But I think if I think higher levels. It’s happening. And I think it’s starting to happen more often with women as we’re just like the the level of competition is elevating. And we’re not penalizing each other for being fast. Right. But I think it’s to everyone’s detriment if we’re if you if you hold back like that, right, because you’re not making your teammate faster. You’re not getting faster, you’re not finding what you’re capable of. Right. And it’s so funny that you don’t have to teach guys that. Right. Yeah, I know. It’s, it’s it’s always such a fun puzzle to try to solve with these girls. It’s really cool.

 

Colby Pearce  57:28

Yeah. That’s cool. So your code, how many? How big is the group?

 

Lydia Tanner  57:33

Six of them. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, we broke all the groups into smaller groups this year because of the COVID regulations. So yeah, we try to keep it really, really small and insular. So like, you know, try to limit exposure to just the people that you’re working with. But yeah, it’s it’s a cool group. I’m they’re all very competitive, like I have. I’ve had different levels of competitiveness with the girls have worked With over the years, but I feel like every generation they get more and more competitive. Because and I just really think this is like the direction that women’s racing is going generally right? Like, I bet the next generation is not gonna hold back on that finish, right? I’m not gonna have to tell them to right.

 

Colby Pearce  58:16

Why do you think that’s turning that way?

 

Lydia Tanner  58:18

Because I think women’s racing is becoming more legitimate. You’re there’s more equal pay. That’s an expectation. I think it’s gathering momentum. I think we’re seeing that like World Cup mountain bike racing is way more fun to watch the women’s races like they’re dramatic. They’re exciting. They’re amazing athletes. Yeah, I just think it’s becoming I think there’s momentum behind it and, and like, you look at Nika and the quality of racing and the number of kids out there, and the community they’re creating, it’s like, just the the support around the whole concept of racing is so much better and so much more like acceptable, right? Like, it’s like dropping your kids off at soccer practice. Right, you know, right. And, and so when you have that Like volume of high quality training and racing and, you know, places for them to go when they get fast. Right. Like, I think, I think that fosters, like the whole competitive like, drive much better.

 

Colby Pearce  59:13

Right? Beautiful. It’s like, you got to make it a win for the parents, right? Yeah. The parents are dropping their kids off to go on a road ride, you know, down Highway 36 with traffic. Maybe not. Yeah. Or raise some open road race or something random. That’s less appealing. I mean, I grew up. I got started racing, because of the course classic and the red zinger mini classic. Yeah. That formed, which was a kid series based on the red zinger, the actual reading or stage race. Yeah. And it was a kid series, and that was road racing back then for kids aged 10 to 14. Yeah. And I did a podcast that they would challenge me to talk about this, but he started racing there too. And some reasonably famous racers came out like Chris Wari came out of that program and Jimmy killin Yes, he represented the US in Mount Mike worlds a couple times and That was so cool. But I don’t think you could have that series now because there are just too many cars on the road, the liability insurance to have 300 kids out riding around on the morgul Bismarck road course on a Saturday. Like, no way, like so taking kids and having the high school mount bike program is just genius. I mean, I wish I had access to this when I was a blur. Hi,

 

Lydia Tanner  1:00:21

everyone says this, right? Like it’s just because you see, like, the main thing I see is that they have friends who ride and they go ride together and Josh each other and they, you know, take care of each other and they support each other. There’s always someone cheering for them when they’re out riding. Like, when I was racing. I was like the only person I knew is like, same here. Yeah, it was like the only person in your high school. There’s maybe one other

 

Colby Pearce  1:00:44

real like a party with your parents or like, what do you do for fun? You’re like, I’m a bike racer. They’re like, Wait, what? Yeah, yeah. Then you spend 15 minutes explaining how you spend every weekend by yourself. like riding around in the mountains, right? Yeah, yeah. And they still don’t get it at the end of the index. Yes, yes.

 

1:01:01

For some reason, right.

 

Colby Pearce  1:01:04

Okay, so why don’t we pass it back to? To reloop? Sorry to interrupt you. Yeah, of course. Can we pass? Okay, JV. The other day we’re talking he was like, Okay, if I could have it my way I would put all juniors on six speed Regina freewheels because they shift like crap, and they force you to pedal at 140 rpm and also 50 RPM because you just don’t have enough gears. So you actually have to learn how to finesse a bike. He’s like, if I could take every 12 year old talented kid and make them ride like that until they were 18. And then on your 17th or 18th birthday, you get di two and you know, a power meter boom there you go. And and so,

 

Lydia Tanner  1:01:37

man, that’s totally my parents philosophy.

 

Colby Pearce  1:01:41

Do you think that we would make similar headway with women and body image if we mandated that all Nika high school students wore baggy clothes and did away with lycra?

 

Lydia Tanner  1:01:53

I that was not the direction I was expecting you to go in. But yeah, I mean, that’s an interesting thought.

 

Colby Pearce  1:01:58

Less body image, less

 

Lydia Tanner  1:02:00

For sure, yeah. I mean, anytime there’s a dress code people get bummed, right. I’m sure there’s girls who love wearing spandex, right?

 

Colby Pearce  1:02:08

I’m sure there are.

 

Lydia Tanner  1:02:08

I don’t want to imply that, like, you know, you can’t love wearing spandex because I’m sure lots of people do. I have definitely felt like real cool my spandex sometimes. Right? But yeah, I don’t know, that’s an interesting thought I wonder if that would create, like healthier sort of body image stuff for that just like kind of really vulnerable period. I’d like to see more. I bet you that that period is measurable that period where you’re just super vulnerable. I’m sure there’s things we can do in that period to make it better. But yeah, it just occurred to me seemed like an easy, actionable. Yeah, thing. That’s interesting. No, like are allowed. I thought you were gonna say we should all make them race on shitty bikes.

 

Colby Pearce  1:02:43

I don’t know for me. I definitely see like, okay, there’s the discussion about economic achievability or actionability for someone for a parent who can’t afford some bike and then there’s the discussion about the kid who has the super racy stuff and they’re beating all the other kids because they’ve got a million dollars worth of equipment and I’m sure there are times when that’s happened. But there are other times when it doesn’t matter because that kid isn’t that fast anyway or whatever. And so it kind of all comes out in the wash to a degree. Part of cycling culture is about meshing man and woman with machine. And so we kind of have to be dorky to a degree. I mean, if we weren’t if we had zero interest in the equipment, we might be trail runners, right? Maybe, or we would just run on the road, but because those are people who don’t really care, I think most runners just put on shoes and go run. Yeah, they’re more about the activity than they are about the stuff. Cyclists have this weird fetish thing about derailleurs and wheels and carbon and, and whatever. That said, I think you could get away with that, you know, like little 500 style, where you mandate a certain level of equipment. But the thing about mountain biking is the technical performance of the equipment actually really does impact the quality of a ride to a big degree. I mean, go ride a mountain bike that’s 15 years old and you realize what a piece of junk It wasn’t really like there the the amount of technology, the way technology has changed mountain biking in the last decade is and and then another decade past that.

 

Lydia Tanner  1:04:11

Even just the last few years, right? For five years, I had a bike that’s five years old, and I can’t even get parts for it anymore.

 

Colby Pearce  1:04:17

Right? Like, but then if you wrote it on the trail, you could feel the difference. That’s my point. Like, I could put you on a road bike that was 20 years old. And if it was adjusted the same as a modern road bike, you’d feel a few different you know, if you’re blindfolded, don’t ride a bike blindfolded people. This is a thought experiment. But if you were blindfolded, he rode the two bikes back to back you could probably tell the difference, but it wouldn’t be like holy crap once the new one is so much better. I’d be like, yeah, it’s a little this a little that. But if I put you on a mountain bike, those 15 years old, you’d be like, almost crashing the whole time. You know? Yeah, way slower. Yeah, and having less fun, you can feel the difference. That’s my point between rim with tubeless tires, improvements in suspension, improvements in geometry, display improvements in frames, disc brakes. I mean, hello.

 

Lydia Tanner  1:05:00

Yeah, I can’t believe we used to not race disc brakes, right? Like that blows my mind

 

Colby Pearce  1:05:04

the first cross country I ever did in steamboat. I didn’t have a fucking fork. Yeah, I used a rigid fork. And I thought it was so probably get away. I was like I’m gonna smash everybody on the hills. down hills. I probably have like 60 psi or two. Yeah, cuz

 

Lydia Tanner  1:05:22

cuz you do. That’s what you do when you have tubes. Yeah, because yeah, kids I’m questioning him like almost never had a flat they just because they’ve grown up with tubeless tires, which blows my mind to Right, right. You didn’t ever have to deal with tubes. You’ve never patched a tube

 

Colby Pearce  1:05:34

like Patrick to do that. Yeah, tubes. What’s a tube? Yeah. Good. Okay. Pop quiz. Oh God, which happens to be very apropos. Yeah, would you ever breakfast this morning?

 

Lydia Tanner  1:05:50

Ah, oh. musically. It’s like a homemade measly so I had, like shredded apples and oats and oat milk and strawberries and blueberries. Bananas, peaches and that’s, that sounds delicious.

 

Colby Pearce  1:06:03

That’s amazing. Did you overnight oats or do you do it in the morning?

 

Lydia Tanner  1:06:06

No, it’s like a it’s a cold breakfast. It’s like an old family recipe. Actually. It’s called bear hair measly

 

Colby Pearce  1:06:13

your hair.

 

Lydia Tanner  1:06:14

Yeah. Cuz the apples look like kind of hairy.

 

Colby Pearce  1:06:19

humbled in your music. Well when you shred them. Ah, yeah, okay. Yeah. Important.

 

Lydia Tanner  1:06:24

It’s like the tip my dad used to make it growing up. It’s like the taste of summer to me. It’s like that’s how I know it’s summertime.

 

Colby Pearce  1:06:29

Cinnamon and stuff in it to

 

Lydia Tanner  1:06:31

a little vanilla and a little lemon.

 

Colby Pearce  1:06:33

little lemon. Sounds very good.

 

Lydia Tanner  1:06:34

Yeah, yeah, it’s more of like fruit salad and right oats but

 

Colby Pearce  1:06:38

and Are you a big carb protein? How’s how’s your macronutrient spread looking? Are you paying attention to that stuff right now? How much are you just sort of did a lot of animal protein? No,

 

Lydia Tanner  1:06:49

I meet like once or twice a week. Okay. Yeah, I try to eat mostly carbs. Yeah, mostly carbs. And I like try to up the fat if I knew I’m gonna do a big difference. thing.

 

Colby Pearce  1:07:00

carpets on fashionable right now. I don’t care. One answer.

 

1:07:06

That’s how I feel good. Good. No, your body.

 

Lydia Tanner  1:07:08

Yeah, um, I try to do the whole 30 thing. Have you heard of that? I did that a couple years ago because I was writing an article about it and having no glycogen in your body is horrible. It’s a terrible feeling like I could ride forever and not get hungry, but I couldn’t make it up a hill. Like it was a really bizarre. So yeah, like now that I got back to the carbs that I just try to eat them all the time.

 

Colby Pearce  1:07:32

I’ve had similar experiences playing with the keto boundaries, yeah, myself and seen athletes go through it as well.

 

Lydia Tanner  1:07:38

Yeah. And I was recently on a call with, she didn’t call me it was like a group chat with Stacey Sims. And she talked about how bad keto is especially for women. Because we’re already basically in a fat adapted state and when we also deprive ourselves of calories, it like kind of just messes up the whole balance of everything. Yes, I think it can work for men as Yeah, I had what she said totally resonated with me. I was like,

 

Colby Pearce  1:08:06

Yeah, that sounds about right. It’s. So I’ve taken a couple of courses on this recently on the chicken suit offers a course specifically about training for women. And they talk about that in particular, you know, when women are in their moon, and they’re demonstrating

 

Lydia Tanner  1:08:23

the low hormone phase? Yeah.

 

Colby Pearce  1:08:25

Yeah. ligaments are more lacks, right. They’re more prone to overtraining. And that’s when carbs are really even in the week before. My understanding is that carbs are pretty essential. Yeah, hormones can just fall off a cliff, right?

 

Lydia Tanner  1:08:40

Oh, yeah. I mean, so I’ve been I’ve been really reading Stacy’s book roar, mostly and trying to learn a lot more about how to train with your cycle. Because she says something at ECS last year that was about it. It’s like an adaptogenic aid. It’s ergonomic. It’s a it’s a body. It’s something your body does. I am

 

Colby Pearce  1:09:02

trying to sound smart over here, we can use as many four syllable words as you want.

 

Lydia Tanner  1:09:07

Anyway, your period is basically a metric you should track because where you’re at in your cycle really changes how your body processes water, how it processes carbs, process protein, your temperature regulation, like everything right now. And so what works for me just like the cliffnotes version is my rest week is the week before I get my period. And then as soon as I get it, it’s like Game on. It’s like hard week because that hormonally is when you’re closest to a dude, you’re like building muscle really well, your regulating temperature really well your hydration is on point. So that’s a good time to like dig deep, which is not what a

 

Colby Pearce  1:09:45

contrary to what you might think initially. Right?

 

Lydia Tanner  1:09:47

Right. Because your your body’s not super comfortable, right? You can actually get some really good training and you hear like tons of stories about women having really great races when they’re on their period and like trying to time things that way. So It’s a really interesting thing to try to play with and measure and and keep track of that. Yeah, I think it works well to take a recipe when you’re messing too, because you’re just feeling like crap anyway. Right?

 

Colby Pearce  1:10:09

What are you using to track your cycle? Are you using an app or something? Are you just do just know it

 

Lydia Tanner  1:10:13

is no. And it’s the moon. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

 

Colby Pearce  1:10:18

I know some athletes that I’ve worked with and some women use. There’s some different apps out there, you can use that.

 

Lydia Tanner  1:10:23

Garmin has like a whole, like, detailed reporting system now on their app. Yeah.

 

Colby Pearce  1:10:28

Yeah. I think this is something to that I would encourage male coaches who have female clients are really don’t be shy. Like, this is something you should feel comfortable. I mean, well, should. This is something ideally, you will feel comfortable discussing with the client, because it’s important. It’s important to know what’s going on. I mean, you should know if you’re female client is menstruating, first of all, are they training so hard that they’ve tanked their hormones and they’re not or Yeah, if

 

Lydia Tanner  1:10:55

you’re not menstruating that’s like step one. Right? Right. Yeah.

 

Colby Pearce  1:11:00

So these are things to, to know about your client and understand. If you’re writing training for them and they’re not. You’re not on the same page. I’m not saying it has to happen all the time with every client. There might be clients who are uncomfortable discussing that with you. I’m saying be open to it.

 

Lydia Tanner  1:11:16

Yeah, I think approaching the conversation. Like, this is a metric that we can use to help you train. It’s like, you’ve got this amazing piece of information that you’re not using if you’re not tracking it, or communicating about it. Right. So

 

Colby Pearce  1:11:32

yeah, I think it’s the work that cc is doing is pretty cool.

 

Lydia Tanner  1:11:34

Oh, man, she’s my hero. She’s so cool.

 

Colby Pearce  1:11:36

shedding so much light on. Yeah. On how dimly lit the world of women’s sports.

 

1:11:42

I mean, women all knew it. Yeah, yeah.

 

1:11:48

Well, but it’s cool. Like,

 

Colby Pearce  1:11:50

some of them maybe didn’t. Yeah, that’s even sadder. Right?

 

Lydia Tanner  1:11:53

Yeah. I mean,

 

Colby Pearce  1:11:54

yeah. Go Fish can’t see the water they’re swimming in and that applies to men and women.

 

Lydia Tanner  1:11:59

Yeah, right. That’s true. Yeah, I just I, you know, always appreciate how determined she is to make sure that research gets done and ways that it needs to be done. So

 

Colby Pearce  1:12:09

hashtag women are not small men. Exactly. Go by Roar. Roar. Yeah, it’s a good resource. We’ll put a link to that in their keyboard mood resection, what major events would you say change your trajectory as an athlete? you’ve outlined kind of how things went historically. But what were the what were the events or mentality shifts that you had that kind of directed you to where you are now? And are you still are you currently racing? Do you have designs to race in the future? What? What is Leah’s future race resume look like goof if it has races on it? Does it just have more Winter Park adventures?

 

Lydia Tanner  1:12:45

Yeah, I mean, well, like everyone, my calendar is blank this year. Right? Yeah. So it’s actually been normal

 

Colby Pearce  1:12:51

year.

 

Lydia Tanner  1:12:52

Yeah, if it was a normal year, I would be trying to do the epic rides and do better at them and shooting for like more marathons. Three aces. Okay, I really like doing those last year, I think it’s a good distance for me. So, yeah, and I like the training for it. Like I think training for cross country is really like intense interval based, like, just like more pain. Not the marathon training is not hard, but I think that that sort of more relaxed, like long format works better for me.

 

Colby Pearce  1:13:20

So we’re talking hundred K to 160. k, Mt. My crisis, right?

 

Lydia Tanner  1:13:24

I don’t understand kilometers. Just Yes.

 

Lydia Tanner  1:13:29

Yeah, like three to five hour type things. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yes, that’s what I would be doing. But yeah, I’m actually really enjoying this opportunity to not race and not go through that sort of roller coaster of stress, because it’s giving me this like, perfect season to just do a ton of bass and do like the big exploration rides. I always wanted to do that you can’t really ever fit into a race calendar, right? Like, where do you fit that Winter Park right into a race calendar. As you know, you’re going to be racked, right. And I mean, unless you’re Laughlin and you You just do it every day, but unless you’re walking, but I need to rest. So yeah, no, it’s been cool. I’ve been doing a lot of mapping I got on Strava for the first time. So I’ve been seeing, like some cool new routes and using that, and I’m really actually enjoying the way the season is going. And I think by the time racing starts again, obviously to do that, too.

 

Colby Pearce  1:14:20

Yeah. Cool. Okay, so I asked you two questions. And one and the first part of that question was, what were the major events that changed your trajectories? Oh,

 

Lydia Tanner  1:14:28

yeah. I love that you asked this one. And I when I was thinking about it last night, I was like, oh, what am I gonna say? And I was thinking that the major thing that has really changed my trajectory is the sheer number of injuries I’ve had. I’ve had three ACL reconstructions and both my shoulders, a bunch of broken bones like, bunch of concussions, it’s, it’s been kind of like kind of rough. And so there was a period between you know, like in my 20s were almost Every other year, I had a season ending injury and had a massive surgery that sent me back to like full on like atrophy life, right? So I’ve gone to total zero and started there again so many times that I feel like that has shaped my like, my attachment to sports, because I always know that, like, I want to be doing them at any level, even if it’s like, you know, super bird leg level or, you know, climbing five, eight, or you know, just like anything to keep myself moving. Because I so appreciate being able to move at all right, because I’ve spent so much time rehabbing So I think those helped me kind of detach my ego from my performance and just appreciate movement. And, and yeah, so to me, it’s like, Am I gonna race Am I not gonna race maybe, right? Like, it doesn’t really matter. It’s like, I like being able to do things at the highest level that I’m able at the time, but I’m not really worried about it.

 

Colby Pearce  1:15:59

That’s cool. Yeah,

 

Lydia Tanner  1:16:00

I don’t know if you know how many injuries I had.

 

Colby Pearce  1:16:03

I don’t think I knew they were quite that many.

 

1:16:04

Yeah, a lot. Yeah, yeah. You’ve been beaten up.

 

Lydia Tanner  1:16:07

Yeah. When my last shoulder surgery, I was like, I was so bombed. And I was in this, this sling. And I just, I was like, I’m not gonna sit on the couch for six months again. And I started, like making dates across town, so I’d have to walk. I was just walking back and forth across boulder for like, three months, like, really good at walking.

 

Colby Pearce  1:16:30

Walking is an important part of exercise.

 

Lydia Tanner  1:16:32

It’s an amazing part of exercise hiking. Yeah, yeah, I don’t know. I’m a big fan of these like really slow boring sports lately.

 

Colby Pearce  1:16:42

So, you know, okay, local talk here. We have all these climbs and all the climbs have sort of like a first part. And then the second part is always called Super. So like you can climb to Jamestown, and then they’re super Jamestown, which is where you do the steep part of it. There’s Flagstaff to the amphitheater and then there’s super Flagstaff where you go all the way to the top to the The mailboxes in the clouds and then there’s super Walker and then there’s super Walker where you ride over super Flagstaff and then you ride the walker mountain bike trail and right back. There’s also super Long’s ha I’ve write that I have to just the other day I saw someone post on Instagram about it.

 

1:17:19

And I went, Oh,

 

Colby Pearce  1:17:20

that might need to be my next adventure. So just to get people idea Long’s is one of the more Team fourteener on the Front Range. No. It only

 

Lydia Tanner  1:17:31

bigger four tiers on the Front Range.

 

Colby Pearce  1:17:33

Are they all the same size?

 

Lydia Tanner  1:17:34

No. No, you feel

 

Colby Pearce  1:17:36

you’ve got you’ve got I’ve won. I’ve never been a box.

 

Lydia Tanner  1:17:38

Oh, you should do it before you do. Super Long’s.

 

Colby Pearce  1:17:40

No way. That’s cheating. You drive up to it.

 

Lydia Tanner  1:17:44

So I claim Long’s when I was 12. And I vomited the entire way. Oh, boy. Yeah. Cherry Pie was what I had the night before. And I remember that day. I will always remember that. Yeah. Yeah, it was horrible. But it was It’s also really cool because it was during the I think the proceed meteor shower, per se it however use it. And so it was just raining because you set you have to start at like 2am so you’re hiking in the dark most of the time and it was just raining stars the whole time. Wow. Oh amazing. I’ll never forget it. Yeah, but one of the most like, like just brutal like because you’re also I was also vomiting the whole time and watching these stars and and being like, oh god, I still have this like massive like scary mountain to get up. And yeah, it was a

 

Colby Pearce  1:18:34

bunch of parents think about that. I guess they

 

Lydia Tanner  1:18:36

they didn’t they didn’t go. Oh, yeah. I was hiking with some soccer teammates.

 

Colby Pearce  1:18:40

I see that makes more sense. Mom might have been like, you’re going home now. Throw up your fault.

 

Lydia Tanner  1:18:48

Yeah, I was like How was that?

 

Colby Pearce  1:18:50

Yeah. So speaking of scary stuff, have you written what’s the trail in Moab that’s like now has a signpost it’s like do not stop on this trail. You will die portals. That’s portal, right? Yeah, you’ve heard natural. Yes. But there didn’t used to be a sign many years ago. Until someone died. I imagine I would imagine. Yeah. Someone just came along and decided to stick

 

Lydia Tanner  1:19:11

their family’s not listening.

 

Colby Pearce  1:19:12

Yes. Hopefully not. I’ve never ridden that trail.

 

Lydia Tanner  1:19:16

Really? No. Oh, you should. It’s it’s not the best trail there. Right. It’s more just like the shock factor. Yeah.

 

Colby Pearce  1:19:24

I mean, to make this may be relevant to some listeners at this point. You mentioned several times that you you legitimately felt scared when you were racing in Europe, when you would pre ride the trails. I mean, to me, that’s been interesting, because it seems like what I’ve been consistently hearing is that the UCI has been consistently making trails, more challenging and more technical aspects to them on the World Cup level for sure. Right. Yeah, trucking in big boulders and making big drops and stuff.

 

Lydia Tanner  1:19:52

Yeah, I think it’s, and this is with very limited experience. So like I only did like two or so years. of like, even coming close to that level, but from my perspective, it seems like they’re building in. It’s more manmade features. Right? Right. Like bigger drops like big berms like kind of more Bike Park looking features. The things that always scared me the most were like the natural chutes full of roots. Right? Like, I feel like when you’re on a man made feature, you know that if you hit it with the right speed, you’re gonna be okay. I feel like when you’re on a trail, it’s like obviously made by goats. Right. There’s no guarantee that it’s it’s like rideable

 

Colby Pearce  1:20:30

that my tire fits in those. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. A water a trellis to me by water erosion.

 

Lydia Tanner  1:20:36

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. With I mean, sometimes. Those are the funnest trails. But

 

Colby Pearce  1:20:41

yeah, and sometimes then they suddenly turn to Yeah, yeah, yes. Yep.

 

Lydia Tanner  1:20:48

Yeah, I mean, I think it’s, it makes it a lot more fun to watch. I think it has driven a lot of really cool bike development. Like you look at cross country bikes now and they’re so much better like their bikes that people would actually want to ride. They’re not You know, stripped down as much and yeah, I think I think it also makes it more relatable to mountain bikers to watch because it’s not like watching a dirt crit anymore. Yeah. Like it’s like a trail rider can watch a cross country race like a enduro rider or downhill or can watch across countries and be like, well, that’s about us, you know,

 

Colby Pearce  1:21:18

usually a lot the bigger delta between the two disciplines. I think, back in the day, it was just downhill and cross country

 

Lydia Tanner  1:21:24

and none of us on TV there was no way to watch it anyways.

 

Colby Pearce  1:21:26

Right, right, right. But yeah, yeah, that’s interesting. Do you find yourself writing now like a lot of the modern train parks that are super sculpted and burned out and crazy? Do you read that stuff a lot? Are you more?

 

Lydia Tanner  1:21:40

Um, I tend to like Alpine riding like Blackmore. Yeah, those are that’s like my bread and butter I love trails like that where it’s like they’re obviously have some history like there’s a reason it’s there I had to get from point A to point B for like mining or whatever and or, you know, it’s an animal trail in some cases or it’s like a male trail like the like the one for Crested Butte to Aspen right? Like, I like trails like that, that have like some history and have been like a pathway for something right? I like trails that are built for fun and built for big bikes. I get that powdered a feeling that’s great. If I were to choose one trail ride for the rest of my life, it’d be stuff like Breck for sure. Yeah.

 

Colby Pearce  1:22:18

Okay, what about you? What’s, wait, what’s the biggest mile bike ride you’ve ever done? What’s the biggest ride you’ve ever done?

 

Lydia Tanner  1:22:25

Biggest ride I’ve ever done was that I think I came in to talk to you about after I messed up my knee. Which is like a so it’s like a, it’s the part of Rafa’s festa 500 thing they do every year where you’re supposed to try and ride 500 kilometers between Christmas and New Year’s, but cyclists are cyclists. So there’s always people who try to do it in one go. My boyfriend is like the person who puts it on in Seattle. And so I went out to visit him and he was like, let’s go to the peninsula for you know, a weekend away. And it was really just driving the route so we could scout it And so we’re driving this route and I’m like, You’re crazy. You’re crazy. This is insane. Like you’re gonna make people ride this. And you know, it’s so 500 kilometers is roughly like 340 miles. So you’re looking at

 

Colby Pearce  1:23:13

like a do no metric.

 

Lydia Tanner  1:23:15

Well, only because I have done that math. Okay, and have have written those miles now. counted them, right?

 

Lydia Tanner  1:23:23

Oh no 500 kids actually more like 300 miles but the bay because of the way the route was had to be 340 Okay, so I didn’t think I was gonna do it. And then I kind of got it kind of got a hold of my brain and I had to do it and just to see if I could, and it was one of the coolest, craziest, like, just wild experiences in my life because I literally rode for like 40 hours through the night through the rain. I mean, you know, Seattle in December isn’t great. Not it’s not super pleasant there, especially when you’re right up against the ocean. So we’re just we just poured on the whole time. And but there’s something about like the the challenge of trying to figure out the right gear to have and like, do I need to have like waterproof. I was really excited about my mitten system that I came up with where I was wearing Nordic ski gloves underneath these waterproof mitten shells. And my hands are so happy. I was so proud of my like knitting system.

 

Lydia Tanner  1:24:20

Um, but yeah, I mean, that was it was cool. That’s That’s the longest ride I’ve done.

 

Colby Pearce  1:24:24

Were they the mini Siemens you bought at the visitor center with your dad,

 

Lydia Tanner  1:24:27

that would be a really cool.

 

1:24:30

I’ll just say yes.

 

Colby Pearce  1:24:36

So 40 hours. That sounds awesome. Yeah,

 

Lydia Tanner  1:24:38

yeah, I slept for like four of them at a hotel and tried to draft my stuff.

 

1:24:43

Yeah, yeah.

 

Colby Pearce  1:24:44

But it didn’t matter. Because as soon as you got on the bike anyway, everything was wet again.

 

1:24:47

Yeah, yeah.

 

Colby Pearce  1:24:50

I’m with you on the terrain on the mountain bike train. I I’d say brecker Give me a lap of like sourdough which is a high Alpine train here above.

 

Lydia Tanner  1:24:56

Yeah. sourdough special

 

Colby Pearce  1:24:58

sourdough. So like it’s just that high. Alpine singletrack that’s kind of yeah half made by a goat or a minecart, or some mountain bikes or some skiers. You don’t really know. And I’m a boulder boy. grew up here so yeah,

 

Lydia Tanner  1:25:15

yeah, the riding round like Winter Park too. Right? always gets me.

 

Colby Pearce  1:25:19

Yeah, yeah, there’s something about the air and all the pine trees. Yeah, yeah.

 

Lydia Tanner  1:25:24

And it’s something it’s so I think about these trails every time I test a bike right? That’s always my criteria is Could I race the ones in at Worlds short track on it? And could I ride in Winter Park on it?

 

Colby Pearce  1:25:35

So you’re you have fallen victim to the How do I make a one quiver bike problem?

 

Lydia Tanner  1:25:39

Well, it’s just where I put it on that spectrum. Right? Like is it closer to win worlds or is it closer to you know, five hours unpredictable Alpine singletrack right. And I found that’s really like a pretty good range for good bird bikes that I like to ride

 

Colby Pearce  1:25:56

so what’s your what’s in your your bike garage currently? What if we went to Lydia’s garage and looks. What would we find? Well,

 

Lydia Tanner  1:26:02

I don’t have a garage. I just have a small condo but I living room. Yeah, I got rid of my, my guest bed and I put a two by four on the wall with a bunch of hooks in it. So now there’s six bikes hanging from my wall. I have a pivot Mach four SLS, like my actual bike that I bought that I love. And I’m testing the new sparks Evo, which is amazing. I my daily driver these days is the trek super caliber. I’ve been like, experimenting with putting some different parts on it. And it’s real nice.

 

Colby Pearce  1:26:37

I was involved in the development of a bike actually. Really? Yeah. A little bit. Yeah. That’s like

 

Lydia Tanner  1:26:43

that makes sense. Because I feel like it is the singular perfect bike for the Front Range.

 

1:26:47

I agree with that.

 

Lydia Tanner  1:26:48

Yeah, it’s um, it’s like you can ride every fire road on it. You can take every trail you can see it’s you know, it’s forgiving enough. I literally was going on like, road rides on it because My prospect wasn’t working for me anymore. Like, didn’t seem to penalize me at all. I mean, it’s like a 22 pound bike right now. Um, yeah, no, I, I’ve been digging that bike.

 

Lydia Tanner  1:27:12

What else? I have a Kona super Jake, which is a cross bike. And then another mark for it’s my boyfriend’s and his steel titanium road bike.

 

1:27:23

Okay, yeah. Well done.

 

Colby Pearce  1:27:26

Yes boyfriend got two hooks and you have no road bike? Yes. All right. Yeah. So you guys gotta be at least a year and then

 

Lydia Tanner  1:27:33

we’re close. Yeah, we’re close. Okay. Yeah, it was a little, a little bit of a weird timeline because of the quarantine. So it was like, either we’re not going to see each other for, you know, unforeseeable future or you’re moving in. Right, right. I feel a little bad for him. I think it’s pretty hard to come live in a place where you can’t actually get to know anyone or go anywhere.

 

Colby Pearce  1:27:54

I’ve had a few clients recently that I’ve worked with in the office who are like, yeah, I moved to Colorado from wherever In November, and I have one friend. Yeah, rough go is a rough time for people to transition and go anywhere in the world. Yeah, if you’re moving somewhere new.

 

Lydia Tanner  1:28:08

She has a pretty unshakable brain though. He seems like totally fine. So

 

1:28:14

he has a good outlook.

 

Colby Pearce  1:28:18

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming in today and sharing all your stories and your wisdom. Yeah, really appreciate. Always fun to talk. Where do people find out more about Lydia Tanner?

 

Lydia Tanner  1:28:28

I’m on Instagram. Okay. Yeah. And I’m on. I’m on Strava. Now,

 

Colby Pearce  1:28:31

that Strava Yeah, I have all kinds of followers. Does that fall under loves mud? loves mud? Yeah. We’ll put a link to that in our notes. Cool. No people can can manipulate their finger pads to find you. needed. Yeah. Cool. Fantastic. Thanks. Thank you so much. Disclaimer. Listen up monkeys. The ramblings on this podcast represent me and me alone. They’re not indicative. About the thoughts or opinions of fast labs or Chris case or Trevor Connor, or anyone else. Also, none of this advice is intended to prescribe or diagnose anything, not a doctor. I don’t play one on the internet. So just want to be clear on those points. Thanks for listening