When

do I stop asking people on the group ride to slow down for me and just leave like this this is a very interesting question because targeting

you is it

well i don't know it's it's i mean certainly okay so for personal experience that a few weeks ago i was out in a spin it was supposed to be kind of a very slow spin but there was some much stronger people on the on the ride. So the levels were very, very different. Now, I was kind of every couple of like every half an hour, every 40 minutes, we're like, lads, can we slow down a bit? Can we slow down a bit? Now, the guys weren't really they're not doing it on purpose. They're not saying, oh, we're going to give Sarah her day or we're going to turn the screws on her. But they would slow down and then slowly the speed would kind of creep up over the next 20 minutes. And next thing I'm watching my heart rate creep up with it. And I ask again and then I kind of say to them, oh, do you know what? I'm going to roll off and do my own thing. And I'm like, they probably think I'm a brat. I'm not being a brat, but it's just no one is happy in that situation. And I feel like a bit of a bitch. But that is hard to moderate

to speed. You've done this to somebody else on Sunday. And not through any, I'm sure, intention to turn the screws on him. No. But I asked you to slow down. And you did slow down. Just a concentration. And then over the next five minutes, I watched as you just brought your speed back up again. And he got back into the predicaments that he was in as we asked you to slow down to start so when you point the finger sarah sometimes you have three fingers pointing back at you no

i totally agree it it just it happens and i i don't think it's not done out of malice from the people who are riding up the front it's you get into a conversation you get into the zone and the speed kind of creeps up i think it needs a good strong leader on the group right to constantly be saying let's keep it at this speed or let's

even rewinding from that more than a strong leader because a leader is going to enforce rules you need to have a consensus as to what the objective of the group is yes are we going out and that's why the one you talked about from the Sunday before was that's advertised as a really slow cruisy Sunday spin and it was the same criticism I had you pushing the speed the Sunday after that because it's a really slow cruisy casual cafe spin like people shouldn't be hanging on for dear life the objective of that spin is to get new people into the spin that don't feel comfortable coming on a normal group ride but

let's say that for instance this listener just actually gave us a lot of a lot of information if somebody's coming on a normal ride that's not particularly cruisy you do as for as someone who's newish to cycling you do end up starting feeling like a little bit of a burden when you're kind of constantly saying oh can you slow down can you wait for me and then if they do wait for you the top of a climb they they're rested and as soon as you get there they're off again so it's how do you manage that i

think it's managing the expectations going into the ride because as much as you know i romanticize and i always talk about the group ride maybe too much i get some abuse in the youtube comments from this romantic notion of the group ride but I feel passionately that the group ride is all those things and it is meant to be this collective where we're only as fast as our slowest person that being said you need to caveat that and say the group ride can't constantly be a race to the bottom we had problems last summer where people will come out on the group ride who never rode the bike and they would come out on the group ride and then they would be dropped and it was like absolutely ruined the whole group ride and you're like now you're catering the group ride for the lowest common denominator who only comes to the group ride once every three or four months there's no riding in between and now you're asking 20 25 people to put their all their plans for training and having some fun on a saturday on hold to cater for one person who's totally in over their head so it's that like matching of objectives like you need to understand who the group you're going out with is i'm not going to go over to girona show up with a bunch of world tour guys, and then expect them to slow down all day. I'm on their group ride. I need to match my, calibrate my expectations of being left alone to their training ride. So I think it's, and I get messages on Instagram all the time asking people, can they join our group ride? And I'm always like, yeah, absolutely. And the next question they'll ask most of the time is, what's the average speed? and average speed only goes some way to telling how hard the ride is because you're you're in the wheel is a flash is it windy but it does give a little bit of a barometer I actually a few years ago one of my mates teammates McKenna we talk about a bit on the podcast he was I think he submitted ad proposal or he was going to around a grading system for a group ride similar to golf where it's a golf handicap so it factors in a load of different things thresholds elevations so you could say how hard it's a group ride and you'd be like it's an eight and we all know what an eight handicapper in golf is because we have a friend who's an eight handicapper in golf i don't know it's an interesting idea i still don't think we have a good vocabulary for explaining how hard a group ride is yeah i think you're right

i think we need some more words to say to somebody yeah i think that the it's a four star ride it's a three and a half or yeah i i think that's an absolutely like

the cobbles on carraford the labra

yeah get back on it, Sean McKenna. Come on, we need that system.

But then a couple of times where you definitely shouldn't be saying to somebody, go on, is like if you're out of fuel, if you don't know where you are, if you're maybe like a vulnerable person, like you're a young girl and you're out the countryside far from home on your own and you don't have like mechanical ability. You know, I think there are some reasons I would say regardless of the group's objective saying okay I'm in over my head I've made a bad decision this week but don't leave me on my own like bring me back to civilization and then I'll find my way on my own but yeah I think the main thing is that communication at the outset we try to do it as a fast group and a slow group within one so it's quite cruisy for like 60 minutes and then we split it but yeah it's not perfect yeah

it's not perfect but when do i stop asking people on the group ride to slow down i mean do you three four times or you just hang in there and then maybe don't come on the next ride because it's not suitable for you you

know there's ways that if you think about our group ride there's ways you can still you don't have to just leave the group There's ways to interact with that group where you do a part of the ride. You do the first, like I wasn't feeling well last weekend. I said to you, I'm only going to ride as far as Port Maran, which is 45 minutes with the group. And then I plan to ride back on my own. Or you could ride directly to the coffee shop at the midway

point and ride home on your own. Yeah, if you're tired, I'll say to you. You say that to me if I'm tired. Yeah, if i'm kind of hitting get have a lot of stress from that week's training you're just like just go straight to the coffee shop and then do the second half or

ease up when it gets hardest and plot a shortcut back to the midway point or shortcut to intersect so there's loads of ways to interact with the group but i think the main thing is knowing that expectations at the start and then communicating to someone in the group your plan so people don't just think you're dropped and are waiting for you.

Okay. Okay. Next question. Yep. Okay. Anthony, how do I explain to my family and friends that I need to be disciplined? I need to eat healthy now and get up early in the morning and train and not have those glasses of wine. I've changed my lifestyle over the last six months. I've lost over eight kilos and I feel 10 years younger, but my family doesn't seem to support it. My wife constantly sabotages me and grumbles that I train so much, even though I'm conscious to get it done early when everyone in the house is asleep. My friends are constantly hassling me and slagging me about being a square. Any advice? It's

hard, isn't it? That's really hard. It a hard question like if your wife is constantly grumbling that you train too much even though you train early like i would say does she have a point like a tree i always say we talk about this if i go and i ride my bike for two hours in the morning i feel that adds to my day i i feel fresh. I feel alert. I get more done. If I ride my bike for three hours or above in the day, my day is basically a write-off. No creative work gets done. Maybe I can do some admin tasks, but my day is pure slobbering. So even though you're getting your training done early in the morning are you coming back then you're just not present with your wife and you're not present with your kids and you're not taking your business or your family objectives forward for the rest of the day because if that's the case i think there's a lot of merit to your wife's grumbles and that's not saying the two aren't compatible it's maybe looking at your training plan and saying hey instead of riding so hard in the morning can i do that last thing in the evening or can i change up my session can i do instead of a two-hour ride can i intersperse in a little bit of intensity to get the same training stress and now i'm doing three by ten minute threshold in the evening in a 60 minute session which is more of a working man session rather than riding two and a half hours in the morning with two by 20 threshold which is kind of a pro rider session i think that's important to see is there merit in her actual underlying concerns outside of that i'd be saying it's important to communicate the benefits of it you've communicated the benefits here quite clearly to us that you feel 10 years younger you know explain that to her that you do feel 10 years younger you've lost weight you have more energy would the libido go up i don't know maybe maybe it's down maybe she doesn't like that maybe she doesn't care maybe she's her own thing going on the side uh other than that i would set boundaries i would say look these are the times I'm gonna train and I'm fully present and available to do stuff outside of these times but here's the times I'm training there here's my important events that you know I need to tighten you don't need to be super tight you've lost eight kilograms the hard part is losing weight the easy part is maintenance so you don't need your whole year where you're super strict you just need periods of your year where you're strict likewise coming up to an event you want to tighten the strings a little bit but out the far side of the event you can loosen the strings a little bit so communicating all that and with your friends i've done this really bad historically but i had i don't know quite like high performance goals i i don't find balance easy in my life and i went like full gas at cycling and then the collateral damage to that is like friendships because you just torch friendships because if you're riding the bike 25 hours a week yeah you're not much space for anything else so but then it's like what's that buddha saying like people are in your life for a reason a season or a lifetime so is it a case that they're not actually friends they're just your old drinking buddies that maybe it's that period your life is over and it's okay to let go of those friendships to make space for new friendships i think there's an argument for that as well yeah

I totally agree with all of your your points I mean going back to your wife and your family um yeah it's look it's really hard when your goals and your new lifestyle isn't kind of aligned with everybody else you need to first of all you need to continue on in your journey I mean if this is something that you're now focusing on there's nothing more special and more precious than your health and that's going to be for your kids going through the next couple of years and your wife and your relationship your own mental health and the you know how fulfilled your own life is over the next few years so I would say please try and continue to focus on this and don't let other people's opinions uh take you out of this journey that you're on having said that Anthony I think you're right you need to like more we get questions like this all the time it's like why can you not communicate with your other half a little bit better to kind of say okay well why are you unhappy with me training as you said and then you made up some made some excellent excellent points there that maybe it's just having such a knock-on effect on their lives together it puts a stress like

it puts a stress even like you know yesterday you rode the gravel bike basically all day yeah and it's like it puts it totally changed the shape of the other person's day it

does because

now you're like okay normally we do this together or normally we split this chart like bringing the dogs out normally that gets split 50 50 then it's like okay actually i need to do that for the entire day now and it kind of curtails plans you can make it's a stress that yeah

so like be aware that that's maybe something underlying that your wife is doing with regards to your friends i i not that i want to say torch them you know torch your friends but if your friends are still stuck in the i want to go and be a booze hound thursday friday saturday sunday and you've no interest in that well but for now you're for now your lives at the moment are forking away from each other unfortunately that doesn't mean as you said you do need to strike a good balance between this sport cycling look this person who rides in is not a pro you do need to strike a balance and have that anthony isn't it's like it's not it's not like don't become so obsessed with cycling and being disciplined that you ruin all of the other good things because how many

times have we seen this now you're only getting into cycling you've even seen this a couple times I've pointed it out one or two people have come into our group they come in hot and fast like they're going to be the next big thing in cycling and I'm just like to you I've seen this play out like 10 20 times before people come in cycling's addictive It's this game of marginal gains where like if I lose this bit of weight, if I gain this much power, if I get this much more aero, I'll fly through the categories. Category 4, Category 3, when you're racing, they're normally pretty soft if you're that talented or you're that committed. So you fly through these or you're getting the positive feedback straight away. Then you get to a point like Cat 2 or Cat 1 where you're like, oh, everybody here trains. I'm not getting that positive feedback that I was anymore. Everyone stopped telling me I'm going to be the next big pro. And it slows down. And a lot of those people walk away from the sport. They don't have great longevity on it. And now you've torched that group of friends that you used to go drinking with and you want to go drinking again.