In this week’s show, we talk about whether gravel racing can save North American racing, if adding a Zwift race to your interval work is still good training, and techniques our hosts use to keep in balance.
Episode Transcript
Rob Pickels 00:04
Well, we are back in the saddle again, the Three Amigos here for another Potluck – this time though we’re coming from a new location.
Grant Holicky 00:14
It’s a nice dig.
Rob Pickels 00:15
So we’re going to be extra spicy today, are we going to be nice and mellow? Look, look around. How does this room make you feel, Grant?
Grant Holicky 00:21
You know, it’s interesting. There’s a very, very old school feel with it, you know, wood floors, brick walls, but then there’s a lot of glass. It’s like very high class –
Rob Pickels 00:30
Right?
Grant Holicky 00:31
So maybe a lot like you- kind of old, but little –
Rob Pickels 00:35
A little bit of class.
Grant Holicky 00:37
Polished on the outside?
Rob Pickels 00:38
You do what you can.
Grant Holicky 00:40
I don’t fit in that. I’m just old.
Trevor Connor 00:45
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Rob Pickels 01:21
Well, we got another Potluck episode for you today. Each of us have our own topics as always, we don’t really know what everyone else is going to talk about, we’re gonna shoot from the hip as always on this one, but yeah, hopefully it’s a great conversation and all all the listeners are entertained and maybe maybe learn something, maybe learn something today. We’ll see.
Grant Holicky 01:41
Yeah, so I guess the kind of the pattern is for me to go first on these I guess, right?
Rob Pickels 01:45
Oh, well, cycling and sports in general are nothing if not traditional, so…
Grant Holicky 01:50
Yeah, so we’ll go with it, right?
Trevor Connor 01:51
We’re a completely unstructured – intentionally unstructured – show, we’ve kind of built – you’re first, I’m second, then Rob, I always ask a training question. You always have something unique. And Rob gets into that more inspirational side.
Rob Pickels 02:05
The fluffy stuff.
Grant Holicky 02:06
The fluffy stuff?
Rob Pickels 02:06
I’m a fluffy guy,
Grant Holicky 02:08
You know, whatever works for you. Inspiration, eh? That what we’re gonna get from you today?
Rob Pickels 02:14
Maybe, maybe. Always trying to make people’s lives better.
The Future of American Road Racing
Grant Holicky 02:16
Okay. I like it. Well, here’s my question. My question is, is kind of about the American racing scene. I got a text today from one of my riders who’s looking at coming back and doing more in the States instead of in Europe, and was lamenting a little bit that on one hand, there’s, he’s like, yeah, the stage races in the states don’t interest me. And there’s only three left, right? Redlands, Joe Martin and Gila. That’s all we’ve got.
Trevor Connor 02:45
Yep.
Grant Holicky 02:46
On the men’s side, on the men’s side. And this was a male rider talking, but then he was also trying to decide do I do some gravel? Do I want to just do a bunch of crits? So I guess my question is, where do we go from here with American Road Cycling? Does gravel save American Road Cycling? Is gravel ending American Road Cycling, we’re going to take a pundit – we’re going to be pundants for a minute. This is like talk radio for cycling.
Rob Pickels 03:13
Welcome to 99.5.
Grant Holicky 03:15
Exactly, exactly. That’s what we’re looking for.
Rob Pickels 03:18
Yeah, I mean, I don’t know I, I’m interested to hear the conversation that the two of you have, because I don’t know that I have too much to contribute to this because I personally, I am so far outside of the American Road Racing scene, that you’re listing off the stage races, and I’m like, I have no experience with them. I am the guy that went to gravel years ago. So maybe I’m the future. Maybe that’s what I am in this.
Grant Holicky 03:46
But I think that’s exactly the point. You know, what is it – okay, but what is it for you as a fan then? What are you interested in looking at? Are you interested in what we’re doing from a roadside at all in the States? Are you just interested in gravel? Are you not interested in any of it unless you’re participating in it?
Rob Pickels 04:04
Yeah, yeah. And I hate to say it, I’m, I’m not a fan of cycling. I’m a participant of cycling and I’ll watch the tour, right? It’ll be on in the background when I’m doing some work or whatever. But I don’t really go out of my way to watch anything but European cyclocross, you know, that’s, that’s what I’m a fan of to tell you the truth and we watch every European cyclocross race and I definitely do not have a VPN or anything that allows me to watch these things in the US because it’s difficult right? I definitely don’t jump through hoops you know? But I don’t even spectate gravel races or anything else, I – can you spectator gravel race? I mean remotely?
Grant Holicky 04:48
There’s not a ton to consume because I mean, Flow Bikes was supposed to cover a bunch of the races and then they literally pulled the plug on that –
Rob Pickels 04:55
Yeah.
Grant Holicky 04:55
Because it was the logistics of it were too hard to cover.
Rob Pickels 04:58
Incredible, yeah and that – that’s a question for me is participation based versus spectator based –
Grant Holicky 05:07
That makes you American.
Rob Pickels 05:08
It makes me American but a clear spectator base, I think is really important for the health of sports. Think of American football, American baseball, all of those things are ultimately spectator sports in the whole scheme of things. You look at the number of people participating in those sports, it’s a heck of a lot lower. But what do you have then – you have a lot of spectators, and you have a lot of companies who are vying for their eyes, who are sponsoring, who are trying to get in front and that pumps a lot of money into these sports. And is that what’s happening in road cycling now?
Grant Holicky 05:38
Well, that’s essentially the difference between American cycling and European cycling. American Cycling is a participation based sport. So people go out and they do it. They do it up to our age and they do whatever – we talked about this for cyclocross forever, who’s at a cyclocross race in America? It’s people – or in North America – it’s the people that participate –
Rob Pickels 05:56
Correct.
Grant Holicky 05:57
It’s not a lot of people there that are fans.
Rob Pickels 05:59
No.
Grant Holicky 05:59
So maybe they’re watching their friends, maybe they’re watching their families, but even in the old days of say, Boulder Cup, when they made a big deal of it, and they got on the radio, and they announced they put up flyers all around town – Chris Grealish did a great job at that. Some people would show up for a good beer garden and watch – but this is a very unique town. So the majority of the places we go – you go to Roanoke, Virginia, people aren’t coming out just to watch the bike race.
Trevor Connor 06:24
So look, there’s different definitions of what makes a pro team and what makes it pro race. Technical definition, you get a pro card if you are on a pro team, and that makes you a pro, right? And if they – a race says it has a pro one race at it,that as a pro race, that’s how some people define it. I think the way you’re gonna see more people define it is that spectatorship side, you know, think of other sports like baseball or NFL, if there’s an NFL game where it’s not on TV and nobody comes to the game, is it really a professional football game?
Grant Holicky 06:57
Right, right.
Trevor Connor 06:58
And by that definition, no, there is no professional racing in North America.
Grant Holicky 07:02
And this takes it to, again, back to the cyclocross thing. If you go to a cyclocross race in Europe, there’s no amateur race –
Rob Pickels 07:09
No.
Grant Holicky 07:09
There’s no amateur race within 50 miles of that. That was one of the unique things when they started Masters worlds is that they didn’t have them in Belgium very often because there weren’t a lot of participants in Belgium.
Rob Pickels 07:22
Yep.
Trevor Connor 07:22
Right.
Grant Holicky 07:22
So, cyclocross and cycling in general in Europe is NASCAR in the States: nobody really does it, maybe they go out and drive their car or ride their bike to work, that’s what they do. But they’re watching the pecipi – precipitation? Wow. Porky Pig – precipitate. It rained a lot. (laughs) Like that reference? So that’s one of the major differences of the sport from the beginning, right? We haven’t had – maybe we did briefly with things like the Course Classic with Tour de Trump, we had some of those elements briefly back in – what was that, late 80s, early 90s? – it got really popular around Lemond. But it never has picked up again and so where are we gonna go from here?
Trevor Connor 08:13
I would say we had another spike, a big spike, in the 2000s. So I’ll give a little history here – and that’s because of the popularity of Lance Armstrong –
Grant Holicky 08:22
Right, and you really were a midst of this.
Trevor Connor 08:23
I was in the midst of this and here’s what will just blow your mind – I remember – so I raced, most of my racing was in the 2000s. You know, I was still going to a few pro races up to kind of 2016, 2017. So I actually saw the decline as it was happening. I remember in 2007, the teams in the US were complaining about the number of races on the calendar, the NRC calendar had over 50 races and I think it was 26 or 27 significant stage races. And it was impossible for the domestic teams to get to all them and they were actually complaining about that many races. So back then it felt professional, back then you had European teams, international teams that were coming over to do the the North American circuit. I remember being in races with a helicopter filming so we actually had the TV coverage –
Grant Holicky 09:15
Yeah.
Trevor Connor 09:16
That’s not what exists anymore, you start to see that decline. And so here’s a bit of history I’ll give and my interpretation of it – it started with the race organisers, you saw race organizers, and this was particularly after all the doping scandals, you saw all the race organizers, it was getting harder and harder for them to bring in sponsorship. And so they were starting to disappear. I forget his name, but the guy who organized Mount Hood and Cascades, two of the big races, he was struggling more and more. He was a major race organizer in North America. I am going to blame the riders a little bit here too, because there was this movement to really paint race organizers as bad guys who are just trying to make money. Here’s the truth. When you’re organizing road race, at best you’ll break even. These race organizers were killing themselves. They weren’t making any money. And then you had athletes that were complaining about them, painting them as bad guys that didn’t do good enough a job, they’re just out for money. And eventually these race organizers just said “Why do I bother?”. And that’s what happened with Chris Grealish putting together a bunch of good races around Boulder.
Grant Holicky 10:24
Yeah.
Trevor Connor 10:24
And they just said, “Why am I doing this? Why am I killing myself to put together these events just to be painted as a bad guy?”
Grant Holicky 10:30
Well, and eventually, there are a couple race organizers that can make money doing races, but most of the money they’re making at a triathlon.
Trevor Connor 10:39
Yep.
Grant Holicky 10:39
Because you got a ton of people on it.
Rob Pickels 10:41
And again, you know, what, what is driving this? Is it the spectators? Or is it the participants? And I think that that’s what we’re seeing on the gravel side of things, participation in gravel is way up so if there’s going to be any money anywhere, and it’s not going to come from spectators and sponsors, it has to come from participants. And if you’re chasing participants, gravel is the only place that really has that. I shouldn’t say it to that extreme, right, but road participation, I think is down.
Grant Holicky 11:06
Yep.
Rob Pickels 11:07
Gravel participation is up.
Trevor Connor 11:08
Well, here’s, here’s my opinion, I think gravel has the potential to save North American racing. Because as you pointed out, a race organizer can make money doing a gravel race.
Grant Holicky 11:19
Right.
Trevor Connor 11:19
People seem to be a little more relaxed and kind of accepting of gravel races if they’re not organized perfectly, which means a race organizer is going to have a better experience. I think gravel is going to bring back race organizers, it’s going to get them more excited, more interested. And if we get the race organizers back, hopefully some of them are going to start saying, “hey, let’s try something else, let’s put together a road race, let’s put together stage race”.
Rob Pickels 11:44
Let me ask a maybe difficult question. Do we let road racing die? Do we understand that a lot of race organizers – we’ve tried to do this for decades – people have come, they were supposed to be the next best thing, they had the great idea that was going to unlock the secret to success and they fizzled out after a few years. And the big racing happens in Europe, the spectators are in Europe, the best competition is in Europe. Do we maintain an amateur racing series here in the US, but do we kind of just let pro racing in the US die?
Grant Holicky 12:18
I think we already have. I mean –
Rob Pickels 12:19
Do we have a choice?
Grant Holicky 12:20
I don’t – yeah, I don’t think there’s anything else that we can do and I think Trevor makes a really good point. Listen, gravel is very similar to triathlon or running in the 80s or 90s, right? People are gonna come to gravel because there’s a completion element to gravel. If you go to Unbound and you complete it., that’s a really good –
Rob Pickels 12:40
It’s why most people are there.
Grant Holicky 12:41
Right? And you did something special, right, that’s hard to do. We got to the point with marathons – and this is why there’s so many shoe contracts and running, right? – like marathons, you can go out, how many people are in the Boston Marathon, how many people are in the Key West marathon, how many people are running these really, frankly, pretty small marathons around the country? There’s a ton of people in them. That way the race organizer can make money, then they can put some prize money into it. Now maybe they draw some sponsors, because it’s it’s good to look at and it’s good to see, gravel can do all of those pieces of the puzzle, right? We can have enough people in that we get a prize purse. Now we have enough people in that we’re gonna have some sponsors walk into it. And it’s just piles on and Trevor may be right. I mean, these are people that like cycling, right, so maybe they’d come to this point where they’re like, “Well, I want” – race organizer – “I want to bring back a major stage race in the United States so I’m going to try to revive Tour California or Tour Colorado. That’s the kind of stuff that you can do. I’m going to be really interested to see what happens in Maryland, at that Maryland Cycling Classic that’s happening here in a couple of weeks – that’s a UCI race in the States, we’ve been waiting for it to happen for two years. It’s got a big element of it in downtown Baltimore around the Inner Harbor, which is going to look great on TV, so we’ll see. That can get me on a whole nother soapbox of the fact that we don’t develop one day racers in the United States, all we try to develop the stage racers and climbers, and maybe having a one day race like Philly was and is this something we can keep in Maryland for a long time. I’m curious to see how it goes. I’m curious if anybody watches it, curious if fans come out.
Trevor Connor 14:21
Here’s the other thing to throw at you guys that you might totally disagree with. And I’m gonna – I’m gonna take some hard stances here and I’m talking more as a racer remembering what the scene was like.
Rob Pickels 14:30
I disagree.
Trevor Connor 14:32
He’s already there – was about to say Rob is a beautiful, wonderful person and he disagrees.
Rob Pickels 14:37
I disagree, I disagree with that.
Trevor Connor 14:40
So here’s my statement. We do not need to bring back Tour of California or Tour of Colorado. I think those races hurt North American racing, I don’t think they helped and here’s why. The idea behind those was to get that, maybe not quite the Tour de France level stage race but like Dofen A-level race. In Europe, you can have races that level because Europe lives and breathes cycling. They have the spectatorship. We don’t have that in North America, we just – you’re not going to get all Americans behind “let’s have this giant stage race”. So it would be great. They’ve tried a couple times to have a Grand Tour in North America and it hasn’t worked. I think we need to look at what is the size of our spectatorship – and we have a decent spectatorship – and two, if we wanted to rebuild North American Racing right, let’s get back to let’s have those five day stage races. Let’s have the Mount Hoods, the Cascades, the Altoonas and accept the fact that North American Racing will always be a level below European Racing, but build a really good system for developing North American riders that we can then get them to the top level of European racing.
Rob Pickels 15:49
Trevor, I’m glad you said that because what I was thinking of is, what is the purpose? What is the goal? Why do we have pro level North American racing? Is it so that our pro level riders can race continentally here so they don’t have to go to Europe – so they’re not away from their family – is that the goal? Is it so that we can develop talent? Or is it so that we have entertainment for spectators? And I think that the answer to that really helps us flush out exactly how we should approach North American racing and ultimately, what the value is?
Grant Holicky 16:22
Well, I’ll I’ll leave this with my last – maybe controversial – take. I don’t think any of that matters. I think we didn’t develop talent, U23 talent in the United States to get to the point where we develop the next great American rider, because until we develop the next great American rider, nobody’s gonna care about watching cycling in the United States, United States is all about what we’re good at. We will watch what an American is good at. Americans don’t watch sports that they don’t participate in. This is why soccer has been such a brutal developing sport in the United States. It has helped immensely when the women win the World Cup, that has been the driver of development of soccer in the United States. And this is why that whole debate over equal pay was ridiculous. The American women’s team drove American soccer, the men’s team has done nothing. MLS has helped somewhat so now we have some of that American talent. But until we can go out and win a World Cup on the men’s side, it’s not going to grow much more because that’s – American sport is chauvinistic, and Homer based. So we need to develop more American talent that can win the biggest races.
Trevor Connor 17:41
Here’s my take on that I agree with you, we need to develop the North American talent. And so we – every once in a while – get emails on the show of “You’re talking too much to pros”. The training advice that – what wegive on the show is actually not designed for pros. If you are a pro trying to get to the top level, here’s what I do –
Rob Pickels 17:59
Don’t listen to what we tell you.
Trevor Connor 18:02
Here’s what I’m going to tell you, you need to train up to a certain level, once you get to that level, what you can accomplish with training, to get to that highest level, you need a couple years of doing 100+ race starts per season –
Rob Pickels 18:14
You just need experience.
Trevor Connor 18:16
You need to be racing every weekend, you need to be doing constant 5, 6, 7 days stage races to be able to hit that highest level. Training can’t give you that intensity, can’t teach you to tolerate that sort of pain. So we can’t develop those top level riders until they can get those race starts.
Grant Holicky 18:34
Trevor, why don’t –
Motivation and Sticking to a Training Plan
Rob Pickels 18:35
A training question?
Trevor Connor 18:36
I have a training question.
Grant Holicky 18:38
Well, that’s a good segue, right? Because we just – you just talked about training and getting to the next level for somebody so let’s go to a training question.
Trevor Connor 18:46
Okay, so this is a “I want you to justify what I’m doing, which I know is wrong”.
Rob Pickels 18:52
Hold on, hold on. Hold on. We’re a radio – we’re a radio station today so thanks for calling 99.5, caller number two, you’re on the air.
Trevor Connor 19:00
So this is Mike calling in, saying my girlfriend’s cheating on me. She never comes home. Tell me that she still loves me.
Rob Pickels 19:07
His dog bit him, his truck broke down.
Grant Holicky 19:11
That’s a country song.
Trevor Connor 19:12
Yeah, there we go. We’ll do a country song about my training. So look, let me just start this by saying I have had a pretty lousy season. I have not been motivated this season so I have been finding it hard to go and do my intervals go and do my work. So I have been doing something more and more – and I just did this on Tuesday, which I am convincing myself is a good thing when I probably know it isn’t and I’m interested in your takes – which is, I get on Zwift to do my intervals, so Tuesday I was going to do my five by five minute intervals, I got through the first one and said “I don’t want to do any more”. So I made a bargain with myself get through two or three more and then I can hop in a Zwift race, and then I’ll get all my intensity and – matter of fact, I’ll get more intensity because I’ve done some intervals and then I’ve added 20 minutes of racing and this will all be great. And I did that, so I got through three and a half, instead of my five, and then jumped to a Zwift race, spent 15 minutes in the Zwift race and went “That was a great workout”. I think I’m deluding myself. And I have been doing this all year. So what’s your take on this?
Grant Holicky 20:29
(laughs) I’m sorry, I think this is hilarious. I was looking at Rob’s face during some of this, and –
Rob Pickels 20:34
No, no, no, no, no. This might need to be off-mic but the reason I was laughing is, Trevor, if you can’t see this, but if you recall, Grant’s phone was just vibrating. And so what did he do with his vibrating phone? He is now sitting on it.
Grant Holicky 20:49
I’m sitting on it..
Rob Pickels 20:50
And I was looking for my phone. So I could call him because I wanted to see.
Grant Holicky 20:57
Oh, you know, what would happen? Listen, if there’s anything that can muffle sound, it’s my —.
Trevor Connor 21:04
I’m basically asking for a therapy session and your answer is “not paying attention”.
Rob Pickels 21:10
Let me – let me ask this question, first, before we kind of dive into the training side of it, you haven’t been performing as well as you normally do. Your motivation is down, you know, I’m sure that stress is probably high. Are you in a place where you’re overreaching or overtraining? Is that a possibility at this point in time? Okay. So even considering that life stress and whatever else, that can be a huge factor, even though your training isn’t as hard as it was, I just want to –
Trevor Connor 21:45
So I know why my motivation is low – and we won’t go into that today, we might have that as a different conversation – so no, I mean, I know it overtraining feels like, this is the furthest I’ve ever felt away from overtraining in probably 15 years, I have been feeling all season undertrained because I’m just not putting in the time and the training.
Rob Pickels 22:05
Perfect. And I think that everybody needs to ask that question first because oftentimes, you can end up in this situation, not realize how you got to that situation and people can just push harder, and it makes it makes it a worse situation. So now that we’re clear on that, Grant?
Grant Holicky 22:21
Well, yeah, so that’s typical response, right? Like if if you’re overtraining, you’re not performing so you train harder. Okay, that’s not what’s going on. Now, my side of the world goes, Why is the motivation down, right? There’s three things that drive motivation. We’ve talked about this: autonomy, competence and relatedness, right? So I’d look at Trevor, if I, if I was doing a session with you, Trevor, I’d sit there and go, “Okay, it’s probably the competence piece right now, you’re used to racing at a very high level, you don’t feel like you’re necessarily can race at a very high level right now, so that beats up motivation”. My take on the world is – and maybe I don’t know, if I’m helping delude you or not – if it’s something you’re willing to do, do it. If that’s a way to work hard, if that’s a way to get some training in, that’ll get you back in the door. I experienced a ton of this last year and I don’t know if it was top of the race age group so – and I was super busy during cross, was trying to run the team, I was trying to do all this stuff. I didn’t care. I literally didn’t care. I didn’t train very hard. I’d get on the bike. I didn’t race very hard. I didn’t do much at all. It just was like kind of hanging out. So you know, this year has been totally different for me. I think it’s because part of it is “Oh, I’m 50”, right, “race age 50, I can be competitive”. The kids in full day –
Rob Pickels 23:43
Because he’s the youngest of the old people.
Grant Holicky 23:45
Yeah, kids in full day preschool – “Oh, I got the training time, I got all this stuff. I’m out of grad school, oh, my God”. So for me, I think it really is what whatever works for you, you’ve got to start with that. And then maybe build a training plan around that.
Trevor Connor 24:03
Which is fair but so let’s move beyond the motivation side and I want to ask the pure training question. Is that training as good? Or even better or worse than if I had done the original plan of just getting my intervals? is mixing this up still good training? Or should – is this like your plate? You should keep your meat and your peas separate?
Rob Pickels 24:23
Well, I think that that’s a value judgment. And I don’t know that the value judgment is appropriate at this point in time because something is better than nothing. And what is the saying? Like “perfect is the bane of good” or some – you know what I’m, you know what I mean?
Grant Holicky 24:39
I think I know what you mean.
Trevor Connor 24:41
I always – I always tell my athletes “don’t let the perfect get in the way of the good enough”. I’m just not certain this is good enough. So, Grant, as a coach, I’m interested in your take.
Grant Holicky 24:51
Here’s my answer and my answer, unfortunately, is nine times out of 10, it depends. So what you were doing the other day? I think that’s probably fine because you – what were you going to do? 5, 6, 5?
Trevor Connor 25:02
It’s going to five by 5, I did 3 and a half kind of crappy and then, okay, –
Grant Holicky 25:07
Five by five threshold, right? So you’re going to go low rest, get 25 minutes of work in and go from there. Well, instead – all right, maybe you did a little bit of tempo in before that, but you know, as Zwift race to me is just a threshold workout. You’re just sitting at threshold for a period of time.
Rob Pickels 25:26
Pretty much.
Trevor Connor 25:26
Yeah, I agree with and I’ve thought about that and that’s why I hopped into crit, which was not a threshold workout at all.
Grant Holicky 25:34
But even – even to me, now you guys know me, I love spiky stuff. I love it the way above or way below, even to me the crits in Zwift are pretty moderate. Within a level, right? They’re not that spiky because even if you wind it up, you wind it up for a period of time. All right, so if it were me as a coach, I’d be like, “Yeah, that’s great, because you got a bunch of threshold time with some spikes of higher effort that forced you to recover out threshold or just below threshold”, right? So I like to mix and match efforts. And this is one of the things that you’re struggling with because you don’t like your peas to touch your potatoes as a coach. I don’t care if the peas are in potatoes.
Rob Pickels 26:17
What about the Franks and your beans – do those – ?
Grant Holicky 26:20
I’m the guy that – with my ice cream, puts everything in the ice cream and then waits a minute and then mixes it all up.
Rob Pickels 26:26
His peas, potatoes and ice cream are all the same flavor.
Grant Holicky 26:29
Oh, I love peas, potatoes and ice cream. That’s a great flavor.
Trevor Connor 26:32
This is good to know. I’m gonna throw some jalapenos in your ice cream. Watch your face.
Grant Holicky 26:37
Have you ever had jalapeno ice cream? It’s quite good.
Rob Pickels 26:40
I have not.
Trevor Connor 26:41
There is such a thing?
Grant Holicky 26:42
Yes. There is such thing.
Rob Pickels 26:43
You know, getting back on topic here –
Grant Holicky 26:45
Why? Why?
Rob Pickels 26:46
Because. Because. Because Trevor needs to hear this.
Grant Holicky 26:49
My answer is this. My answer is if you’re trying to do threshold or threshold with spikes that are trying to get you to recover a threshold, the Zwift race is always going to work. If you’re trying to get true vO2 max work, or true extended tempo work, those things aren’t going to work in a Zwift race.
Trevor Connor 26:49
You’re gonna give me your answer – your answer is “got the job done – “
Rob Pickels 27:10
No, they’re not going to.
Trevor Connor 27:11
Good answer.
Rob Pickels 27:12
The other side of this is I think that you came out of this happier and in a better place and if that is the path that you need to take to help you get back into the full motivation, to enjoying riding – because you know what, maybe this workout wasn’t the best workout. Physiologicalllly, if we studied it in a lab, I’m sure it doesn’t get you the best return but that’s okay. Because you might be feeling better. You seem happier after doing that so does next week – are you able to go and you’re motivated, and you’re going to do that full workout and you’re not going to have to take this sort of shortcut out of it – I think that all of those things are very important because the best workout for an athlete is not the best workout on a piece of paper, it’s the best workout that that athlete is able to do to complete, to feel motivated to feel happy to feel encouraged. All of that is really, in my opinion, incredibly important – more so than the perfect, like to the second, to the watt workout.
Grant Holicky 28:09
I will always, always say what you just said. And that’s my starting point – now Trevor asked me as a pure coach and a training piece – yeah, I think it worked for what you were doing, I think it is not well rounded enough for an entire training plan, but –
Rob Pickels 28:34
How would you rate this in Training Peaks, ah “give up halfway through your workout, do a Zwift race?
Trevor Connor 28:41
Well, I’ll give you –
Grant Holicky 28:42
Do what you did last Tuesday.
Trevor Connor 28:44
I will give you my take on it, which is looking at it as a coach, if one of my athletes was doing this – if an athlete, if I signed them the five, let’s say their routine right now is five by fives twice a week and one of the, you know, so I’m looking at their report for the week and on Thursday, they had the five by fives and they did exactly what I did and just said “just having a low motivation day, so, you know, I hopped into a race and and got, you know, just helped me stay motivated”. I go “Fine. You’ve made the right choice.” If I gave them five by fives twice a week, and every single time they were doing two, three intervals and then hopping into Zwift race. I would go “this isn’t working and let’s have a talk – so maybe the five by fives aren’t for you, we need to find something else but you can’t be doing this every time.”
Grant Holicky 29:33
Yeah, and honestly part of the reason that I like indoor riding – or indoor riding works for me – is because how I train and what I like is shorter, harder, more intense intervals and I feel like I have an easier time knocking those out on the trainer. I can wrap my head around a minute on the trainer. I can wrap my head around two minutes on the train or 30 second sprints on the trainer. I have a hard time wrapping my head around 10 minutes of LT on a trainer.
Trevor Connor 30:03
Really?
Grant Holicky 30:04
Yes.
Trevor Connor 30:04
I am the exact opposite.
Grant Holicky 30:05
You don’t have that problem. I know, I know and ifferentt people are different ways and this is what, kind of, Rob was alluding to, the uniqueness of an individual is super important. I’ll look at it and go “Minute on, minute off on the trainer? Sweetsp,otman, like that, that’s like my sweet – I will nail that all day long, I’ll do 20 of them.” I feel great doing that. That was the old Suffer Fest workout – just knock them out. Thank you Neal Henderson.
Rob Pickels 30:30
Yeah, Neal.
Grant Holicky 30:30
Revolver. And you know –
Rob Pickels 30:33
I remember Revolver before it was actually Revolver. That’s how old school – we are OGs of that workout.
Grant Holicky 30:39
Yeah, yeah and I love that workout, like, that’s – if I have a low motivation moment, that’s what I load up. Just like, I’m just gonna knock this out because I feel good doing it. And I think that’s part of what you’re kind of getting at too, where do you feel good, you can feel really good in that place – and to come back to Rob’s point and I don’t think, hey, like, I think you guys talked to somebody about this recently, you can’t separate the training from the mind.
Trevor Connor 31:06
Right.
Grant Holicky 31:06
Right, they don’t get pulled apart. There is absolutely no way to pull those two things apart. So how do you make somebody feel competent – you hopped in a Zwift race, probably came out of that Zwift race and went “I did alright”.
Trevor Connor 31:19
Yeah, ‘cept it was a crit.
Grant Holicky 31:20
But it was emphasis with crit, right, it’s, it’s like you’re in this box in a Zwift crit.
Trevor Connor 31:27
Well, the worst part of it is I’ve done the Zwift crit course a few times but always counterclockwise – so for the first time I did it clockwise and didn’t realize – there’s a hill!
Grant Holicky 31:39
Oh, yeah.
Trevor Connor 31:40
And they hit that hill hard!
Grant Holicky 31:42
It goes – it, like, stair-steps up the hill and you got to, like, rip it up that hill.
Trevor Connor 31:46
I got popped first lap – so here I’m hopping into it to get motivated, I’m like, I’m a minute and half in and I just got popped.
Rob Pickels 31:53
Yeah, you gotta be at the front of the field at that and then I usually drift backward on most laps, so that I’m controlling a little bit.
Grant Holicky 32:00
I love that course.
Trevor Connor 32:01
But that – I did allude to that when I was saying what I would do with one of my athletes and putting aside the first question of “Are you overtrained?” –
Grant Holicky 32:09
Right.
Trevor Connor 32:10
If you’ve addressed that, if I give an interval workout to an athlete, and they’re consistently not doing it, and hopping in a Zwift race, I don’t go – I’m not gonna yell at the athletes and say “you got to do this”. I look at that and go “they don’t like these intervals”. We gotta find a better direction for you.
Grant Holicky 32:28
Alright.
Rob Pickels 32:28
I mean, so that enjoyment factor, you know, seems seems like is really a big important thing, right?
Trevor Connor 32:35
Intervals hurt and look, there’s no way to get around that. If you do good intervals, they’re gonna hurt, right? There are some intervals that people are okay with, saying “I’m going to hurt doing these”, there are other intervals where it hurts, “I hate these intervals. It sucks. I don’t want to do this.”
Grant Holicky 32:50
And everybody has their wheelhouse – this is what I was talking about, one on, one offs, my wheelhouse. LT is Trevor’s wheelhouse. Going really really hard for a short period of time is your wheelhouse.
Rob Pickels 33:02
I don’t like doing that on the trainer though.
Grant Holicky 33:03
Okay, so going really – you don’t like anything on a trainer.
Trevor Connor 33:07
He likes doing –
Rob Pickels 33:10
I love doing my base rides and ERG mode on the trainer.
Grant Holicky 33:12
Oh my god, you’re a psychopath.
Trevor Connor 33:16
You do two hours, then state ride in ERG mode.
Rob Pickels 33:19
It’s not steady state, it fluctuates up and down – but the computer controls that for me and I don’t have to look at it.
Grant Holicky 33:24
What are you looking at?
Rob Pickels 33:25
I don’t like watching Netflix there –
Grant Holicky 33:27
You’d just be stari a brick w. You are – you are a child of the coffee trainer.
Rob Pickels 33:29
Yeah, we’ve talked about this before – I, if I’m not in ERG mode, I have to actually watch the course which means I need to shift and everything else – I can’t focus on the Great British Baking Show – you know.
Trevor Connor 33:46
And the fact that my question ended with the Great British Baking Show – I think we’re done. We are good. I have nothing left to ask.
Grant Holicky 33:57
Take it away, Rob.
Rob Pickels 33:58
Perfect.
Ryan Kohler 34:01
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Self-Care and Balance in Busy Times
Rob Pickels 34:31
Well guys, you know all of my questions come from inexperience and this time, there I was just laying on the massage table and it came to me – I have not had a massage in a long time and beep, did it feel good – anyway, here’s my question, is, my life is often very hectic, work, riding, kids, wife that travels and races herself – Grant you’re in a pretty similar situation, I know you were sort of saying how busy you guys are right now – and so my question is this and Trevor, you’re you’re owning and running businesses and training and whatever else so we all have a lot and everyone out there has a lot going on as well. What is it that you do for self care? What emphasis do you place on your self to help balance all of the things that are going on in the world around you – and I’ll just kick this off by saying massage for me is oftentimes more about my mind than it is my legs. If I want my legs to feel good, I got my percussion massager and that really helps me recover from a workout, I can’t get a massage every day. But I know that taking that moment for myself helps calm everything inside of me when the world is a lot, when it’s too much. And I can judge when things feel too much when I stopped doing these self care things, you know, like it pushes them down. And so, you know, Grant, Trevor, and this is something I’d love to hear from from everyone out there, what is it that you have in your life that helps you balance – and if you don’t have something, then maybe let’s get some inspiration going for people and what could it be?
Trevor Connor 36:11
You wanna go first?
Grant Holicky 36:12
Sure. For me, it’s (laughs) it’s training. And, but – but I don’t look at training as – and maybe this is why I wasn’t motivated to race very hard last year, like I’d hop in races because I wanted to see the course, I wanted to help out my athletes, but like, I wasn’t going as deep as I’d gone in the past – but for me, training and racing is my break. It’s that time that I get to step away from everything else. I’ve, I’ve gotten to a point in my life where I don’t look at training as a “have to”, I don’t look at it as “I got to”, it’s a “I get to”, Hey, man, like, this is my hour, I get to tune everything else out and I do a lot of meditation on the bike, whether that is on my long rides outside, where it’s just making an focus point to look at the mountains, look at what’s around here and have some gratitude for where I live, what I’ve done, what I’ve done with my life to I could get to this point – so it’s self gratitude too, its gratitude to the people around me – and then intervals for me or meditation, I think I’ve talked about this before, I’m a big believer in that retiring athletes need to find a replacement for natural meditation that they did in their training. Hey, if you’re going to five minute interval, and you’re outside, what are you doing? What are you thinking about? You’re not thinking about anything, you’re thinking about your breathing? Maybe occasionally, you’re looking at your watts, And everything else that comes into your mind, what are you doing with it? I’m just gonna put that away for the next four and a half minutes. Oh, man, you didn’t pay your bills, I’m gonna put that away for the next three minutes. That’s meditation. And so we’re doing that naturally, as athletes, I’ve just really – that’s what I rely on and when I don’t have that, I really, really struggle in my life.
Rob Pickels 38:11
Grant, do you think that – does this happen just naturally for you? Or is this something that you’re purposefully engaging with activity to elicit this response?
Grant Holicky 38:23
I think a little bit of both, I think growing up a swimmer, you don’t, there’s nothing I mean, you’re staring at a black line on the bottom of a pool when you’re doing intervals, right? If you’re going really, really hard as a swimmer in the water, all you can think about is your breathing because otherwise you drown, so like that natural meditation of interval style workout – that got built into me as a swimmer. As an adult, it was a lot of intention, really taking a step away from the results defining what I was trying to do and coming to a place that says, Hey, man, athletics is something that I have the pleasure of doing at 40 years old. It is not, it doesn’t define me, it doesn’t make me good or bad. If I win this race, or I get 10th in this race, that doesn’t matter. I get to race. And I think gratitude has become a huge aspect of my life and so as, you know, what you’re saying, if I go out for a base ride, and I’m alone, I like riding alone. But I really will force myself at an early point in the ride to stop and look around and really take a moment to take that in and go “you know, this is a really cool place to live” or “this is a really cool place to ride” or, I mean, I’ve done base rides in awful places and gone “well, this is a really particular place”. And so I think those things for me, yeah, there’s a lot of intention and then there’s a lot of awareness of that natural piece of it that just got built into my life. And now I do that with intention.
Rob Pickels 40:01
Yeah, I think the intention and the awareness is important because if you rush home from work and you rush out to the garage and you rush onto your bike and you rush through your workout and you rush home and you make dinner, you’re not getting these positive benefits. But if you break that cycle, if 10 minutes into your ride, you stop and you look around, you say, “Man, the sky is pretty today” or listen to those birds or you wave at people going, you have the intentionality – that I think can really change and that’s really important to do, because it changes how you’re engaging with the ridng. And it can make riding a self care situation as opposed to a “I have to”, “I need to”.
Grant Holicky 40:39
Yeah, to me, that’s the key, right? I really, and honestly, I’ll have this conversation with professionals who are living and dying on the result. If you’re looking at your training as an “I have to”, you’re gonna struggle at places, you’re gonna have a hard time. I mean, the same thing with anything that’s, you know, if you, if your job is a, it’s a dredge, you just got to get through it, I just have to do it, this is how I make money. Lives go by really quickly, right? The old – if you don’t stop and look around every once in a while, you just might miss it. And I think, how do you find some fun? How do you find what makes it joyous? I mean, we’ve all had this experience, I have an hour that I have to get through, dude, that hour takes forever. I remember walking on the pool deck early on in my coaching career, and I was teaching, I was coaching, I was barely making any money, I was hanging on for dear life, right, and I remember getting on the pool deck and going I gotta get through this two hours, and it was miserable – the slowest two hours, right? But if I made a choice to actively walk in and engage as much as I could, this is why it became such a technical swim coach, because otherwise what do you do? Sit back, you give a set and you read the paper, right? So become a technical swim coach, the two hours will fly by because there’s always something to do and you get engaged with people. And it just, I mean, it just live in life up – so man I’m sorry, I got like real deep
Rob Pickels 42:06
Yeah, that was good T-dog, I thought that you would be the training –
Trevor Connor 42:10
T-dog?
Rob Pickels 42:10
Yeah, T-dog today.
Trevor Connor 42:11
That’s a new one to me.
Rob Pickels 42:15
I thought that you would be the training person and Grant I pegged Grant as a, as a meditation person, so Trevor, you’re going to surprise me with how you implement some self care here?
Trevor Connor 42:26
I probably am. So look, I am that guy who got really out of balance. I do work long hours, and got to a point where I was working till 11:30, 12:00 at night, getting up in the morning exhausted, trying to get my training in when I could, get to work, work another long day and it got to be a grind, and found myself getting less and less effective. Because the way I described it to a friend is you know, think about school exam week and those exam weeks there, you can kind of be fun, oryou can do them for a week. But then you get a rest and I kind of went “every week is exam week and my body is finally saying I can’t do this”. But the interesting thing I have found trying to get myself into balance is there a lot of factors – so you can say, “Oh, I’m going to try meditation” or “I’m going to try riding” or I’m going to do this at this particular time. What I found is A) that can change, B) that might work for somebody else, it might not work for you, or it might even change what works for you. So let me give you an example. I think back to 10 years ago, when I felt really in balance, I was a night owl. So my favorite thing in the world to do at this coffee shop that I loved, it was a 24 hour coffee shop, I would go there do all my reading, do all my research, I would leave there usually 11:30 12:00 –
Grant Holicky 43:50
He knew he was a 24 hour coffee shop because he was there all 24 hours.
Trevor Connor 43:56
You know I would never get out of there before 11:00, often get out about midnight, go home, relax for an hour, hour and a half, get to bed about 1:30, you know, wake up in the morning, get back to my routine and I would do my training kind of mid afternoon and actually felt really in balance. Training was part of my relaxation. But actually sitting at that coffee shop is a relaxation for me. I found an interesting thing with COVID is I didn’t have my coffee shop anymore. I tried to keep my routine but do it at home and what I found was what was a joy at a coffee shop was a struggle that drained me at home and I would wake up in the morning feeling like I got hit by a truck and I just slowed down more and more and more. So I’ve actually switched my routine to I now shut down about 10 o’clock because I know I’m just not productive after 10:00. All the stuff I used to like to do at night I’m now finding I actually enjoy more in the morning like I would do a stretch routine at night watching TV. I actually now like doing that in the morning. So even that, that is something that kept me in balance, the timing of it was important and I had to shift it to the morning so now I go to bed earlier and I get up much earlier. And my time to relax, I have a couple hours before I come into work where that’s, I do my stretching, I do my exercise routine, I’ve tried meditation, and I use a – first when I tried meditation, I was doing it right before I went to bed. And I hate it –
Grant Holicky 45:21
Yeah.
Trevor Connor 45:21
I’m like meditation sucks. And finally, one morning I woke up. I’m like, why not try in the morning? I did the routine in the morning went, “Oh, I love this”.
Grant Holicky 45:27
Yeah, yeah, I think timing is really important with that. And I mean, yeah, it really interesting point is it is so different for every individual –
Rob Pickels 45:37
100%.
Grant Holicky 45:38
And how things change, like, I totally agree with that, with a massage, right? And I used to go in and get a massage and go, “I don’t really need you to fix anything -“
Rob Pickels 45:47
I know.
Grant Holicky 45:47
“- just, just, just give me a rubdown, touch me a little bit and I’ll zone out for an hour.”
Rob Pickels 45:52
Yeah.
Grant Holicky 45:53
I am to the point now where I do the opposite. The person who does my body work is a friend, we talk for the entire hour, and honestly, he’s just fixing stuff, right? Like I drove back from Montana so I spent 10 hours in a car, please fix me.
Rob Pickels 46:09
Yeah, right.
Grant Holicky 46:10
So that’s really shifted in my life, I don’t have that luxury, whatever it was and so I don’t do it, it’s so much about, I thinkthere’s a lot of value in routine, I think there’s a lot of value in what feels good and what feels safe to you and what feels like I have control over this –
Rob Pickels 46:31
Yeah,
Grant Holicky 46:31
I can do this – and you made a point earlier and I always like to touch on this – transition time. To me transition time is everything for everybody. And we’ve lost transition time. When when I take my kids to school, they have to be in the school by 7:50, they don’t start anything till eight o’clock. They have a 10 minute transition time. You were at home. Now you’re in school. And I find myself doing this all the time. I’m going to do this podcast until this time, and then I’m going to start the next thing at that same time – we can’t do that, you can’t end one thing at 11:00 and start the next thing at 11:00. So, building in a half an hour of just time – I don’t have time for that – you can if you build it in, and what do you do? Sometimes you get through 20 minutes of it, and you’re like, “Okay, I’m ready, I’m gonna go to the next thing.” But I talked about this with athletes all the time, get away from the rest of your life, take a moment to leave that behind, step into the workout, do the workout, take a moment to leave the workout behind, go hang out with your friends or your family or your loved ones.
Trevor Connor 47:39
I think you bring up a really important question about time – and now we’re getting way outside of the training world, but just general advice I have certainly seen – so going back to when I said “my routine didn’t work anymore and I was getting drained”, I was, even though I was trying to get as much time as I could, I was probably doing about a half an hour’s worth of work in an hour. So I really wasn’t gaining time. Where when I find myself in balance and rested and in a good place, you know, I’m one of those “There’s no such thing as given 120%, you can only give 100%”. So I’ll say, you can get an hour’s worth of work in an hour’s time.
Rob Pickels 48:16
Yep.
Grant Holicky 48:17
Well, and that’s unusual, right? I mean, that’s hitting your potential. That’s one of the – I joke about this all the time, like my brother, I hope he doesn’t listen to this but my brother has a desk job and you know, he’s an architect, and he’s busy. But he talks about how busy he is all the time but I, god, I get so much random crap from him in the middle of the day. Cleveland Browns or the Guardians, or like, just bike racing -“did you see this?” I’m like “What are you doing? I thought you work 24/7.”
Rob Pickels 48:41
Yeah.
Grant Holicky 48:41
And, and so the distractions within our lives and our workspaces right now are so extreme that it’s very rare that we’re doing an hour worth of work in an hour.
Rob Pickels 48:51
And that’s, I think the effectiveness that you both are pointing out right now is the reason for this. Oftentimes, we feel overwhelmed, we stopped taking care of ourselves, we stopped doing the routine that works, we stop getting our massages, or going for our rides or having our intentionality and we get progressively worse at what we do, which means it takes progressively longer, which means we have less time, which means we’re less effective, and it feeds this cycle. That’s why I think that it’s important and why I bring this up, what is it that you do to make sure that people are doing it because it can be so hard to take that moment out of your day or to put that thought into what your routine is. But taking that – even though it feels initially like it’s going to be counterproductive, like it’s taking you away from what you have to do – ultimately can make you more effective and give you more time in the future to do things you want to.
Trevor Connor 49:42
So, when I set up these businesses, my dad is also running a business, so I went to him obviously and said, “Dad, what’s your advice here?” and one of the things that he told me that really resonated is, he said, “Too many bosses focus on the time that their employees are putting in, what you need to focus on is what they’re getting done.”
Rob Pickels 50:02
Yep.
Grant Holicky 50:03
And that’s a great point coming out of COVID, right? We want to get everybody – bosses want to get people back in the office, it shouldn’t be about where it gets done, it should be about productivity.
Rob Pickels 50:14
Yep.
Grant Holicky 50:14
The other thing that I think and I’ll, my final point with this is one of the things that I’m a big believer is in self forgiveness. Give yourself a break. Just take that second and go, “it’s okay”. Maybe I messed up today, but you know what, it’s all right and I get – part of this for me is that transition time.There’s a lot of times that I said I was gonna get on the bike at five and I end up getting on five at night. I’m gonna don’t end up getting on the bike till 5:30 – well, I gotta be off the bike by 6:30 because that’s when we all sit down for dinner, right? So “aw, I only got an hour” – I can punish the heck out of myself for missing that half an hour or I can go “you know what, I needed it”. That was appropriate today, I needed it, I get an hour and I’ll go hard for an hour – dude, I’m a 50 year old bike racer, what’s it matter? Like, enjoy your hour, instead of spending 30 minutes of that hour being mad that you missed the 30 minutes from earlier. And there’s so much of this stuff that we do – so the self care? Yeah, like, self forgiveness is huge. And gratitude is huge. And self gratitude is huge. I think we don’t do enough time of that. “Hey, you know what? Right, we’re going to bed, you did a good job today, Grant.”
Rob Pickels 51:34
I thought I was the fluffy guy – Grant’s over here -.
Grant Holicky 51:37
Listen, I’m a huge fluffy guy. Like, I think we need so much more time in our lives to take a second to tell everybody else good job and to tell ourselves good job – and we don’t do it enough. And the more we do that, I – dude – talk about trotting out studies, I could try it out study after study after study on gratitude and how it changes perspective, how it changes mood is fantastic. And that’s a whole show on that kind of stuff.
Trevor Connor 52:06
Something I will add to that, find something that you love that rejuvenates you and make sure you do that regularly. And you protect that. So for example, mine is when I was racing full time, I would after every ride, sit down and do a 45 minute stretch, watching some sort of, some show that I really liked and I love that time again. – Not even slightly (laughs).
Rob Pickels 52:34
Missing out man.
Trevor Connor 52:35
So, every weekend, usually on Saturday, I go for my ride and then I come back and I have my now hour full stretch watching the show and so this summer it has been Stranger Things –
Grant Holicky 52:50
Oh, okay.
Trevor Connor 52:51
And even though I absolutely want to binge watch that show and see what happens next – it’s such a great hour for me – I will only, so like I’m on the final episode now which is like two and a half hours long and I finished my stretch in the middle and I’m like “have to stop it”. I’m not gonna – because I want this so much next week.
Grant Holicky 53:11
Oh my god, my wife would kill you. We were watching Game of Thrones right now, finally watching that show. And we’re getting to the point where I, you know, we finish an episode. And she looks at me and goes “we got to start another one”. “No, it’s 10 o’clock at night, we’re gonna go to bed.” “We have to do it now, just gotta start it.” She’s – she’s not a patient woman.
Rob Pickels 53:32
We love you Brie!
Trevor Connor 53:36
But now that we’ve ruined Grants marriage, I think we’re done here –
Grant Holicky 53:39
Gonna play this for her for sure.
Rob Pickels 53:41
There you go. Well, Grant, Trevor. I just want to say great job today, guys.
Grant Holicky 53:46
Yeah, I think we did a really nice job today. I think we should be really proud of ourselves.
Rob Pickels 53:50
I’m proud of you.
Grant Holicky 53:51
I’m proud of you, too.
Rob Pickels 53:52
Thank you. Appreciate it.
Trevor Connor 53:54
Do you guys want me to leave so you can – have the room to yourselves?
Grant Holicky 53:57
No. You, too, Trevor, you did really, really well. And I’m really proud of you for doing that Zwift race the other day.
Trevor Connor 54:03
Are you?
Grant Holicky 54:04
I am, you could have been easy to just bail and instead you got something out of it. I think that’s important.
Trevor Connor 54:09
That was not the word – like do we need to do a big group hug here? Are we getting into that phase?
Rob Pickels 54:16
No, no, no, no, no, we don’t have to touch each other.
Grant Holicky 54:19
That’s why we’re all separate.
Trevor Connor 54:23
Oh, that was good.
Grant Holicky 54:24
That was another episode of Fast Talk!
Rob Pickels 54:27
Keep going Keep going. Keep going.
Grant Holicky 54:28
I don’t know it.
Rob Pickels 54:29
Doesn’t matter. Just say whatever you want.
Trevor Connor 54:31
None of us know it. Rob?
Rob Pickels 54:33
That was another episode of Fast Talk. Please like and subscribe because we’re awesome and you love listening to us. Join the conversation at forums.fasttalklabs.com. And Trevor’s opening his computer
Trevor Connor 54:43
This is like me not finishing my intervals, okay, we’re doing this right.
Rob Pickels 54:47
For Trevor Connor and Grant Holicky, I’m Rob Pickels. Thanks for listening!
Trevor Connor 54:52
No, not acceptable.
Rob Pickels 54:53
You’re going to forgive me?
Grant Holicky 54:55
The attitudes, conversations, expressions, and moments of joy expressed on this episode are not indicative of Fast Talk as a whole –
Rob Pickels 55:03
They are those of the individual!
Grant Holicky 55:04
Not as the company? I don’t know – don’t sue us!
Rob Pickels 55:08
Don’t sue Trevor!
Grant Holicky 55:09
Don’t sue Trevor! I’m an independent contractor.
Rob Pickels 55:14
You’re really unprotected unless you do – you have your own insurance I hope?
Grant Holicky 55:18
I do. I do I do. I do.
Rob Pickels 55:19
Well then sue Grant because he’s covered –
Grant Holicky 55:21
Don’t sue me!
Trevor Connor 55:23
That was another episode of Fast Talk. Subscribe to Fast T wherever you prefer to find your favorite podcasts. I’m amazed you guys aren’t talking over me on this. Be sure to leave us a rating and review. The thoughts and opinions expressed on Fast Talk are those of the individual.
Rob Pickels 55:36
(snores) We said all of this.
Trevor Connor 55:39
As always, we love your feedback.
Rob Pickels 55:41
See!
Trevor Connor 55:42
Join the conversation on forums.fasttalklabs.com. Tweet us at – God, I can’t read – tweet us – tweet at us – well, it’s horribly written!
Rob Pickels 55:57
I do it everytime!
Trevor Connor 55:57
Head to fasttalklabs.com to get access – but we need to work on your English – to get access to our endurance sports knowledge base coach continuing education as well as our in person and remote athletes services. For Grant Holicky and Trevor Connor, I’m Rob Pickels. Thanks for listening!