Coach Patrick McCabe

As we close out an incredible year of cycling, host Tom Butler reflects on the highlights and challenges of 2025. Tom shares how he measured up against the goals he set at the start of the year and reveals his new targets for 2026.

In this episode, Tom welcomes Patrick McCabe, owner of Grit City Health in Tacoma, Washington, and a Cyclocross racing advocate. Patrick brings his expertise as both a personal trainer and Cyclocross coach to revisit the AI-generated training advice discussed in a recent episode. His perspective offers a compelling contrast to the algorithmic approach, demonstrating why personalized coaching and human expertise remain irreplaceable when it comes to training effectively—especially for cyclists over sixty.

Whether you're setting your own cycling goals for the new year or considering how to approach your training in 2026, this episode delivers valuable insights and inspiration to keep you motivated and moving forward.

Here is your invitation to join a great launch party for the summer cycling season.  Join the Cycling Over Sixty Tour de Cure PNW team.  Whether you are local or come out to experience cycling in the great Northwest, I would love to have you help make this a ride with a purpose.  And to send a message that the joy of cycling is here for everyone, regardless of age. Go to tour.diabetes.org/teams/CO60

I know it is early but we are looking to get the Cycling Over Sixty Tour de Cure team together as soon as possible. You can find all the info at tour.diabetes.org/teams/CO60

Thank you Konvergent Wealth for sponsoring CO60 Jerseys for the Tour de Cure!

Become a member of the Cycling Over Sixty Strava Club! www.strava.com/clubs/CyclingOverSixty

Cycling Over Sixty is also on Zwift. Look for our Zwift club!

Please send comments, questions and especially content suggestions to me at info@cyclingoversixty.com

Follow and comment on Cycling Over Sixty on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cyclingoversixty/

Show music is "Come On Out" by Dan Lebowitz. Find him here : lebomusic.com

Chapters

• 0:23 Weekly Update
• 9:25 Meet Patrick McCabe And Grit City Health
• 16:51 Creating A Judgment-Free Training Space
• 21:46 Massage, Recovery, And The Nervous System
• 23:36 How Patrick Got Started with Cyclocross
• 28:26 Safety, Risk, And Smart Course Decisions
• 32:06 Power, Heart Rate, And What Data Misses
• 39:46 Building A Sustainable Yearly Training Calendar
• 48:46 Using FTP as a Measure of Progress
• 53:36 Minimal Effective Dose And Recovery Focus
• 57:56 Strength Basics Before Bulgarian Split Squats
• 1:07:02 Team Support And Adopting Over-60 Racers
• 1:10:16 Wrap Up

Transcript

Tom Butler: 0:04

This is the Cycling Over 60 Podcast, season 4, episode 8. Coach Patrick McCabe, and I'm your host, Tom Butler. We've come to the end of another year for Cycling Over 60. I feel like this has been a fantastic year. I really had some wonderful experiences. I'm ending up the year with an interesting issue. As I talked about last episode, I have Achilles tendon pain. As I'm working through that issue, it's obvious to me that recovery has to be a really big focus of cycling over 60. In the case of my Achilles tendon, the pain comes from Achilles tendon enthasopathy. That means the problem is where the tendon attaches to the heel bone. It's a good example of an injury that can take a while to heal. And having that experience at this time makes me think that in the future, cycling over 60 needs to help people find information how to rehab such an injury and maybe even resources to turn to for help. So I'm going to be looking more closely at normal recovery issues and then also strategies for rehabbing injuries in 2026. There's only a few days left until the end of the year, so it's pretty clear how I did on goals for 2025. As a reminder, my first year of riding seriously was 2023, so I've now had three years of cycling. Last year I fell short of the goal of 10 miles a day. But this year I will make it with only 11 miles needed over the next three days. I'm a little nervous about setting a higher mileage goal next year because I've gotten more busy lately. But I also think that I have the capacity to do more. So I'm going to bump it up slightly to 4,000 miles in 2026. At the six month mark this year, I was at 2,279 miles. That means that I should have been able to make 4,000 miles this year. I'll have to analyze what kept me from doing more this year, but I do know that I started spending more time driving every day, and I also had a really busy couple of months dealing with family stuff. At the six month mark, I was at 174 hours of cycling. That time I decided to shoot for 320 hours of activity by the end of the year. It's disappointing that I spent 263 hours so far. There's no way that I can do 37 hours of cycling in the next few days. I will keep 320 hours as a goal again next year and see what I can learn to make sure that I can reach it next year. Seems like if I do the 320 hours, I'll be able to reach the 4,000 miles. My stretch goal for time is to do 10 hours a week of all types of activity. But some of that activity isn't tracked in a way that we'll be able to look back at. So I don't think I'll be able to measure all activity toward that goal. I fell well short of my elevation goal. I did 60,197 feet of climbing on the bike. My goal was 110,000. I'm going to keep that goal for 2026, but I'm going to have to drive to places that have more hills than what I have locally. I do want to think about a fair way to count virtual elevation in the total. If I add in virtual elevation this year, I'm at a total of 125,813 feet. That means I had 65,670 feet of virtual climbing this year. As I've said, virtual climbing is just not the same as climbing in real life. Now if I decided to count half of the virtual climbing to my goal, that would put me at around 93,000 feet, still below the 110,000 feet I was shooting for. For now, I'm going to just ignore virtual climbing and see if I can reach 110,000 feet on real roads. I accomplished my goal of 25 weeks of lifting twice a week this year. My goals for weight training in 2026 are going to be very different from 2025. In 2026, I'm going to be getting help designing a full body weight training program. Stay tuned for what that means for my goals. In 2025, I really deepened my connection with the local community in Tacoma, Washington. I've made some important steps to develop a model for local cycling over 60 support. What happens with this in 2026 will be impacted in a big way by conversations that I'm having in the next month. I'm anxious to share as soon as I can about those plans. Something that I'm very motivated to do in 2026 is to expand cycling over 60 events. First, there's a tour to cure on May 2nd. I'm extremely excited to make this a kickoff of the summer cycling season. A big reason for that excitement is that we get to help raise funds for the American Diabetes Association, and at the same time, we get to make a big statement about benefits of cycling later in life. And like I've been doing for the last couple months, I'm inviting you to come and join us. Another event in 2026 will be the second annual celebration of cycling event late in the summer. I hope to release some information on the event in a couple of weeks. I enjoyed cyclecross a lot and it was a unique bike experience for me. And I'm hoping to have a cycling over 60 cyclecross team doing races in the fall. Again, this is something that I'll be sharing more information about as time goes by. The final word on events is I'd like to have an awesome cycling over 60 multi-day cycling tour. I don't have any concrete plans yet. If I do something this year, it will most likely be very laid back. But send me an email if you want to be kept in the lube on any plans that I make. I have found a very cheap way to measure flexibility, and I'm going to add a flexibility goal. My cheap and easy way to measure flexibility is simply to have Kelly hold a yardstick against the wall and see how far I can reach. The yardstick has a 36 inches end against the wall, meaning that touching my toes would be a measurement of 36 inches. My first attempt was a measurement of 2.5 inches. I would hope to be able to touch my toes by the end of 2026, but I'm going to play it safe and work toward a goal of 20 inches. Currently, I'm not even able to get my back to 90 degrees in relation to my legs, so a lot of work there. That's a look at what I'll be working on in 2026. Wish me luck. They were so welcoming that I was excited to meet the owner of Grit City Health and have them become part of the local cycling over 60 support group. I met Patrick McCabe, who owns Grit City Health, and is the force behind the Cyclocross team. I also found out that Patrick works as a personal trainer with people doing cyclocross. It was a natural thing that I asked Patrick to comment on the advice I got from AI coach Sarah a couple of episodes ago. Patrick took the time to listen and offered to come on and share his thoughts. Here is our conversation. I am joined in person, which is awesome, by Patrick McCabe. Thank you for coming on, Patrick. Thanks for having me. And we are here in your clinic, Grit City Health, which is really fun to be like with you here in this place. I originally learned about you at Cyclocross event, the one Cycle Cross event that I participated in. And so I'm I wanted to talk to you and kind of and we'll learn a bit more about what we're talking about in a bit here. But first, let's start out. Tell me like your earliest memory of the bicycle.

Patrick McCabe: 7:30

Yeah, one of my earliest memories, and just a couple, is like being in like first grade kindergarten ish and just riding around the cul-de-sac on a bike with some friends and just jumping off all the curbs and having a good time. And then my next memory is like we have a family tradition of getting a 10-speed bike on your 10th birthday. And so I remember getting a brand new bike. I had never used handbrakes. And so I got the bike out into the cul-de-sac, rode it up and then down, didn't know what to do. So I just grabbed both brakes, went over the bars, and just went straight into the house, grabbed one of my new gold pens and wrote F and B for front and back on the brakes. So I would never make that mistake again. But yeah, from there it's just nonstop freedom and riding.

Tom Butler: 8:22

You know, there's something about that picture, and I I hope that we continue to see it. I don't know what's happening with BMX if less kids are doing it, but that that adventure of BMX and getting out and you know, the the tracks that you see and everything.

Patrick McCabe: 8:38

Well, and I think a lot of it just had to do with the simplicity of the bicycle. No shifting, no nothing, no cables. And so it was a really easy entry point for a lot of people to be able to get into cost-wise, and just yeah, the simplicity of of learning on a bicycle, not having to worry about that. And so now as as kids are getting older and or even just getting younger, and smaller bikes with gears are coming around, it's it's becoming a little bit more challenging for them to be able to navigate and understand. My kids each have gears on their bikes. Do they use any of the gears? Not a lot. They just spin faster or grind up you know hills a little bit slower. And so it's like, oh, you can shift, and they're like, oh, right, right, right. But having that single speed, that BMX style is just kind of that you don't think about it. That's it.

Tom Butler: 9:28

That's an interesting perspective. I yeah, you know, that that simplicity as compared to trying to make things more complicated. Yeah. Sometimes, yeah.

Patrick McCabe: 9:39

So it's one of the elements of cyclocross as well, as we get into that, that I I really am a big proponent of. I preach to everyone, is that if you ride a single speed in cyclocross, there's a single speed category and a time slot. It will make you a stronger cyclist, a more resilient cyclist, and a faster cyclist, you know, in cyclocross and beyond, just from the simplicity of having to maintain momentum. But I've always wanted a little counter to see how many times I try and shift on my single speed, just so I can see if I'm I'm getting better. It's like, oh, that was a 300-shift race where I tried to shift 300 times. It's like by the end of the season, it was only a 200-shift race where I tried to shift 200 times.

Tom Butler: 10:23

That's an hilarious visual. I love that. Yeah. So we're here at Grit City Health. Yeah. Tell me what you wanted to bring to the community through Grit City Health.

Patrick McCabe: 11:43

Yeah. Since thinking about this, it's kind of led me down a lot of different rabbit holes of like, what do I try to bring? What do I bring? That whole mission, vision statement, you know, mission statement of being like, who are you and what do you do now? And the vision statement is, who are you and what do you do, what do you want to be in five, 10 years? And if that came true, would you be happy with that? And one of the things that just kept coming back is we live in such a high pressure, expectation-driven world that what I try and bring to the community is space, space to come in and be who you are. There's no judgment, there's no expectations that you can come in at any starting point and be able to have a space to be able to be who you are and start from right where you're at with any goals, whether that's a health-related goal, whether that's a fitness-related goal, whether that's athleticism, or whether that's being out of pain, but not having any fixing expectations of that I'm sick and I need to become better. You just come in with who you are and you can be able to say, I just kind of want to move a little bit better. It's like awesome. We'll start at that point versus going, well, these are the expectations that we have at this gym of being able to do these proper movements. It's like, no, we're we're working with the fundamentals of helping people make those changes that they want because they're the guides of their lives. They know their life better than I'm ever gonna know their life. And so if I can just support versus pressure, they stay engaged a whole lot longer. And that's really what I feel drives the community is if you don't feel valued and appreciated, you're gonna leave, whether that's in a job, whether that's in a town, if you don't feel that your self is worthy of that environment, or you're being given the opportunities to excel, you're gonna move on. And so if I can be able to provide that space where people feel empowered by being who they are and then making goals within their own capacity, that's that's what I'd love to be able to do.

Tom Butler: 13:56

It's such an interesting, like big view of it. And I'm thinking as you're talking that people will come in with misconceptions, people will come in maybe being pressured to do something that they wouldn't naturally choose to do. And so there must be a process at times where people really don't know, and you help them find that, you know, that concept of where they want to be.

Patrick McCabe: 14:27

Yeah. I had a, for example, a recent client come in and she just walked through the door for her appointment, was like, I'm really scared. And I was like, well, tell me about it. And we just sat down and and so I try and convey to all my clients and and to my website and my limited marketing I do that it's a session. It's there's no expectations of what we'll do in that session. We can sit here and talk about life goals and be able to move through those steps of change, you know, moving from pre-contemplation to contemplation, contemplation to preparation, preparation to action, action to maintenance, and and be able to kind of figure out where those steps of change are taking place, what goals they are thinking about or they never even thought about, and then help them be able to identify things that they do want. And so by the time we finished the session, they were just like, I am so happy I made it in here. And it's like, I'm so happy you made it in here too. And it just was just so cool to be able to take that I'm fearful. Because I, you know, there's a healthcare kind of trope and joke that I always say, which is like a lot of people, they don't, they need to be able to prepare themselves to go into X. They're not ready to do this because they need to do this, all these different things. They have this idea of they, you know, I don't I can't take a fitness class because I want to get fit first so I don't look, you know, out of place in that fitness class. I always make the joke to the dentist that the dentist is one of the few healthcare, you know, places where you try and do their job for them. I brush my teeth really good this morning so that you don't have to do anything. I extra floss today so that you you'll be like, wow, these teeth are great. I don't have to do anything. I don't do that when I go to the hair, you know, salon. I don't do that when I go see my general practitioner for a checkup. It's like, I took all my vitamins today, so you're gonna think that I'm really healthy. But when we start to deal with people in the real world, they do have those fears and they do have preconceived notions and expectations that they should be X before they even take on whatever it is. Uh you know, I want to try and become a little bit healthier, or maybe like a friend of mine is running a marathon. I don't even know, I don't think I could run 10 minutes, 30 minutes. I how could they run for that long? And it's like, oh, you you just start with support without any expectations, and then you develop a love for it, and so it becomes a whole lot easier. And if you don't have support, it's really hard to find other people that are supportive. And so again, that that's that's where I kind of like came up with the concept of like, yeah, it provide a space for people to be who they are and find others in that community because they start opening their eyes to what the possibilities are.

Tom Butler: 17:25

I hear you saying that as a personal trainer, that you see there being a whole person view of that that is essential to finding success with that person. Is that right to say?

Patrick McCabe: 17:41

Yeah. You know, I I really kind of work on uh a three pillars model of mental, physical, and emotional pillars. And you can't stress all three at the same time. And so if you don't look at the entire person, if you start adding on too much physicality when they're already dealing with mental and emotional uh challenges, whether that's at home or at work, you're gonna have something break down. And so you wanna be able to kind of understand that it's not we don't seek balance. I always joke that I don't even know how to say the word balance because there's nothing about me that is balanced. And so I really strive to seek harmony, it's the constant fluctuation that you might be in dissonance and you might be in harmony and you might oscillate back and forth. But when you put a little bit of extra effort into one area, you get a lot of rewards, and so that you can put a little bit of extra effort into another area and get a lot of rewards. So seeking that harmony really through my coaching, athletic coaching, health coaching, through my movement, that's kind of my big, big focus. It's like, yeah, some days, some things are gonna be a little bit more challenging. And you just have to know that you can't seek balance. You can't say, wow, today was a really emotionally taxing day. I think I'm gonna do a physically taxing day to balance myself out. And it's like it's creating negative pathways. Like rest, recover, seek harmony, lean into that, and get as much as you can from that.

Tom Butler: 19:18

One thing that you bring, you're a licensed massage therapist. Yes. And so talk to me about like how you see massage therapy as important to being active.

Patrick McCabe: 19:31

Yeah, massage therapy really comes down to human touch. I've got massage guns, and you can have them bump around on you, but there's no connection. The massage is really that human touch to be able to kind of create connection. And I look at it as stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system is how do we get into a state of recovery? You can find ways of putting yourselves into an excited adrenaline-fueled fight or flight state. Just walking out across the street already does that. But we have a really hard time falling asleep, staying asleep, finding recovery, finding times to relax. And that's where massage really comes into play. And so having it as a complement to movement or separating movement from exercise and understanding that movement doesn't have to be exertion, you know, exertion-centered. It can be relaxation-centered to be able to support that recovery, adding the massage component in just kind of as that cherry on top to be able to say, I see you, I see what's happening, and now I'm creating a supportive structure and feeling the way the body's responding so that you can become more in tune with these types of feelings as you spend time throughout your day. It's like, oh, I do tense up my shoulders when I get stressed. It's like, cool. Here's a couple little things that you can do to be able to kind of move those shoulders around, de stress, take a couple deep breaths, all while in the, you know. Context of movement treatment relaxation work?

Tom Butler: 21:11

When I watch a documentary or something on like the Tour de France, and I see them doing massages after races as part of their recovery from that day's race. What are they trying to achieve with massage in in those sessions?

Patrick McCabe: 21:32

Yeah. So if you look at your body as a system of roads and highways, you can see that those roads and highways can fuel muscle activation. And then when muscle activation becomes so strong, the muscles can actually limit movement. And so you have blood pumping the muscles to fuel the muscles, but then you have the muscles taking over and limiting the blood returning to be able to kind of get fresh oxygen, lymphatic system moving through, which is kind of pulling the garbage, the byproducts. And so a lot of time post-race massages, you're trying to stimulate the lymphatic system, you're trying to return blood, you're trying to downregulate the muscle activation so that you can be able to recover as quickly as you can. So you're constantly doing these big, long called the efflourage, uh, sweeping strokes to be able to kind of move fluid uh throughout the body versus creating a stimulating massage, like a massage gun, which is there to kind of promote blood flow, get the muscles activated, kind of warm them up and kind of excited to be able to perform at their best. You're kind of doing the opposite, kind of flushing out the muscles and kind of getting as much movement as you can through the whether it's the blood vessels, whether the lymphatic system, whether it's just interstitial fluid opening up the fascia, things like that.

Tom Butler: 22:59

Well, you know, I feel like I want to come back sometime and talk more about massage with you, but I do I want to get into like the main reason why I wanted you to join me. Yeah. And it comes down to your interest in cyclocross and you again kind of interacting with your wife at the cyclocross event I was at and hearing her talk about your interest and what you're doing. I'm looking on the wall, and there is a Grit City kit on the wall behind you. Like you're into it.

Patrick McCabe: 23:43

Yeah.

Tom Butler: 23:43

And so tell me about that. How did you get interested in cyclocross?

Patrick McCabe: 23:47

I was asked to like, you should try cyclocross. It's so fun. And when it was described to me, it sounded like the dumbest idea ever. And so I was like, absolutely not. That just doesn't sound like a good time. Riding on a the the wrong bike, riding on the wrong trails and in the wrong season. But then there was a race at the local trail system that I had kind of like worked to help build and do a lot of trail work and volunteer work. And so I was like, I might as well represent some of the trail builders that have done a lot of work out here. And I'll go out there and it's at Swan Creek. And the only bike that I had that could essentially qualify was this steel single-speed bike that I used for commuting to work. And I put some knobier tires that I got from Second Cycle on it and went out there and just wearing a Sounders jersey and some you know capri pants, you know, commuter style cycling pants, and just had a blast because there were 50, 60, 100 other people with bikes just like mine doing an activity and struggling just like I am, with everyone's just big smiles on their face and sweat and grimaces. And it was just so, so fun. And I was like, I want to do this again. And there was like one race left in the season, and so I was like, the big separator is I I just need gears, and my only geared bike was a full suspension mountain bike. And so me, my wife, and my daughter all raised our full suspension mountain bikes up in North Sea Tac. It was so muddy. Our bikes probably weighed 40 or 50 pounds by the middle of the first lap. And then we had to climb up these stairs carrying these full suspension mountain bikes, riding around. But we all had so much fun, and we all have so many memories that we quote from each of these races, just from the announcers calling us out. Like my wife was wearing a camelback backpack for her race just because she didn't know what to expect. And they're like, let's go camelback. And so we quote that nonstop throughout the cyclocross season. And I was Sounders guy because I had a Sounders jersey on, and it was just so fun to be like you just show up with whatever you have and whatever you're you don't you know experience it for the first time, and then from there we just couldn't stop buying bikes and getting more into it. We we had to wait for the entire next season to come around, and so it was just it was so great.

Tom Butler: 26:23

So nice. Yeah. I went out and uh my son-in-law is doing circle cross, Garen. People have heard him from him on the podcast several times. You know, he said, come out, this is gonna be a very friendly course. I I hadn't really prepped at all. I thought I'll come out, I'll do the warmups, you know, and if I hate it, then I won't do it. But did the warm-ups and it's like, okay, this is not too technical of a course. Yeah, and so I I wrote it, I had a blast, was the only person over 60 erasing that course that day. Yeah, and so I came out of there really looking at cyclocross as a different way of stimulating my interest in cycling and also wanting to put together a cycling over 60 cyclocross team. Jim, my first question to you is do you think it's crazy to think about cycling over 60 cycle cross team?

Patrick McCabe: 27:26

No, I don't think it's crazy at all. There is inherent risk, which comes with off-road riding. And so that's the main thing is making sure that people are understanding the risk that they're taking and the ways that they can stay safe and get a positive experience out of it. So that they don't feel that they are forced to do any certain technical downhill or single track section, that they're doing it within a their own ability. But there's a lot to be garnered from riding cyclocross just bike handling wise, it's a unique experience and the stimulus of a high-intensity activity where you're constantly going back and forth between high output and zero coasting, you know, exertional efforts. That constant oscillation really stimulates a unique experience that most people don't get when they go out on the group ride with their friends or ride the foothills, or even mountain biking can be can be very one hour of consistent output to the top of the hill and then coasting and intermittent output on the you know, descent.

Tom Butler: 28:41

So I think it's an awesome point that it's an opportunity to kind of regulate yourself in a way. Uh it's a it's a challenge, and it's sometimes you might have to say, okay, I'm I'm not gonna do that. I'm gonna get off the bike, you know, like maybe there's a downhill section. I'm gonna get off the bike, I'm gonna walk down that section. There's times that's a very healthy perspective to take, that I'm gonna take care of myself by doing this right. Yeah.

Patrick McCabe: 29:07

So the one of the psychicross sayings is you might not win by riding a certain section, but you could definitely lose a lot by riding a certain section that's above your ability. And so being mindful, for one example, I think a race that you came out to, the North 40 race, had a very dry summer, and we had a very heavy rain going into it, but one of the descent sections did not receive any of that moisture, and so it was very, very soft and dry, and it was very loose of years of just riding the same descent. And so by the time the last race of the day came around, which was my race for the single speed race, I made the decision that yeah, I could ride it. I rode it in the pre-rides, I've ridden it every year. I've I'm a well-seasoned mountain biker. I didn't have any issues with it. But the first race of the year, I felt that I didn't want to risk crashing, injuring myself, and taking myself out for the entire season so early on. So I made the decision to run that section. And again, I did not lose any places every time I ran it. I was right with the person that I went in with, or I stayed faster than the person that was behind me by running it, but I decreased my risk quite a bit and came out without any injuries. And I did not fall into the lake or the little uh pond there, which every time you descend that, it's like it's right there. Somebody's gotta go in it, make it a triathlon. But yeah, so I made that decision and that was the right thing for me. Yeah, and I felt that I I I had a really good race. I like it.

Tom Butler: 30:55

Yeah. Okay, so I reached out to a coach for some input. And if you've not listened to the episode a couple episodes ago, uh there's it might be good to stop at this point and go listen to that for some context. But I reached out to a coach and it was AI Coach Sarah. Yes, the AI gave a name, Coach Sarah, and got uh quite a bit of input on preparing for to do more cycle cross in the future. Yes. You were generous to take your time and go listen to that. And so I'm really curious now to get into some comments you have, some observations you made, some maybe corrections that you would like to make in the device that was given. So go ahead and let's get into that.

Patrick McCabe: 31:50

Yeah. It was a really interesting back and forth, and you can tell that it's pulling from a really broad range of knowledge and experience of people writing about this and talking about Psychocross and being able to kind of display that. The hard part is that Psychocross is a an experience that has to be actually done. You can watch a lot of Psychocross on TV, but until you experience it, there are just unique challenges that come up. And so I yeah, I made a couple notes, which is she talked a lot about becoming more technically capable, especially due to your concerns of having your power, average power be so much lower than uh what your threshold is. And one of the challenges with cyclocross is that it's it's so variable, and the exertional stress is not captured by a power meter that comparing Cyclocross to a Zwift ride or your threshold or a group ride, it's like comparing a banana to an apple. They they both have carbohydrates and they're slightly sweet, but really that's about it. Um, and so looking at the the power profile and looking at what your threshold is, yeah, the goal with any power profile or any heart rate data is all always post-activity reflective to see what's going on versus in race. One of the things I always joke about is during any kind of exertional effort, when muscles and your brain are fighting for glucogen glycogen, your muscles will always win. So don't try and do math on the bike. And so when people are exerting themselves and they're like, my heart rate is this, and they're looking down at their computer and they're like, and my power looks like this. And they're going, okay, if my power is like this, and and I hold this over the course of the next five minutes, and then my heart rate goes up this, and it's like, just so you know, your brain is not working with a full deck right now, it is not getting the glycogen it needs to be able to fuel this kind of computation. Your muscles are asking for this. So don't, don't, don't even worry about that. And so, yeah, so looking at that technical capability, one of the challenges is yeah, it's a technical thing, but how much time you invest in the technical capabilities really doesn't pan out. And so you can spend two hours a week, like Coach Sarah recommended, on technical skills to be able to then race three to four races once a month, as she recommended, to save a few seconds per lap. The return on investment just unfortunately doesn't seem there. A hundred hours over the course of the year, plus to be able to save a couple seconds in a race that you might do three to four times a year. Seems like those couple hundred hours could be better spent, being more comfortable on a bike, increasing your threshold by a couple watts to be able to recover a lot better, uh, focusing on more resilient, focused workouts, things like that. And so it's it's really interesting because your peak capacity really you get a diminishing return when you hit so many hours.

Tom Butler: 35:08

So let me talk about a few things. So I the race that I did was actually the lemon peel stilicum race. Um there were it was mostly flat. Yeah. And so there were some tight turns, you know, and then there was one section where you came down a pretty, not very far, but but down a pretty steep um hill, and then had a very sharp turn at the bottom of it. You came back up the hill, had a sharp sharp turn at the top, came back down the hill, and then you you got back on flat again. And then there was there were two sets of barriers, yes, which are basically, I don't know, two by sixes, two two by sixes, two two by eights. Two by twelve. Two by twelves, okay. So stacked on top of each each other.

Patrick McCabe: 36:02

Two two by eights for those ones. Okay. Yeah, some of the lower barriers are two by twelve, just two by twelves.

Tom Butler: 36:08

Oh, okay, okay. So I dismounted. I was clipped in, so had to unclip, dismount, get over the barrier, pick up the bike, carry it over the barrier, and then jump back on. So get over the first barrier, run to the next barrier, get over the that barrier, and then and then hop back and continue going. So I found, and and there is a picture of me going over the barriers that's a side shot, that's a video, not a picture, but a video. And I look at that and I go, okay, that's a novice person going over these barriers. What I hear you saying is even the like my bike handling around the sharp corners on grass or in mud, I felt pretty, I felt challenged with that. I felt like I had to slow down quite a bit to make it around. And then that section, especially coming down the hill, making the sharp turn, and then having to accelerate up the hill, I found that to be challenging. It's not something that I do, yeah, you know, and it was getting muddier as time went on. So I found those to be challenging technically.

Patrick McCabe: 37:22

Yeah.

Tom Butler: 37:23

But even within that, what you're saying is that to really focus on that technical side of it is probably not going to provide more satisfaction for me racing those races. Am I hearing you right?

Patrick McCabe: 37:42

Yeah. So I usually look at it as there's early season riding. Let's say you focus on cycle cross. That's your A season for the year. I like to do my most risky things with the furthest time frame away from that season. And then you get more precise and more precise and more precise as you get closer and closer and lower the risk so that you're ready for the season. One of the challenges is that doing some high-intensity work, whether it's out in the field and you're riding the trails that we're, you know, the lemon peel race was at, you can only sustain successive weeks of high-intensity work and be able to reap those benefits for so long before you start to burn out. And so those types of skills really it's challenging to do in a fresh state and feel that that's going to be super beneficial. You need to do it under the same conditions. And that's where I feel that looking at the race season as an experience. So, newer riders, if you can ride 10, 15, you know, I usually average between 15 and 20 races a year. This year was a very low year as I leaned into the management side. But the main reason for me to race that many times is just to be able to repeat those same efforts under those same conditions in a safe environment. If I ride my bike out to Fort Stillicum and I start going through those trails and I fall, it's going to be a long time before somebody finds my body. And so that's the fun part about doing events is that you have medical staff on hand, you have somebody who's going to find you in within seconds because they're right behind you if you do take a fall. We've had people break hips and have significant crashes, and medical staff is right there because there's riders who are letting everybody know as quickly as they can that somebody needs help. There's riders who are staying with that individual. And so you don't want those things to happen, but I'm more happy to take those risks in a race and develop those skills over the course of the season versus saying I'm going to ride one or two races a year or one race a month, as Coach Sarah was saying, because it doesn't give you that experience. I like to say that you cleave off fitness early in the base phase. You take a round, you know, new object and you cleave off an edge. And then you start sharpening it as you start to increase your intensity. And then you start honing it when you get into your specificity, whether you're getting ready for cycle cross-style efforts. But racing uses the blade. It does not build fitness. It uses the blade, which might harden it and make it more resilient. And it might, you know, slough off some of the burrs that are left from the honing process. And so you might get really, really good because you you develop those technical skills. But it's really hard to say my FTP went up because I raced 15 times. But I learned so much so that next year, when I do increase my capacity, I'm coming in with a new experience and doing the same thing over and over, which is why I like Cyclocross to have shorter. Laps so that you're doing more laps of the same experience. So that little chicane that had a little off-camber section, yeah. If you do that twice because it was a super long lap, you didn't really gain any experience on that. But if you did it five or six times because it's a short lap and you're going through it over and over, every time you're going, how do I do that faster? How do I solve that problem quicker? How do I be a little bit smoother going into it? How do I maintain speed coming out of it? Do I dismount and just run the whole entire thing versus trying to figure out, I didn't shift, I'm not in the right gear to get up this. Now I have to dismount from a complete dead stop. So there's all those learning processes every single lap, which is I really promote pre-riding and getting as many pre-rides in as you can all throughout the day to see how the conditions change throughout the race day. After the last race is done, hop on course real quick and just see what the last racers were dealing with. If you raced at nine o'clock and now it's three o'clock, stick around for the day. See what other racers who are a little bit faster or might be a little bit smoother, how they're dismounting, what they're doing, how they're swinging their leg over the back of the bike or stepping through if they're a classic style racer, how they're dismounting, how they're going over the barriers, how they're carrying the bike. Everything is going to be a little bit different as you start to get a little bit faster and more experienced. And so it's really tough when newer riders will go at nine or 10 race and then leave. It's like, man, those conditions of the course, a little dew on the ground, a little bit damp. By the time it's two, three o'clock, and you're going through a course that might have had 900 racers, as you know, like Woodland Park, that last race of the day, the course is pretty different than the earlier racers.

Tom Butler: 42:59

I mean, it's really easy to see that. You know, it is a different course. Right. So yeah. So let's talk about my heart rate. Yeah. Limitation. As I was writing, I did have my computer on, I could see my heart rate. And I know if I when I'm pushing myself, I will get up to over 170 beats per minute. I also know that I can't sustain that for very much. And so it does give me some feedback that you know I'm I'm pushing too hard. If I want to complete these, I'll, you know, as many laps as I can complete. What are your thoughts about that? Uh coach Sarah was saying you you can increase that by spending some time, you know, uh getting up into higher ranges and then backing off. What what were your thoughts about those recommendations?

Patrick McCabe: 44:01

Yeah, I I tend to go back to the very, very beginning of the heart, is the heart is a pumping mechanism. And so your heart rate is a condition of the volume and the speed. And so some people have really low heart rates because their heart is pumping so much volume per stroke. And then some people, their heart doesn't have that volume capacity, and so it increases the rate at which it needs to squeeze. And so it's really kind of this informative post-race experience of looking at your heart rate after the race. Did that feel like what it felt? And that's the challenge is looking at it in race. I can be on the start line and have 150 beats per minute going on, and I haven't even moved because I care about the race. I did a double dose of caffeine before the race and it's finally kicking in. And I just looked over and my arch nemesis just lined up that wasn't on the start list, and he just showed up. And now I really like am nervous, but I haven't even left and I'm already in that sweet spot zone. So am I doing sweet spot effort with that heart rate on the start line? And so it can be really kind of misleading looking at a heart rate during a race. But if you are doing long group rides, if you're doing ramrod and you kind of know that, like I really am just trying to keep my heart rate low, and you notice that, oh, like I felt really good, but I know that's too high. I might need to have that inform me on how many calories I'm burning or what my carbohydrate intake might need to be to be able to make it to the next aid station, what my rest at the aid station might need to be until my heart rate kind of relaxes. But there's so many variables that kind of go into it that I feel like using heart rate or even power in a race doesn't really give you a whole lot. Because also the biggest thing is mental training is your body is always gonna be self-protective. It's always gonna be saying, Hey, if you keep doing this, you could die. And it's it's like, come on, body, like you're being a little like over the top. And it's like, no, but really, like this seems really hard. You should stop right now. And it's like, okay, I stopped. And then if somebody were like, could you go a little bit longer? And you're like, well, yeah, I can totally have gone a little bit longer, but is my body just kept telling me that like this is a lot of work. And it's like, yeah, that's the self-protective mechanism of our brains. And that's why we do things that are challenging, isn't just for the physiological adaptations, it's for those mental challenges of going, I've done this in training, I can do this now. And that's what I tell my athletes is events have one purpose. Give your coach good data. Because I don't want you to set a new threshold PR max out on a gravel road by yourself. Again, nobody's gonna find your body if you crash into a ditch. So use events as ways to be able to give your coach good data to be able to affect your training plan, to be able to move forward. So we look at the climb and it's like, hey, this looks like it's gonna be about a 40-minute climb. This is kind of what you've shown in training that you can do. Give me good data. If you think that you can do more, show me in this race that you can do more, and we'll look after the race and we'll see what we can do, and we'll see how we can form our next training cycle based on what you showed me that you can do. Give it because you get to the top, you're bleary-eyed, recover, take some breaths, but know that you you left it all out there for that type of effort, and that there's medical staff if you need to, that you're supported, that you have aid stations to be able to give you some extra fuel or hydration if you didn't plan for that. All those types of things come into play. How do you know what you have available if you don't ever put that out there? And that's why what is FTP? Like when we get down to it, what is a functional threshold power? It's all just a guess of how much you can do in training so that we can inform some kind of expectations for racing. But if we take away those expectations of racing and we just say, be curious and show me what you can do, then we can inform our training and keep moving the needle forward.

Tom Butler: 48:20

Yeah, I I don't see FTP as something that has some like that number is magical. Yeah. I but I do feel like if I'm replicating the conditions and I'm able to do a higher FTP, if I'm you know on Zwift, I'm on the same course in Zwift, and I'm able to do a higher FTP over 20 minutes, I do interpret that as an increase in strength.

Patrick McCabe: 48:51

Yeah.

Tom Butler: 48:51

In some kind of strength. Yeah. Whether that's muscular strength or cardiovascular strength. I do interpret it that way.

Patrick McCabe: 48:59

Yeah. And that's the way to use it, is to be able to show that your training zones are moving in the right direction, that you have more capacity to be able to increase your efforts. If you go out and you ride 200 watts for 20 minutes, and then the next day you see if you can hold it for 40 minutes, and then eventually you can hold it for a full hour. It's showing your increased capacity. But if you keep riding at that 200 watts, eventually it's gonna become a smaller and smaller and smaller ratio or portion of your capacity. And so then it's gonna elicit a smaller and smaller physiological adaptation that you might not be hoping for because you're gonna need to stimulate some kind of capacity at some time.

Tom Butler: 49:47

So FTP is one of those things that I'm I'm following. The other thing is I don't know what's going on physiologically with me as my heart rate increases. I mean, theoretically, my blood pressure is doing something different, but I'm not wearing a blood pressure cuff. I don't know what my blood pressure is doing. So, in addition to the number, then there is the element of how I feel.

Patrick McCabe: 50:17

Yeah.

Tom Butler: 50:17

My breathing, I don't feel like I'm ever breathing hard. And that's a really curious thing with me and about energy utilization that we don't have time to dive into at this point. But you know, if I'm if I'm doing a climb and I get above 170 beats per minute for very long, there is a I feel differently, like my head feels differently. I would get up to maybe 175. I don't ever get up to 180. But there is, you know, that element of I feel my like I've overstressed myself. But maybe I'm wrong about that. Maybe that's not reliable assessment of my stress.

Patrick McCabe: 51:06

Yeah, you you touch on breathing. And one of the interesting things that I'll just bring up real quick is like breathing is one of the few subconscious and conscious controlling factors. Like you can control your breathing and you can just choose to stop breathing. You can increase your respiration rate. But also, if you don't, you'll just naturally keep breathing. And so as your stress rate goes up, your breathing will respond to that. But you also have control over that. You can slow down your breathing as much as you need to. Now, that might have downward effects of increasing your heart rate because you're no longer providing the amount of oxygen that's needing to be, you know, going through your lungs and into your bloodstream. But we have a lot of capacity to be able to reduce our heart rate, reduce that exertional feel by controlling our breath, focusing on a longer exhale. You know, we start to work harder. Our body's creating chemical reactions and it's using different nutrients and it's moving everything around and we start to become acidic. And we get rid of that through the carbon dioxide we breathe out for the most part, and we utilize a little bit here and there. We inhale as much oxygen as we ever need because we're super good at that, but we are trying to exhale more carbon dioxide. And so if we're constantly in this panting breath, we never get out a lot of that buildup. And so then it feels so much harder. And that's why our body's like, you could die. We're we're we're we're almost suffocating here because we're not getting enough carbon dioxide out so that we can bring in the oxygen in. And so just yeah, controlling the breath has a huge effect, and something I really recommend people work on when they're doing easy rides, steady state rides, is just take some slow deep breaths and watch your heart rate come down. Take a drink of water and watch your heart rate go up because you you're not exhaling while you're drinking and you're pausing that. And it's like you can always tell looking at my rides, like when I took a drink of water, because it's just see that rise, and then you just see it drop all the way back down. So there's lots of things that you can do to be able to control heart rate, and that's why I really feel that it should perceive or it should influence your perception of exertion and your RPE, your rate of perceived exertion, it should influence that, not be a controlling metric.

Tom Butler: 53:27

Interesting. As you listen to what the advice I got from Coach Sarah, yeah, how would you direct me as far as what to do from now to next cycle cross-season to get better prepared?

Patrick McCabe: 53:41

Yeah. My biggest focus with all my athletes that I recommend for just about anyone is to create a sustainable calendar. We get into these microcycles of like, oh yeah, I'm gonna do a big threshold block. And then I go into VO2 block. And the hard part is that if it's not tied to available daylight, training time, some of the goals and events that you like to do, having fun on the bike, you can really spiral really quickly if you don't have that mindset of like, yeah, this is this is my ultimate goal. And so I create a sustainable calendar, which usually looks at a little bit of endurance riding and some base building, just getting comfortable and creating the habit of being on the bike and finding a really good rhythm and schedule. And then doing some early spring, a little bit more sweet spot threshold type of efforts where you're kind of increasing your capacity and kind of pushing and seeing what you can do. And by the time you get into the summertime, you're using a lot of those efforts to be able to fuel some, you know, unique adventures, some longer riding where you might have some harder climbs or some longer sustained climbs to really build a good volume and base. And then you get close into the end of the summer as you get towards the cyclocross season, you start uh honing that tool. You start getting into some specificity, some higher anaerobic efforts, some VO2 style efforts, because you you really cap out at how long you can do VO2. If I had you do a VO2 work workout one to two days a week starting now, and just see how long you go, you're really gonna start hitting the bike pretty soon. Because we create these negative reactions to physical duress. And your body's like, if you do this, you're you could die. And so, how do you do that? You start incorporating easy rides with maybe some strength training, some full body mobility, something to be able to create a healthy, strong, active body. And then you get into the summertime and you're kind of oscillating between more ride time, more adventures, enjoying being on the bike. I recommend a lot of soul restoring rides, things that like that's why you're getting on the bike. Psychocross is really tough. If you had a national intention of, I want to be the strongest and fastest 60-year-old cycle cross racer, cool. That's a really great 10 to 15 year plan to be the strongest 75-year-old cyclocross racer. Because the people who are at the front end of the 60s right now have been doing it since they're, you know, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years old, and they've been doing it for so long that that expectation just is great. But let's create smart, realistic, timely, you know, goals. And so then we start to go down, go in. How many races can we do to be able to gain that experience? And what does that look like? What does it cost? What is the recovery process? Is the main thing. I constantly say we need to work you between your minimum effective dose and your maximum recoverable amount to be able to get the physiological adaptations and the mental adaptations that we want. If we're below that minimum effective dose and you're not riding enough, you're never going to be able to see any kind of progress. If we're above that maximum recoverable amount, you need to recover for longer than you want. And so then you wind up losing all the gains because your body wasn't recovered in time, whether that's heart rate, ligaments, muscles, all those recover at a different rate. And so having some kind of season where you're going, okay, this is my season. I'm gonna exert myself, I'm gonna try and recover as much as I can, but I want to be able to gain these technical skills. That's all in season stuff, or just before the season stuff. Everything else should be to support developing strong muscles, developing strong joints, being able to develop a strong heart rate, a strong heart, and be able to develop the right mindset that you can be able to challenge yourself and work past some of those back of the mind you could die experiences.

Tom Butler: 57:44

You talked in there about some weight training. Yeah. Coach Sarah recommended Bulgarian squats. Yeah. So talk to me about that.

Patrick McCabe: 57:55

Yeah, so strength training is really great, and it comes from a really simple foundation of that your body kind of bends and squats, which is a lot of anterior work. You hinge at the hips, which is a lot of posterior chain work. Uh, you push away from the body, which is a lot of anterior, and you pull in towards the body, which is a lot of posterior upper body. And then from there you can do some pressure loading, rotation, mobility, but those five of pressure loading, which is creating some static internal pressure and bracing with the core muscles, doing some hinging, squatting, pushing, and pulling, really great to do on a regular basis and get stronger in those things because that's how our body moves. It's not very complicated. I feel that when you get into those motions, you can do a lot of things to add strain without adding resistance. And I feel like split squats, lunges, Bulgarian split squats, these things add a lot of complication for people who are advanced or who are limited on their capacity of resistance able to be applied. So if you were doing bodyweight squats regularly and you were doing some bodyweight hinges or you've increased to regular squats with weight, adding a split loads the legs significantly differently because the knees are bending, which is one of the levers of the muscle. So you're adding that bending of the knee back behind you, you're extending from the hip. And so you wind up loading the muscle very, very excessively for new movers, which tends to be why when people do lunges or split squats as a new mover, they suffer a lot more delayed on set muscular soreness or DOMS than they would without. Hi. Hi Patrick? Yes.

Tom Butler: 59:50

Hi. At this point, someone came into the clinic and interrupted the interview to drop off a Christmas gift to Patrick from a client. When you talk to Patrick, it's obvious that he sees the human connection as vital to his work. I think this was a great moment that shows his relationship with people. Finish your thought as far as the stress of the split. Yeah. And specifically for people that aren't really advanced in their weightlifting.

Patrick McCabe: 1:00:19

It seems like such a simple move, a lunge or a split squat, and it seems so simplistic. But I tend to see a lot of people just doing regular squats have so much limitation in their ankle mobility that they wind up doing a hinge squat combo where they're leaning forward with their chest to be able to squat down, which then is stressing the anterior and posterior without proper form. And so if I can be able to get people to understand the fundamentals of each of those moves and how they're different, and then be able to alleviate some of the tensions that might be naturally occurring, then we can get people stronger so that they can take on the complication of adding balance, being that you're splitting a squat or your Bulgarian squat, squat, split squat, you're Elevating your rear leg onto a ball or a table or a bench. So you're creating this excessive instability for people that might not be able to support that balance. And then we're creating a loading factor with the extension of that back leg, the excessive loading of the front leg, whether there's collapsing of the knee or not. Then if you get that person leaning forward and hinging because they they don't have the proper form and technique, you start just creating a lot of issues.

Tom Butler: 1:01:38

And so I think that absolutely describes me. Right. I think I'm absolutely a novice when it comes to lower body weightlifting. And I as you talk about the compounding of different leverages, yeah, I think it's too much for me.

Patrick McCabe: 1:02:01

Yeah, for somebody who's been doing training regularly, or as I take clients through little intro programs or foundational programs, I like to say, these might seem simple, but you have yet to show me that you can do these on a regular basis based on your history. And so show me that over the course of the next seven weeks, you can do two to three days of these simple 10 minutes of simple movements so that you have the understanding that we're we can complicate things and you have the drive to want to complicate things. But over the course of those seven weeks, if you get two weeks in, and then one week is like one day, and the next week you had life come up, great, make a pivot. And then the next week you get one day, and then you're back on, you did three days. It's like cool. Over the course of the seven weeks, we hit about a 50, 60, 70 percent. Let's move forward and do another round of these same seven weeks and show me that you can do more and be consistent before we start adding in unnecessary complications. And and what that does is it just creates that reinforced habit of this is how I move and this is what I'm doing. So, for example, I always call my cycling bibs my yoga bibs or my strength training bibs. Because if I'm kind of wishy-washy about getting on the bike and training, I just have to put on my yoga bibs and do my warm-up routine and my strength routine to mobilize and activate, and then I can be done if I want to. But I already have my cycling bibs on or my yoga bibs, and now I just get on the bike and it just decreases that barrier. But it makes that the pre-movement is just as important as getting on the bike because it's really easy to pull on your bibs, get on the bike, and start pedaling without doing any activation, any mobilization, and any kind of, hey, I'm letting my body know that I'm gonna expect something from it. And we should have that be just as much a part of the workout routine as the three by nine intervals that you have on the calendar. It's like, okay, you have an hour workout on the bike, but what about the 15 minutes before and the 15 minutes after that you should be doing some mobility work and some preparatory work and then some cool down and some appreciation work. That should all be factored in. So if you don't have an hour and a half to do your work, I'd much rather see 15 minutes, a half an hour ride, and 15 minutes so that we can make sure that those are priorities until we have the time to be able to extend that out. But just getting rid of those is just going to create more issues down the road.

Tom Butler: 1:04:38

The thing that I love about this the most is that I'm hearing like a personal training mindset, right? Yeah. Because there's so much observation that you're doing of where a person is before you're saying, okay, let's go here. Yeah. And you're you're not gonna get that from reading something, you're not gonna get that from watching a video about somebody talking in in general terms. So that's a really interesting thing.

Patrick McCabe: 1:05:14

Because I don't know where you've been, and I don't know where you're at right now. And so that's why I always say, show me that you can do these things, show me that you can be consistent, because right now I'm just going off of your word that yeah, you're really strong. And and I did, you know, weight training uh, you know, a couple of years ago, and I had a personal trainer a little while ago, and it's like, yeah, because nobody wants to say, really, I haven't done anything for the last six months, and I got really sore when I had to walk up the steps to the building the other day. And afterwards I was like, why am I sore from walking up these steps? Nobody wants to explain those types of things, and that's why, like we talked about at the beginning, is like creating that space for you just to be who you are and not have any expectations and not have any directive or goals for you, but to be able to say, Welcome, here's a space to be open and vulnerable. I try and be very open so that people can mirror that and be open and vulnerable so that we can be able to support and kind of move together versus me pushing and creating pushback. And then from there, show me what capacity you have so I can support you more. Show me where you might need a little bit more support so that we can we can go far and we can get there at your timeline.

Tom Butler: 1:06:36

Well, I I like that. So I I think that you've given me as much information as you can give me without challenge accepted, without like knowing more details without making some observations. So I have this dream of having a cycling over 60 cycle cross team next year. I'm wondering if Grit City Health Cyclocross team would be willing in a way to adopt the cycling over 60 cyclocross team and kind of work with us to help us, you know, get there as as individuals. Yeah. And the reason I think that that would be great is again, I want to after 60 years old, and if you're listening to this and you're not yet 60 years old, the goal is for you to start wherever you are, 50, 59, like me, whatever, so that you can be cycling over 60. But I want to be able to push myself and I want to encourage other people to push themselves. And I think doing cycle cross is a is an interesting way to push myself. So would you be willing, and we can talk about details about that some some other time, but to to kind of adopt this team of people that want to do cycle cross over 60.

Patrick McCabe: 1:08:04

Definitely. Nice part of the Grit City Health team came from just I have a little business that I love. I love what I do, and I wanted a jersey that represented my business. And then friends and family and other racers were like, well, we want a jersey that represents your business and who you are and what you do and what you bring. And now we have over 25 riders that would consider themselves a part of Team Grit City Health. We have so many more that are, as I call them, Grit City Health adjacent, that you so we now have a team. So it's been about three, almost four years of having a quote-unquote cyclocross team where people are coming up and racing throughout the season. And so, yeah, we've had quite a few different individual privateers, solo riders, little teams that don't have a full team tent. We just take on under our wing and we support them and we love them and we offer them everything that we have available. And yeah, we would love to talk more about what that looks like to be able to bring on cycling over 60 and a little cyclocross team and supporting doing pre-rides, offering the full amenities of our tent and kind of going from there. So yeah.

Tom Butler: 1:09:19

Well, I love it. I'm excited. And so I I I think we should wrap this up now, but I think that there's there's a lot of things I'd like to talk about, and we'll have to brainstorm another episode together at some point. But I want to thank you so much for taking the time to have this conversation and taking the time to listen to the other podcast and re reflect on that. And I'm excited about like really learning some cool things from you.

Patrick McCabe: 1:09:50

Yeah, it was my pleasure, and I really appreciate you having me on here and even just asking me for my thoughts. Fantastic. Well, okay, we'll be talking more. Sounds great. Bye now.

Tom Butler: 1:09:59

Thank you. Maybe the biggest thing that came out of the conversation with Patrick for me was the concept of minimally effective dose with the maximal recoverable amount. There are two aspects of this for me. First, I want my rides to be effective but also fun. So at times, I'm not really going to be analyzing my riding too much. I'm just going to go out and have fun. But otherwise, I'm going to want to know how to get an effective dose of cycling to improve my performance. The second thing I think about is that I feel nervous about my ability to recover. I've seen some things that really make me think that I'm not recovering as well as I should. I've already said that I think recovery needs to be a major focus of cycling over 60, so maybe it's helpful if that's a big need for me, because my personal journey will help everybody else who are also interested in how to maximize recovery. There are so many strategies to achieve recovery, and also so many ways to prepare for riding that reduce damage. Patrick made it clear that he expects a pre-ride routine to get in the best place to perform while riding. There's certainly going to be a lot of things here to study. It's a bit disappointing to me that I'm going to have to focus on a pre-ride routine. I very much like the idea just jumping on the bike and going. But I also want to make sure that I'm doing what I need to do because I want to be cycling for a very long time. I hope you, like me, experience the best year of cycling so far in 2025. And I want to wish everybody a happy new year, and here's to a fantastic 2026. Now remember, age is just a gear charge.