Bobby and Jens

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PYSO, ep. 53: World TT champ Chloe Dygert, Twenty20 boss Nicola Cranmer on pursuing greatness May 21, 2020

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Some riders are superstitious, believing that they need everything just so in order to perform. They need just the right lucky clothing, or just the right type of coffee. World time trial champion Chloe Dygert is not such a rider. She doesn't even drink coffee. She just thrives off viewing the best riders in the world as benchmarks, and then getting to work on surpassing them. In this episode of Put Your Socks On, Dygert and her Team Twenty20 boss Nicola Cranmer discuss the pursuit of greatness. In Cranmer's case, that means finding and nurturing talented riders in challenging times as well as good times. For Dygert, that means a relentless work ethic and a refusal to settle — even for her current status as one of the absolute best riders in the world. "I'm definitely the kind of person that if you tell me, I can't do something, I'm going to do it, and I'm going to do it better than you would ever think," Dygert says. "I have role models, but I don't look at them and say I want to be like them. I look at them and say, 'you are a benchmark to what I want to be. I'm going to surpass you, I'm going to be better than you.' I want to be the best at anything and everything I do, and I thrive off of pain. I thrive off of other people's doubt, and I think that's also a huge benefactor into who I am today." As the world of cycling contemplates a cautious return to racing, Cranmer floats the idea of racing time trials exclusively for a little while. What does the reigning world TT champ think of this? "I would not be opposed," Dygert says.

PYSO, ep. 52: Bjarne Riis on leadership, cohesion, and creativity in team strategy May 14, 2020

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After an absence from the sport, longtime team director Bjarne Riis is back in the WorldTour at the helm of NTT Pro Cycling. Riis is well known for many things — winning the 1996 Tour de France as a rider, and leading many riders to victory as the boss of Team CSC / Saxo Bank / Saxo Bank-Tinkoff. As a team leader, Riis has long been a proponent of team building, often taking teams on military-like exercises in the early months of the year to build cohesion. With NTT, Riis has been working with team management and riders to develop that cohesion remotely, through Zwift racing and regular communication, and other strategies that he isn't yet ready to talk about beyond saying he has established 'six pillars' of training. But he is confident that NTT will come out of the pandemic lockdown ready to race. "I guarantee you NTT Pro Cycling is going to be a weapon when we come out racing again," Riis said. "Because that was what I explained [to the riders]: I want you to be a weapon in what you do." In his recent years away from directing a WorldTour team, Riis said he missed "fighting in a creative way." While Ineos has the the biggest budget and can hire many of the best riders, other teams have to be creative and organized in their tactics, he said. "What's important to me is being a team, not just saying we are a team but showing it," he said. "You know, the way we race the race together in the peloton, the way we move together, everything we do as a team," he said. "And that's the culture you build." Listen in for a conversation with Gus Morton and Bobby Julich, who for a time raced for Riis at CSC.

PYSO, ep. 51: NTT Pro Cycling's Michael Valgren reflects on the positives of being locked down May 07, 2020

Show notes

A novelty at first, six weeks of lockdown has taken its toll on all athletes. With the easing of restrictions now beginning, we check in with NTT Pro Cycling's Michael Valgren to see how he’s been holding up after months of uncertainty and how he’s planning on moving forward with the new UCI calendar just announced. A quick primer on Valgren, for those of you who don't know him: After turning pro at the tender age of 21, the Danish rider quickly won consecutive U23 Liège–Bastogne–Liège editions, establishing himself as a rider to watch in the future. Fast forward to 2018, and Valgren came of age, winning Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and the monument Amstel Gold Race as well as finishing fourth at the Tour of Flanders. Following that break-out year, where he moved from a strongman to team leader, Valgren transferred to his current team, NTT (formerly Dimension Data), in one of the most anticipated moves for the season. Plagued by bad form and a series of setbacks, 2019 was a winless one. With 2020 a chance to redeem an “un-Valgren-esque” 2019, it seems the COVID-19 situation has delayed his chances of getting even in his favorite classics.

PYSO, ep. 50: Ineos boss David Brailsford May 05, 2020

Show notes

How is the biggest team in the world dealing with the global coronavirus lockdown? Well, they've been doing a few things - including pivoting to help distribute hand sanitizer to hospitals in conjunction with their sponsor Ineos. Ineos team boss David Brailsford comes on the show to talk about how the riders, the coaches, and the support staff have been collaborating, training, and racing over the internet — and helping create value in new ways. Ineos owner and chairman Jim Ratcliffe told Brailsford that he wanted to produce a million bottles of hand sanitizer a month and supply that to the frontline workers in hospitals, using the well-oiled logistics of the cycling team to handle some of the distribution. "Everybody has been involved, and they've done a brilliant job and it's quite a satisfying thing to be involved in," Brailsford said.

PYSO, ep. 49: Former Giro boss on cycling's past, present, and future Apr 23, 2020

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Michele Acquarone ran the Giro d'Italia and RCS' other races for years, and pushed for revolutionary change such as teams sharing in TV revenue and all races having men's and women's events. On this episode of Put Your Socks On, Michele talks with Bobby and Gus about where the sport of cycling should be headed. Michele argues that all pro races should include women's and men's events. "It's so easy to do combined events, that it's crazy that all the pro cycling movement is not doing that," he says. "It should be a must if you want to have a first level race. You have the TV production, you have the operations already in place. For the organizer, it's easy. You have the streets closed, you have the helicopters and the airplanes in the sky. Everything is in place. You just need to invest a little extra money to have a great show with the two races at the same time." And what about esports in cycling? "Esports are not the future but the present of the sport, and you cannot ignore it," Michele says. Before talking with Michele, Bobby shares some indoor training tricks from TrainingPeaks' guru Tim Cusick, such as the importance of investing in a quality trainer with a flywheel for mimicking inertia, using your own power meter if you have one instead of the power from the trainer, and cooling your environment as best you can. "At the end of these indoor rides, you often end up looking like a salt lick," Bobby says.

PYSO, ep. 48: The Business of Cycling Now Apr 16, 2020

Show notes

Steve Maxwell and Spencer Martin of The Outer Line join the show to talk about what the sport of cycling could like in a post-coronavirus world from a business perspective. Will there be fewer teams and fewer events? Possibly. Along with the rest of the world, the cycling industry is now scrambling to figure out what it can do to stay afloat and what the waters will look like once the storm subsides. “Clearly we can’t really imagine at this point in time, what the overall impact of COVID is going to be on the sport, just just like we can’t really imagine what the impact is going to be on society in general, when we come out of the other side of this whole thing,” Maxwell says. “But I think there are a few things that are starting to be apparent. We’re not going back to the same old normal. Some things will probably change permanently as a result of this whole calamity.” In this special VeloNews collaboration of PYSO and The Outer Line, the gents on the pod dig into a laundry list of possible effects of the coronavirus shutdown: How does it affect the teams, the managers, the events, the regulators, and the UCI? “Each one of these stakeholders is going to come out of this thing on the other side a little bit different than the way we went in,” Maxwell says.

PYSO episode 9: 2019 Tour de France, Stage Nine Jul 14, 2019

Show notes

STAGE 9 BASTILLE DAY St Etienne - Brioude 170.5km The cast talks nutrition on today’s stage: team chefs, soggy baguettes, and heaps of Nutella. Special shout out to ROAD ID employee of the month, Becky. You go, Becky. Turns out, Gus knows more about Zombies than anyone expected. And, we have our sprinter predictions for Stage 10 from Saint-Flour to Albi on the fastest growing sports podcast in the world, PYSO! Bonus: Coach Bobby J promises to take the whole crew to Sizzler after the Tour! We’ve put our socks on. Have you?

PYSO episode 7: 2019 Tour de France, Stage Seven Jul 12, 2019

Show notes

Today on PYSO Gus and Bobby examine the science around preparation and recovery. Skratch Labs founder Dr. Allen Lim joins the fun to address everything you want to know about cycling, from nutrition to new technology. Does Lim talk about Cryotanks? Yes. What about ice vests? You bet. It's all here. We even bring back Spinaci bar extensions, because we think they are cool. Be prepared: this is PYSO.

PYSO episode 5: 2019 Tour de France, Stage Five Jul 10, 2019

Show notes

Toms! Toms! Toms! Bobby goes down memory lane but doesn't like it much. Superfan suggests that Sagan’s interview “form” is also back! Phillipe Gilbert shares some very interesting insights into today’s theme: Tactics. Are cartoons really better than Rosetta Stone, does 75% of tactical riding come down to nature or nurture, why did Gus’s coach tell him to climb into a ditch and take his shoes off, and which annual event in Belgium is guaranteed to get you a Pro Contract? Find out all this and more!

PYSO episode 4: 2019 Tour de France, Stage Four Jul 10, 2019

Show notes

Stage 4 was sleepy in spots but PYSO is not! On today’s show, Bobby Julich and Gus Morton discuss failed nature-break ploys, getting jiggy with it, France vs. Italy on the subject of “legal usage” of champagne, high-speed praying mantes and more. Plus, EF Education First assistant sports director Tom Southam calls in to share some thoughts about being a director and the importance of analog technology.

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