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Interview With Sir Chris Hoy | The Run Testers Podcast
2.2k Plays9 months ago
In this podcast special, Tom chats to six-time Olympic champion Sir Chris Hoy about a whole heap of things, from the mental aspects of training at competitive level, to podcasting, comedy and how he became a children's author.
Chris hosts the Sporting Misadventures podcast alongside journalist Matt Majendie where they speak to comedians about the world of sport. Well worth a listen if you're looking for something funny and interesting to keep you busy during that long run.
Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/is/podcast/sporting-misadventures-with-chris-hoy/id1680181306
Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1HlxCFrsX21UQ40OLiEVjb
Big thanks to Fear of Tigers for the killer intro music. You can listen to more of his stuff over at https://www.patreon.com/fearoftigers
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Transcript
Introduction and Diverse Career of Chris Hoy
00:00:01
Speaker
Hey Tommy from The Runtesters and welcome to another podcast special. This episode is a really exciting one because I got the opportunity to speak to Sir Chris Hoy, a man who needs very little introduction. He's a track cyclist who's won so many different medals, whether that's World Championships or the Olympics. But there's loads of stuff that I didn't know a lot about. He's a racing driver. He also has his own podcast.
00:00:25
Speaker
and he is an author as well. So there was plenty for us to talk about on the pod.
The Impact of Knighthood on Daily Life
00:00:31
Speaker
So instead of me waffling on about it, let's dive in and see what Chris had to say. Welcome, Chris, to the Runetester's podcast. How's it going? Hi, Tom. Yeah, great. Thanks. Thanks for having me on. Very excited.
00:00:48
Speaker
Thank you so much for joining. I can safely say you're the first Sir we've had on the podcast, so it's a big deal for us. Yeah, you're intimidated. Have you had to read about the protocol? You didn't bow before I came into the chat room here?
00:01:05
Speaker
No, no. Well, I did seek some advice beforehand, but it was absolutely useless. So I haven't got any protocol at all to work towards. It's funny. Sometimes people do get a bit funny about it and you forget. It's such a weird thing. It's a huge honor to be given any kind of thing like that, but I might do that.
00:01:22
Speaker
It seems to be more of an issue or more of an interest abroad. When you go into other countries, they're fascinated by it. And because, I mean, I got my knighted about 14 or 15 years ago now, so you kind of get used to it in a way, but every now and again, you stop and think, it's quite bizarre and it's quite, well, it's a huge honour. But yeah, it's all good fun.
00:01:42
Speaker
I'm sure it's something I'm never going to have to worry about. But you never know this podcast, you know, you could easily end up. I don't know. I've got a knighthood from off the back of a podcast. Do you find it massively since you got the knighthood? How do you find that's impacted your day
Popularity of Cycling and Social Media Influence
00:01:59
Speaker
to day life? Do you do you get different sort of people?
00:02:04
Speaker
There's no practical sort of, you know, you read all these things, you get, like, you get the freedom of the city or something, you read, there's actual technical guidelines and you can, you can herd your sheep up the high streets or you can, you know, these things that are written 200 years ago, but actually there's, as far as I'm aware, unless there's some sort of secret knights society that they've not given me any sort of a heads up that exists.
00:02:29
Speaker
Yeah, it's just a really nice thing. And at the time, I mean, now we've got Bradley Wiggins, Jason Kenny, Dave Brillsford, and then the Dame Hoods, you've got Laura Kenny. But at the time, it was the first one for cycling in such a, just for a small sport like track cycling, it just gives a bit more attention from the wider public. And it's great to get, for your sport to get recognition.
00:02:52
Speaker
And it's yeah, it was really exciting. I mean, it's it was during a time when cycling was really taking off in the UK because it was when I started as a kid, it was very much a niche sport. You had to explain to people what, you know, I remember getting in taxis and stuff and oh, you know, what do you do for a living? Oh, I'm a professional cyclist. And then, you know, there's a blank look on their faces. You know, what do you do to, you know, Tour de France?
00:03:13
Speaker
No, no, no. All right. Well, you're like a courier then you deliver packages. It's like, no, no, that's a race on the velodrome. And I go, and no one had heard of it. And then there's this kind of massive boost in cycling from 2008 to 2012. And, you know, everybody wanted to get a bike and get active.
00:03:30
Speaker
Well, I suppose it's changed quite a bit in recent years with social media and sports people and especially sports that were probably lesser known back in the days of, you know, five TV channels and things. Now, they're superstars in their own right and maybe not just for the sport, maybe for all the other things that they do. I know a lot of young athletes, social media is almost like
00:03:54
Speaker
part and parcel of the job now. You sort of build your presence on that, and that's a big element of your career. But yeah, for you, that didn't really exist at the time, did it? Yeah, I remember Beijing was Twitter had just taken off at that point. I wasn't even on Twitter. London was the first games that really had a social media angle to it, and I took the choice to come off social media entirely about a week before. I just found it really distracting, and I found that
00:04:21
Speaker
you know you were getting it was crazy i remember going into the games and i think i had about a hundred thousand followers on twitter and i finished the games it was like five hundred thousand or something mad you know it went it went absolutely stratospheric during the games but with that comes this avalanche of messages
00:04:37
Speaker
99% of which are really positive and nice ones, but you do get negative ones. And inevitably, it's the negative ones that stick in your mind. And I just didn't want to have any negativity or any of this distraction. I thought, you know what, you can't pick and choose. You know, if you're going to start believing the positive press, you've also got to take the negative press on board. So I thought I'm just going to completely switch off from it, focusing the job at hand and
00:04:58
Speaker
but i think nowadays it's harder isn't it for as you say for athletes it's a big part of who they are it's a big part of their of their brand if you want to call it that um and they have to a lot of feel they have to continually engage with social media and provide content and provide an insight to their fans into their world and it's there's a lot of pressure i think i think it's simpler without it
00:05:18
Speaker
Yeah, there's pros and cons to it. But I think when you're going into something as intense as an Olympic Games or a major championship, you don't need additional distractions. And I think maybe that's why some of the bigger, the professional athletes have got entourages and teams around them. They have a social media manager who deals with it all and they don't have to worry about it.
00:05:38
Speaker
Completely. And I think, especially when it comes to things like sport, traditionally sport, you didn't really have to promote yourself in any way or tell people what you're doing. You just had to be good at the sport. But, and whereas, whereas obviously like comedy and stuff, you want, you need those people to see what you're doing and comment on it and sort of
Podcasting with 'Sporting Misadventures'
00:05:54
Speaker
build that up. So it's a very different, different world now for, um, for sports people. And I think I imagine it's probably quite difficult for some cause some probably just aren't interested in that, but they're there. You sort of have to do these days.
00:06:04
Speaker
I think it depends on the sport as well. I follow a lot of extreme sport folk on Instagram, you know, a lot of the BMXers and just stuff that, yeah, mountain biking, downhill mountain biking, but it's certainly sports like skateboarding or BMX where there's new tricks being invented, young sports where they're still in that kind of infancy of their development. And in the old days, you know, old old days,
00:06:29
Speaker
it would take months or even, you know, it could be a year before you see the latest trick that Tony Hawk's just done, you know, it's been reported in a VHS video and then it goes to shops and then you can't afford to buy the video so you wait until your friend's got a copy and then you see what they're doing in America and that could take months and months and months but now as soon as somebody invents a new trick, it's there, it's online immediately, you can see it and then people try and copy it and learn from them so the sports develop it a much faster rate exponentially, you see how
00:06:58
Speaker
the sport, these young extreme sports are unbelievable now, how fast they're developing and progressing.
00:07:14
Speaker
Well, let's, so when I was pairing this, I was going through your list of things that you've worked on, and it is a pretty long list now, Chris. I mean, you've got obviously all of the... I'm pretty old though, that's the thing you forget. Don't forget, but I've got a lot of time to do lots of things. You've still packed a lot in. So you've got all the sporting achievements, the Olympics, but also you've got, we talked about a bit of knighthood, but you've done other things as well. You've written kids books, you've got a podcast now, it's
00:07:42
Speaker
How do you find time to do all these things? I think it's just trying to pick and choose what you enjoy. If you enjoy what you do, you've got more passion for it. You put more effort in. It tends to come across as well if you're forced into doing things or you do things because you think you should do them.
00:07:57
Speaker
A, you want to put your heart and soul into it and B, yeah, the results don't tend to be quite as good. So yeah, I think I'm in quite a very lucky position where you can pick and choose and you go absolutely, do you know what? I mean, the podcast we do, I don't actually look at the figures because I think they're so pitiful. I don't want to be demoralized by it.
00:08:17
Speaker
I just do it because I enjoy it. Basically, it's myself and Matt Magenday. It's called Sporting Misadventures. We interview comedians and we talk to them about their relationship with sport and the good and bad, the things that have happened to them, what sports they support and follow, funny things that have happened. And basically, you get a chance to meet some of your comedy heroes and they do all the heavy lifting because they're comedians. You kind of sit back and let them be entertaining.
00:08:45
Speaker
But it's brilliant fun. So, you know, it's one of these things we do purely for as a means to an end for our own enjoyment. And hopefully in time you can build a bit of following. But even if you don't actually, do you know what I do? Because I love it and it's great fun.
00:09:00
Speaker
Yeah, I'm a big fan of it. I got, well, it was Joe Wilkerson who linked us up, obviously from Catholic. Oh, he's a lovely man. And I mean, that podcast, I've never, up until about three years ago, I've never, never really listened to podcasts that much. I know there's been a massive boom of podcasts over the past couple of years, but
00:09:22
Speaker
I was marathon training and just needed something to listen to and I had hours and hours every week trying to get bored of listening to the same music all the time. So I think I just started listening to Chatterbix all the time and just opened up the doors to me for other podcasts. And yours as well, obviously, because you went on Chatterbix and spoke to the guys.
00:09:42
Speaker
That's right. That was great. It's quite bizarre when you go on to a podcast as a guest of a podcast that you're a massive fan on and you've listened to many times. As Joe and David, such distinctive voices, you feel like you know them even before... I've only chatted to them on my podcast and on their podcast, so twice. But you feel like you know them intimately, like you're their best pals. And it's quite weird when you actually do see them on your little Zoom screen on your laptop and chat to them the first time.
00:10:11
Speaker
But yeah, isn't it weird how, I don't know about you, but I used to always use music as my motivation or distraction when I was training. If I was doing long rides, I wouldn't listen to anything. I would take, you know, mainly for safety, I would take, you know, I wouldn't have the AirPods in when I was riding a bike. But if I was doing, you know, in the gym or if I was doing efforts or coming off the track and listening to music, there was always music.
00:10:33
Speaker
never podcasts or the radio, whatever, but actually listening to people talk and just conversations. Your brain can then be distracted from, as long as it's not a really intense session that you're having to focus on the effort too much, if it's a low level kind of just slog and you're trying not to think about how exhausted you are, how far you've got to go, how long you've got to go, isn't it a great way to distract yourself from that payment time passes? It passes so much quicker.
00:10:57
Speaker
Yeah, as I was saying, I never used to listen to podcasts. I used to listen to audiobooks sometimes, but I really struggled because audiobooks you really have to pay attention to. If you miss a bit, you don't know what's going on. You've got to rewind it. But with podcasts, if you get the right ones, you can miss a bit and you dip into the next bit and it just sort of gives you a bit of a, just takes your mind off of things.
00:11:20
Speaker
Yeah, but yeah, I've been listening to your one and the fact that you get to chat to all these fantastic comedians and you've had some brilliant names on there and Alex Horn and obviously David and Job. Is it Reece as well you've had on there, didn't you? Yeah, we've had so many, we've been so lucky. Just started a second season, we've got Jack White all coming on. I don't think that's public yet or not, but anyway, yeah.
00:11:43
Speaker
just yeah it's amazing and a lot of it we're lucky because well Matt's brother is in the comedy industry he's an agent so he has he has got quite an impressive little black boot and if you meet you know if I've met people at events whatever and that gives you a foot in the door and you sort of you plead with them and you hope they're gonna you know come and give you another time but it's yeah
00:12:02
Speaker
It's just really interesting and also to see how sport is, you know, how far reaching sport is and how many people that you might not assume would be really into sport or interested in it, but how passionate they are about, you know, it could be something quite niche as well, we'd necessarily have. Football is one of the most common themes in our chats and ironically I'm not really that into football, but most of our guests do follow football teams or played football when they were younger.
00:12:28
Speaker
But yeah, you get a few interesting ones that are more niche sports. Josh Pughie, well he plays football for, it's the visually impaired team in, for England. Yeah, so he's an international, he's a comedian and he's an international footballer.
00:12:41
Speaker
Yeah, I enjoyed the Josh Pugh on massive fan of Josh Pugh at the moment. But I think the interesting thing is that a podcast, you've sort of shifted it a bit because you normally associate podcasts. It's always comedians who set up podcasts and they get guests on and they're sort of driving it. But you're getting comedians on your podcast and it sort of shifts it around. And I think it's interesting because you actually get a different view of what they're up to and things because they're normally things they probably wouldn't ever talk about because they're normally driving the conversation through a comedy angle.
00:13:06
Speaker
Exactly and it's what's interesting too is you see a different side to a lot of comedians you expect them to come on with the big persona, the kind of stage persona and often there can be a little bit shy or you know they're just kind of not maybe not quite in the comfort zone because they are not in control they don't know necessarily exactly where the chat's going to go but hopefully you get them relaxed and then and then as you say you get a different
00:13:29
Speaker
a different perspective. And because the comedians are just funny, they've got funny bones and they have this ability to observe the same things that we see, but observe it from a different angle and inevitably there's some kind of humorous angle to it. So, you know, well, who was it? We had Rob Otten on recently and he was talking about kids, you know, kids karate. And he said, it's like basically he's angry dancing for kids, you know, they sort of dancing around in like an aggressive way.
00:13:56
Speaker
And it's my son does tag when doing the same thing. They basically initially, all they're doing is hopping around, sort of punching midair and kicking midair, angry, dancing for kids. I thought, yeah,
Post-Retirement Fitness and Adaptation
00:14:05
Speaker
absolutely spot on.
00:14:07
Speaker
Well, one of them is a podcast. I'm guessing you listen to quite a few podcasts. Obviously you're a fan of them. Is there anything, what sort of podcasts or what are the ones you really enjoy listening to when you're either training or out and about? Do you know what most of my training at the moment is done indoors, really dull on a static bike, on Zwift, you know, virtual platform.
00:14:26
Speaker
an hour to an hour and a half when the weather's bad and so you are you know unless you're doing intervals or something that requires real focus you're just trying to distract yourself from that low level pain your heart rate is not particularly high but you are still feeling it in the legs and lungs so
00:14:42
Speaker
All kinds of things. I listened to car podcasts, Collecting Cars, Chris Harris, some of the stuff that he does. I listened to Vittorio, Mike and Vittorio's Guide to Parenting, which ironically has nothing to do with parenting at all. They're just two very funny Irish comedians, Chatterbix. I listened to Richard Herring, Rahel Estapa.
00:15:04
Speaker
That's a good one too. He's got some big names on his podcast, some big comedians on there. Who else have I listened to recently? Yeah, basically, it's quite nice just dropping in and listening or watching one that you've not seen before. Got to study a choice these days, isn't it? There is.
00:15:21
Speaker
I think that's a big challenge as well because everybody's got podcasts and there's only so much time but equally a lot of them you feel you can just drop in and it's you know you ought to know anything about the background just listen to it and learn and even just something different that you learn something new about a topic or something that you hope was the one I was listening to recently this is really rubbish I should have done some
00:15:41
Speaker
should have done some prep for it. Should be a decent guest and do some preparation. But anyway, yeah, it's, I think there's something in there about the distraction of the mind, you know, when you're doing, so when I was doing really high in Tennessee, when you're doing short efforts, you know, they're talking efforts less than a minute, like I used to, I used to race between
00:15:58
Speaker
20 seconds in a minute so really really high intensity absolute anaerobic all-out full blown efforts and you've got to be task specific in that time you've got to be focused on what you're doing you know if you're not completely in the activity in the moment then you're not going to be able to react quick enough and it's not going to be good but the opposite is true as you know for endurance activities so
00:16:20
Speaker
My life, my training and my life has changed massively since I retired from cycling 12 years ago now. And therefore you need to find new ways to adapt. And nothing, yeah, I think that the brain is a massive part of physical activity and what you think you can cope with, what you think you can deal with in terms of volume and intensity. We've got way more capacity for work than we think we have. And I think that's the main difference between professional and amateur athletes, isn't there? There's a case, they do change.
00:16:50
Speaker
as a byproduct of what you do in your training but actually i think it's the attitude it's the mind it's the ability to tell your body what you're going to do and you're in charge not your body it's you know you tell your body what you want it to do and that takes time to learn and to develop those skills.
00:17:13
Speaker
Okay, so obviously we're runners. We talk about running quite a bit. Has running ever played a part in your fitness career or your training? Not in the later years, but I kind of loved running as a kid. I used to do, well, I call kids, you know, sports day, you do your sort of 100 meters and 400 meters and whatever. And then I got into cross-country. So although I was a sprinter in cycling, as a kid, I used to try and do, I used to love all sports and I,
00:17:39
Speaker
I did a bit of cross-country. I got top 10 in the Scottish cross-country championships when I was probably, it was primary six, primary seven, so I would have been about 12 maybe. And it was great, but I was doing BMX at the time, I was doing rugby, I was doing loads of sports, and it was one of these things that I just did.
00:17:58
Speaker
as well, you know, I didn't really focus on it. And then when cycling started taking off, it was kind of took a backseat. But, um, the trouble with cycling is that there's like a mantra that cyclists have don't stand if you can sit, don't sit if you can lie down. So basically you're either training on the bike or you get the weight off your legs and rest at your feet up. We don't walk anywhere.
00:18:19
Speaker
you won't go out on your day off, you wouldn't just go out wandering around. Say you're in a different city, a different country, you wouldn't go sightseeing just wandering around. You would say, right, if we're going to go out, it has to be a minimal impact to our recovery. Get off your feet. Ideally, you just basically used to keep your feet up.
00:18:37
Speaker
July really boring and really dull but it was the optimal way to recover mainly because running or you know anything involving running you know it's the eccentric part of the the action there is no eccentric part in the cycling motion it's all concentric so it's very unspecific to do running training for cycling so um yeah basically I didn't run from probably about the age of 19 18 or 19
00:19:01
Speaker
until I retired and then as all cyclists do when they retire they go right I need to find a way to keep fit that doesn't necessarily involve getting your lanker on and riding for two or three hours you know every day when you're traveling around and you're busy you don't have to take your bike with you so pair of trainers pair of shorts you know jump out the hotel go for a half hour run great I did that my first first holiday after I retired came back after two or three weeks started having this pain in my foot and
00:19:25
Speaker
inevitably picked up an injury, went to the physio, wouldn't go away, had a scan and I've got this thing in my foot which is basically one of the meth tarsals is it's called Freiburg syndrome or something. It's like a instead of being slightly rounded it's square and it's a kind of bone issue and the only remedy is to basically cut the bone and rotate it and bolt it back on and I thought you know what I'll probably just not run. I think I'll just give it a miss. It's not that important to me so
00:19:52
Speaker
Yeah, I don't run anymore now, unfortunately. I look at runners with envy when you see how accessible it is and the fact that you can go anywhere you choose where to go as soon as you leave your doorstep, you are doing your activity.
00:20:08
Speaker
So I totally get it. And I've got friends who have become runners. My wife became a runner after I met her, maybe about 15, more than 15 years ago now, 20 years ago now. And she wasn't into running and then just took it up and started doing 10Ks and 5Ks and stuff. And yeah, she's almost evangelical about it. It just changes people's lives.
00:20:31
Speaker
Yeah, I am. I am jealous, but not jealous enough to want to get an operation that would have my leg in a plastic cast for 10 weeks and go through all that. So, yeah. Well, you talked a bit about retiring and how your training has changed over time. What are the biggest things that you would say about the difference now that you have when it comes to fitness, when it comes to doing exercise to your competitive days and how has it changed your mindset on that?
00:20:56
Speaker
Well, the old days it was all about the numbers, it was all about basically you're monitoring everything and the quality of training was everything and it was all a stepping stone towards this end goal whereas
00:21:11
Speaker
I think you have to enjoy doing what you're doing. You can't just be driven by a goal now. You have to really enjoy the process of doing it because there's not a strong enough... The reason you're doing it now is for your health, basically, for good health and the feeling you get after it as well. For me now, it's about being consistent, so realizing that if you stop for a week,
00:21:30
Speaker
it's quite hard to get back into it. You stop for two weeks, it's really hard to get back into it. And therefore, trying to find time every day to do something, even if it's half an hour on the static bike, I wouldn't necessarily have or definitely don't have enough time every day to go out on my bike for two hours because for a two hour bike ride, you've also got to factor in getting all your kits on, filling out the bottles, getting on the bike, going out, coming back in, cleaning the bike, sorting it all out. That's one of the luxuries of being a runner. You don't have to maintain your bike.
00:22:00
Speaker
So you might have half an hour a day. Well, that's fine. You get on the indoor trainer and you could do eight sets of 30 seconds sprints with, you know, a minute and a half recovery in between or two minutes recovery. Really get your hurry up, really get the lactate burn, you know, get something a huge amount from half an hour that you can, you know, your, your, well, your metabolism can be raised for 24 hours after an effort like that. You know, there's so much you can get. Whereas often you think it's only a half an hour. It's not a naked difference. I'll wait and do it tomorrow and I'll do a proper ride tomorrow.
00:22:29
Speaker
But for me, I think I find it hard if the longer you leave it, the harder it is to get back in. So a little bit every day, whether it's lifting weights, whether it's on the indoor bike, whether it's getting out in the fresh air, just trying to do something. Because the way you feel after it, you just don't feel like it some days. You might not have slept well. I've got two young kids. It's getting easier now. But when they were babies, it was really tough.
00:22:50
Speaker
and the thought of trying to squeeze a session in first thing in the morning, it's the last thing you want to do. But you always thank yourself afterwards, don't you? You've never finished a session and think, I wish I hadn't done that. It's always a feeling of, I'm so pleased I have. I'm glad I did. Remind myself back tomorrow when I'm thinking it's too much of an effort.
00:23:08
Speaker
and even harder at the moment with the cold nights and the bad weather. Yeah, and that's one of the big softies because I just do it on the indoor trainer. But then again, most of my career was spent riding around circles indoors. So I'm not the most, I'm a bit of a fair weather athlete, really, to be honest. But it's, yeah, I think I used to, at this time of year as well, we used to go to Perth, then Australia, we used to go and
00:23:32
Speaker
leave the UK either at the very beginning of January, sometimes in December, and spend maybe two months away in Australia and just have a warm weather training camp. Even though you're training most of it indoors, you still spend a fair bit of time out on the road on your bike. But mainly because
00:23:47
Speaker
Well, you know what your morale is like when it's dark and cold and miserable weather. It does have an effect on you. So to be training in an environment where there's lots of daylight, blue skies on the days off, you've got, you know, you can go down to the beach, sit in a cafe, just watch the world go by and the quality of rest is far greater. And you're also away from all the distractions at home.
00:24:07
Speaker
So I'm mad at them training at the moment. Every night I'm dreading going out down there. I live in Brighton, so I've got to go down the seafront and train and it's just pure wind all the way. You can't even work out how fast you're going because the wind's just pushing you back. And then you turn around and then the wind changes. Yeah. And it goes into your face both ways. Yeah. The worst thing is when you start off and you think, wow, I'm really fast today. I'm really, really making a move. And then you realize it's the wind and you're actually not doing a lot.
00:24:33
Speaker
You should try cycling. It's even worse, because the faster you go, the more your air resistance becomes an issue. It's so demoralizing. People think cycling is tough. The tough part about cycling is going up hills. It's not the hills, because you can see that you're going up a hill. You can actually see what you're gaining. You're gaining elevation. There's a mountain, you're climbing a hill, you're climbing. But it's wind. It's just so demoralizing. And you can't see it. Riding on the flat, absolutely struggling. It's miserable. But yeah, so you're doing this at a London marathon, you're training for it.
00:25:02
Speaker
are doing London, but I'm doing Boston this year, the weekend before. Why did they do them so early in the year? It's a bit cruel, isn't it, to make you all train in the worst, because you can't just do a couple of weeks training, you've got to basically train the whole winter. The winter one, I actively avoid doing the spring marathons because you actually get the benefit of
00:25:27
Speaker
the training over the summer when you go into the autumn marathons because you've been training in the heat and suddenly it's a bit cooler and you're actually better. It's like the opposite. You don't get any benefits training in the winter. It's all horrible. It's quite hard to get out. And then eventually you get to it and it might be like a really warm day in April and then suddenly you're not equipped for it. So it's just, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, it's not a nice time to do it. And I don't, I never look forward to the spring ones. But unfortunately some of the bigger ones are in spring. So
00:25:56
Speaker
Yeah, I guess we can tell the people that are serious about their training and committing properly. I think I'll do this winter training period and then I think I'm going to stick to the autumn ones because I quite like training in the summer but not these winter ones. I've got to go out tonight and do a big one and it's not a nice evening in Brighton alone.
00:26:15
Speaker
And when you've got a big session on that plan, how do you approach it? Is it based on, is it just get the volume done? Is there a set pace you have to go at? Do you account for the conditions? I mean, at the moment, you just gotta keep ticking the boxes and get the hours in. That's been a mix, really, probably similar to...
00:26:32
Speaker
So that's how you would do stuff. So a lot of the week is just getting the hours in, but tonight is a quality session. So that is very much got to hit these paces consistently up and down for like a interval session. And, uh, yeah, it's, it's just not, just not going to be fun because then you've got no idea if you're actually hitting that pace because obviously the wind is hitting you in the face and you might be actually trying harder than normal, but you just, you just never know.
00:26:58
Speaker
Love, love, love Love, love Love, love, love
00:27:05
Speaker
I talked a little bit earlier about podcasts and mindset, but I think one of the most interesting things you probably can help us with is when it comes to training hard, and obviously there's crossover with any sports when you're training hard, because it's not so much about the sport, it's about how you deal with the pain and the effort of that. When you were competing, or even now when you've got a hard session, how do you deal with it? How do you get through it? Because you've obviously got through it quite a lot in the past and quite successfully.
00:27:33
Speaker
Yeah, so to give you a kind of idea of what I used to do a normal week, it would be, well, you'd probably train about, during this pre-season when you're doing high volume, it could be up to 30, 35 hours of training a week. So even though you're a sprinter and I was only racing over a minute, the intensity of the training had to be very, very high, but also the volume was high too.
00:27:54
Speaker
like a normal day when you're out in Oz pre-season, you would maybe ride to the gym in the morning as a warm-up half an hour ride to the gym, you would do a two-hour gym session, all very heavy weights, free weights, Olympic style lifting, you know, high loads, low reps.
00:28:10
Speaker
ride home again so they're half a ride home then you would get some food then you would do you'd ride down the track like an hour ride the track in the afternoon three-hour track session and that track session you'd focus on a specific component of your fitness of your event and then you'd ride home for an hour and then you get your massage and your physio and you'd you know eat your meal and get to bed and you'd repeat that
00:28:31
Speaker
six days a week. So when you've got let's say an eight-week camp and you're into week two and the fatigue is really starting to kick in and you start thinking I can't do this for another week let alone another seven weeks or six weeks or whatever you've got left and then you would basically employ the same approach on a micro level as you do to a macro level you would think right
00:28:54
Speaker
don't think about the next six weeks, don't think about anything other than what I'm doing right here right now. So you have a plan, you have that end goal, so you set your target, you set your ambitious target, then you have a plan, you break it down and you have these micro steps towards that end goal. And as long as you've got a detailed plan and a set of
00:29:11
Speaker
a proper plan of what you're going to do. You don't need to worry about a second or third or fourth step on that journey, just focus on the very next thing you're going to do. For an example, let's say I was doing a session of the track where I was doing 10 sprints and you get to number two and you're already suffering.
00:29:29
Speaker
that the quality of the session or the whole point of the session relies on the absolute maximal effort. You can't do 99% because there's no point in doing it. You've got to do 100% effort or rest. That's all we used to do. So if you hold back a little bit just because you think I've got nine more to go or eight more to go because I'm really struggling here, then there's no point in doing it. So you trick yourself when you say, well, don't think about the rest of those efforts. All we're going to focus on is the very next one. Just do it.
00:29:54
Speaker
Absolutely all out. And if I'm on my knees and I can't do any more, then we'll pack up and go home. But you don't, obviously. So you do the next one, and you say to the same thing. Don't think about the next five. I'm just going to focus on this one, and so on and so on. So it's about focusing on the here and now, the present, not thinking about anything beyond that. And I think we can deal with pain. And aside from sport, you can suffer through things if you don't think too far ahead. If you think too far ahead, you look at the bigger picture. It's overwhelming.
00:30:24
Speaker
it just psyches you out. Whereas if you say right here, right now, I can always do one more stride, one more step, I can always do one more pedal rev, I can lift one more repetition of this weight, whatever it is, I can do one more and you do it and you go, right, do another one. And you basically apply that logic and completely trick your body into doing more than it thinks it can do. Because it's so easy to just throw your hands up and go, no, I'm out, I can't do this.
00:30:50
Speaker
Yeah, that's probably, if you look at a lot of the marathon training plans and things that people do when they get into running, you essentially get the whole plan at the start. You get 16 weeks or whatever, and you can see those runs building up and building up over time. And it is quite overwhelming. You even see it with, you know, catch to 5K. You can sort of see how it's developing and looking ahead and going, well, I can't do that. There's no way I can do that at that point.
00:31:16
Speaker
but you can always do the sessions that are coming up immediately. So I think, yeah, it isn't really the way that I tend to work. I do some coaching as well. I don't like to give people their plan any further than like two or three days in advance because it's useless to them. They don't need to know that. And it's just daunting, isn't it? You can't really plan ahead. When you were training, is that similar for you? You just sort of got given the things
00:31:42
Speaker
as and when you needed to do them. Nobody would say in three weeks you need to be able to do this or whatever. Well, actually, I used to write my own program. So I, when I started back in the mid 1990s, there were no full-time coaches. So British cycling had two full-time members of staff and the rest were all volunteers. Like sprinting was quite a niche part of the sport. There were always lots of people doing the road and endurance cycling, but sprinters were, we were a sort of a niche bunch and there were no, there were very few successful sprinters in the UK to
00:32:12
Speaker
to even learn from. So yeah, we basically, myself, Craig McLean, Jason Quealy, we kind of coached each other, I helped each other and I did my degree in sports science. So I basically found out the answer to the questions I had that no one could help me with. And then I just started to structure my own training and plan it all out. And then as the years went by and we brought on more expertise and we had proper coaches and you know, world level coaches, I still
00:32:38
Speaker
I would still write the program and bring it to them and say, this is what I want to do. And they would say, why are you doing it this way? Why? What about this? And they would challenge you on it. And then it would be a good way to test out your hypothesis of why you were doing it. And then as long as you have a scientific reason to justify it, they'd be like, well, OK, yeah, that sounds good. You've thought about this. Or maybe we'll tweak this a little bit. But that seems like a good approach.
00:33:02
Speaker
and they would facilitate that programme that you'd written. So I knew what was coming, obviously for that in the line, but I think once it was committed to paper, once you had it planned out, of course you can change things as you go, but for me it always felt like a blueprint to success. I loved the feeling of writing out my nearest plan, or even a four-year plan, you know, up to the next Olympics, and you might do it 12 times, you might do it 15 times, but when you finally got that kind of
00:33:26
Speaker
blueprint of success. You thought this, this is, if I follow this, it's like a recipe to bake a cake or whatever. If I do this right and I follow the steps, I believe this is going to get me in the right kind of the best shape of my life, which won't guarantee a gold medal, but I guarantee they'll be at my very best and that will be there or thereabouts. So it was always, yeah, I liked solving problems. I liked the feeling of having a challenge or a problem to solve and trying to work it out. That's the physical side of it.
00:33:54
Speaker
Yeah, well, I suppose in that level of involvement that you had where you're building the program, you've also really invested in working out if that program works as well and not just being prescribed something to follow that might not work. Which I think that's definitely something that is more commonplace now. That information, the point you were at, you were probably very involved in learning about those things. But nowadays, people can have a coach or whatever, and they can instantly go on the internet and go, well, is that right? What they've given me? And go and question the coach.
00:34:24
Speaker
I think it is a really tricky one these days from a coaching point of view in that everyone is almost an expert, aren't they, because they can find an answer instantly. But in reality, it's not the session that's important or not the, you know, the individual elements of the rules. It's what is the long term goal. And that's what people don't really have.
00:34:41
Speaker
Exactly and it's also how you do it because there's no right one right way to do anything and it's you know there's more than one way to skin a cat as they say and it's I think the key thing in all of it is believing or buying into what you're doing so you know these days often you see it with some of the writers the coaches well everything is kind of prescribed for them and it's like this is what you're doing
00:35:04
Speaker
There's no debate. I'm in charge. You deal with riding a bike. We'll deal with planning it. Here's your kit bag. It's got all the kit. Here's your bike. Everything's done for you. It's almost like a one size fits
Inspiration Behind Children's Books
00:35:15
Speaker
all approach. And then when it doesn't work out for that rider, if for whatever reason, they don't win the gold medal, they come back and go, well, I did exactly what you told me to do.
00:35:25
Speaker
And I didn't win the medal. So it's not my fault. It must be your fault. Yeah. And there's no, there's no ownership. There's no responsibility taken. Accountability taken for, for the performance. And I think it's a shame. You need to, you need to buy into what you're doing. So you need to really believe in it. And it's, as I say, there's, there's no one single way of doing anything, but one thing is for sure. If you don't believe in what you're doing, if you only commit 99% into it, you won't get the best, you won't get the optimum result. You can't guarantee you're going to win, but you know that if you commit fully and say, right, I believe in this.
00:35:55
Speaker
and I'm going to, every single effort of every single session for this year, I'm going to throw myself at this 100% and then look at it. We're going to reassess at the end of the year. If I achieve my goal, amazing. If I don't, then we'll tweak the things that weren't quite right and we'll adapt it over time. So you can't expect to, you know, Rome wasn't built in a day. You can't expect to suddenly become a world beta overnight. It takes years and years and years. And I think a lot of people
00:36:20
Speaker
are misled by how quickly you can get to the top because it takes so long and so much effort and so many setbacks that you don't see and people don't talk about. It's demoralizing injuries, disappointments, days where you just don't feel right. There's no explanation why you're not going well, but we're human beings. We're not robots. And it's just about sticking with it, perseverance, looking after yourself.
00:36:44
Speaker
understanding there's going to be peaks and troughs but keeping going and committing to every single session.
00:37:02
Speaker
I've got another thing I noted down here, which I didn't actually know about you before I was doing my little bit of research. I didn't do loads. I never did that much, but you're a children's book author, which is something, I mean, it seems to be an interesting area these days. Obviously a lot of celebrities that become, you know, comedians. It seems to be quite a big thing for comedians to do these days. But how did that come about? Is that something you've always wanted to do or is it just something
00:37:32
Speaker
that have happened? It was never anything I thought I would be able to do. So it was something about 10 years ago, we were discussing it. And we were trying at the stage, we were looking for different ways to get kids into cycling and different ways to inspire them. And also, I just become a dad. I was just about to become a dad. And there was so many things that I feel like I'd learned in my cycling career that I wanted to get across. When you go to schools and you meet kids and you talk to them and you try to instill this belief in them
00:38:00
Speaker
any one of you here can go on to achieve amazing things you know it's don't limit your ambitions but also don't worry about the fact that right here right now you might not be the best in your class at football or maths or whatever it is you're doing but you can get better and the only person you have to beat is yourself you don't have to worry about where you are relative to your friends to your teammates to whoever all you got to do is be better than you were yesterday and find a way to
00:38:24
Speaker
that's your big challenge and that we all grow and develop and learn at different rates. So don't worry about where you are at the moment because that's not necessarily where you're going to be at the end. And yeah, all these little lessons, which I thought, well, we started thinking, well, maybe we could come up with some sort of a book, a single book with a story that would encompass all these things and
00:38:45
Speaker
and try and encourage kids to follow the dream, but also get out on their bikes. Ultimately, I was passionate about or am passionate about getting kids active and on their bikes and enjoying life on two wheels like I did when I was their age. So, yeah, we started exploring the options of how we could create a book. At that stage, I had no idea how to pitch a book or how to write a book for five to eight-year-olds.
00:39:11
Speaker
my kids were in my son was like about six months old at that point so I didn't have any experience so I thought well I need to do this properly so we approached it was what's Joan Aidan in the end approached the publishers and said do you have any authors I could work with and looked at a few but Joan Aidan she's an amazing author for children and for young adults and spoke to her immediately thought yeah we're on the same wavelength here I had all these ideas for
00:39:36
Speaker
characters and themes and messages we wanted to get across and so we basically started writing together at that point and came up with this character Fergus and it's the books are called Flying Fergus and it started out with two books thinking that would be it and
00:39:52
Speaker
It was great fun and then did two more and then two more and in the end we did 10 books about his adventures on his magic bike and all the different characters are sort of inspired by either family members or teammates or people I know or my heroes or you know different people in there and yeah never thought I would you know on paper you would never thought that I would have done a single book let alone 10. I'm sure my English teachers were quite amazed to learn that
00:40:21
Speaker
It's always something I've really, when you see people who are not necessarily in that area and they work on children's books, I've always been fascinated by how that came about and never really known about what the process for that is. Yeah, I mean, I guess for me, I just didn't have the confidence to pale in there and try and write. You don't want to patronize the kids.
00:40:40
Speaker
But equally, you didn't want to miss the point and go over the head. So Joe was an expert at pitching it just right. And so it was just that safety blanket. I mean, she's such a great person. We've gotten immediately, and Claire Nelson as well, who did the illustrations, the three of us as a team. And then once you write the books, then you get to go on two and go to book festivals.
00:41:05
Speaker
And then you meet kids who, you know, turn up when they've got the book and they've read it and you can attest them and say, you know, read your book. All right, so who's your favorite character and what's your favorite bit? And it's amazing. And the number of people that you meet now who are like, oh, this is this is Chris, you know, he won these Olympic medals like the kids like, all right.
00:41:22
Speaker
He wrote Flying Fergus, you know, the Food Cube, right? And they're like, oh, wow, you know, by Flying Fergus. But yes, it was it's a really enjoyable thing. We've done the 10 and that's kind of we think that's the end of it now. But you never say never. But yeah, it was a wonderful thing to do. But most of all, I kind of did it for a selfish reason, thinking, you know, it'd be lovely one day to have Callum or Chloe, my kids, you know, sitting there.
00:41:47
Speaker
you know, before bedtime, reading the story with them, of which Calum has shown zero interest so far. He's like, what should we read? Do you want to read this? No, no, I want to read George's Marvelous Medicine. I'm like, all right. Me too. How old is he now? Calums nine and Chloe's six. So a few of them will have friends at school who are reading the books and then they'll ask me to sign them for their friends or whatever. Oh, wow. But at no point have they
00:42:15
Speaker
It's like, do you want to read it? No, no. Okay, fair enough. Might be a losing bat with that one. Kids for you. That's what it's like. You got any kids yourself? I haven't got any kids. I do have a niece who's just about the age for reading your books. So I'm going to send her across something. Even if your kids won't read them. I'll see if I can get it.
00:42:42
Speaker
Well, thank you so much, Chris. It's been wonderful speaking to you and some really interesting stuff too, especially around the training of things, which I hadn't thought about. But thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. All the very best. And if you're listening to this, head over to Sporting Misadventures, which is Chris's podcast, which is an excellent listen if you're the one who doesn't do it when you're doing your long runs and things like that. And we'll, well, good luck with everything, Chris. Catch you soon. Thanks, Tom. Take care, mate.
00:43:14
Speaker
This episode of the podcast was presented by Tom Wheatley and his guest Sir Chris Hoy.