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Faster with Dr Hutch

Written by: Stripped Media & Cycling Weekly
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  • Summary

  • In Faster, former national cycling champion Michael Hutchinson (aka Dr Hutch) looks at what makes a fast bike rider, and what it's like to be one. He talks to some of the best athletes in the world, as well as coaches, sports scientists and engineers, about the physical and mental challenges, the equipment and the training, and above all about the relentless pursuit of speed.
    Stripped Media & Cycling Weekly
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Episodes
  • Kristen Kulchinsky and Jay Vine

    Kristen Kulchinsky and Jay Vine
    Jul 29 2022
    The rise of esports has been the most important change we’ve seen in bike racing in the last 20 years. Zwift and similar platforms have begun a revolution, not just in how racing happens, but in who can compete. Zwift is open to anyone, from anywhere. It’s the very opposite of professional road racing in terms of accessibility and expense. From a performance point of view, Zwift means that any of us can race against the best, and it means that talented riders from outside mainstream pro cycling can get themselves noticed. In this edition of Faster, I talk to two of the world’s most successful Zwifters. Aussie Jay Vine is the current UCI Esports World Champion, and also races on the road at the highest level. Riding for the Alpecin Deceuninck team, he’s been second in the Tour of Norway, and was unlucky not to take a stage of the 2020 Vuelta a Espana. We look at how racing online in and in real life can benefit each other, and how he’s used them together to get the best out of himself. In contrast with Jay’s twin-track career, Kristen Kulchinsky from the US is a full-on esports specialist. She has been the top-ranked Zwift woman for much of the last couple of years, and while she’s dominant online, she barely rides in the real world at all, even in training. No one knows more about the physical and mental demands of this very pure form of bike racing. And coach and former pro-racer Dan Fleeman tells me about the Zwift Academy, a talent search programme that finds some of the best esports riders (including Jay Vine himself) contracts with top pro road teams. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 1 min
  • A Chat With Sir Chris Hoy

    A Chat With Sir Chris Hoy
    Jul 8 2022
    This time on Faster I’m talking to the man who is probably the UK’s most famous bike rider – Sir Chris Hoy. Almost all of us are familiar with endurance riding. Very few riders know about the specialised world of track sprinting. How do you prepare for an event that might only last a few seconds, where the forces on bike and rider are huge and the decisions have to be made instantly? Sir Chris tells me about training protocols so short and so brutal that the pain in the muscles keeps increasing even after the effort has finished. About how a sprinter might only ride a handful of laps of the track in a full training session, but go home broken and exhausted. And about how he used to prepare for races – watching videos of rivals, learning the people he was racing inside out so that if he had to rely on his instincts, the instincts would be right. And we’re joined by Mehdi Kordi, the exceptional coach to the all-conquering Dutch track sprint team, who tells us about the physiology behind sprinting, how to train as a sprinter, and whether a sprinter is an animal that is born or made. --------------------------- If you liked this episode of Faster, please tell your friends about it. It really helps people find us. It would be great if you could like and subscribe to Faster and rate it too. You can find me on Twitter @doctor_hutch, if you want to get in touch, and I’d love to hear from you. If you want to read the book that inspired the podcast, it’s also called Faster, and available from places that sell books both online and in real life. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 6 mins
  • The Hour Record

    The Hour Record
    Jul 1 2022
    This time on Faster, I’m talking about the Hour Record. And I’m talking about it with a stellar group of guests, including current record-holders Ellen van Dijk and Victor Campenaerts, as well as former holders Joss Lowden, Molly Van Houweling and Alex Dowsett. The Hour is the simplest challenge in cycling – how far you can ride on a track, on your own, in one hour. There are no tactics, or teammates, just you and what you’ve got. And while it’s simple, it has a reputation as just about the toughest thing you can subject yourself to on a bike. Even the great Eddy Merckx said it was the longest hour of his entire career, and that he’d suffered as never before. We look at what makes it so difficult – the challenges of pacing, and the unrelenting pressure of riding at full effort with no snatches of rest, no chances to move on the bike. There’s the question of how you train for something so unique, something that only a tiny handful of riders have ever even attempted. And what can you learn from it – does the Hour make you a better rider back in the world of normal racing? We talk about failure too, because Hour attempts can and do go horribly wrong. What’s it like to square up to something as black-and-white as the Hour and not quite make it? More than one of my guests tells me that a record attempt that fails is a much worse experience than one that succeeds, not just emotionally, but physically. It’s the most important record in cycling, and it’s a great way to kick off the second season of Faster. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    46 mins
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