Alexey Vermeulen on Training, Racing, and the Marginal Gain of Happiness

In a sport increasingly obsessed with optimization and marginal gains, Alexey Vermeulen has found an advantage in knowing which ones not to chase.

When we sat down with Alexey to talk about training, racing, and managing the demands of a full season, one theme kept coming up: performance doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Rather than trying to optimize every detail of his life, Alexey prioritizes staying happy, keeping stress low, and building a routine he can sustain all year.

His reasoning is simple: reducing stress might be a bigger marginal gain than many of the ones athletes spend so much time chasing.

We talked about how that philosophy shapes his training, his approach to a long season, and ultimately, how he gets the best out of himself when it matters.

Below is the transcript of our conversation, edited for clarity:

MATT: Welcome back to the First Endurance Podcast. Today we're joined by Alexey Vermeulen, one of the most accomplished and versatile American endurance athletes racing today. Alexey came up through the traditional road pipeline, racing in Europe at the World Tour with Lotto NL-Jumbo, I believe it was called when you were there, before returning to the US and ultimately reinventing himself as one of the top gravel racers in the country. And that career art gives Alexey a pretty unique perspective on how endurance sport has changed, not just in terms of racing, but also fueling, recovery, and the type of planning and training required to be at the pointy end of really competitive races all year long. Today we're going to talk about what Alexey has learned over the course of his career, and how he approaches the training, nutrition, and preparation required for the increasingly high-octane world of professional gravel racing. Alexey, thank you for joining us.

ALEXEY: Thanks, Matt.

MATT: The genesis for me for this conversation was I think that you're probably one of the best people to talk about training and preparation from a really zoomed-out, macro perspective because you have this experience at the World Tour, which is obviously a really long season. I mean, these days you're talking Mallorca in January, to potentially Lombardy in October. You also, for the past several years, have been in the Life Time Grand Prix, not quite as long, maybe more like six months, I think April to the end of October, but presents other challenges in terms of how spaced out the races are and how you have to stay sharp during these long training down-periods. So when when you're thinking about what your whole year of training looks like, when does that process start? Have you even raced Big Sugar by the time you're thinking about what base season 2027 looks like, and is your base season maybe a lot more intense because of how early you need to be switched on?

ALEXEY: Yeah, it's become almost a little mundane at this point. That's the beauty and maybe the detriment of the Grand Prix. It's the same thing over and over and over, but that also means you can fix and perfect things that have worked and haven't worked over, you know, the course of seasons. Typically there's a couple things that are non-negotiable, so now that I'm racing in the gravel and mountain bike space, there is, you have to understand, there's an amount of stress that's not quantified in TSS. That is not quantified on the bike or in the gym or doing, you know, anything you might be doing. And so my off-seasons have become longer than they were on the road, which I think is just interesting to begin with. So typically, I'll always race Iceman. I'm from Michigan, so it's a big mountain bike race up north. That's the first week in November. So usually the next three weeks through November there's no bike riding at all.

I usually say the first week your body's figuring out it's on recovery at all. The second week, it's actually trying to recover. And the third week it realizes that it's a new version of itself right now, and it doesn't have to get back into training the next week. It doesn't have to think about how your appetite or your metabolism is working, it can just it knows its baseline now. So three weeks (of offseason) on the road was about our baseline, what we tried to do. Now in gravel there's usually a week or two after that that are very based upon how I feel. So, first two weeks of December are like "get on a bike if you want to, don't if you don't want to. Start to find a rhythm and routine again that's exciting to you. Make sure you want to do this." That's that the mental side of it, which is such a big piece, because it's really easy in November, or in December, January, February, to be motivated. I see so many riders that are just out there ripping Vo2 workouts, threshold efforts. It's crazy to me. I can't do that.

So usually, like last year was four and a half weeks of offseason. So you're in quite a baseline of like, you got no fitness, you need to find your routine again. All of December is pretty much just get out and ride. My coach will usually put in guidelines like, hey, we wanna aim for for 18 hours this week, hey we wanna aim for 17 hours this week, go to the gym twice if you can. But I get to pick when and where those days fit with what I'm trying to do. If I want to go out to dinner with my girlfriend, if I want to go get drinks with friends, like it's still offseason in the sense of I don't race till April proper. And so I have that period of time to know when my build has to get serious. January, February. January is like when training's on, I'd say. There's a focus on starting to do some tempo, starting to think about the way I'm structuring things, focusing again that I'm getting enough sleep, doing enough recovery, eating enough, important things that all kind of fall to the wayside in December because you can get away with it. And then I would say February and March are are full on. That two-month block is typically where I see the big rebuild in CTL on TrainingPeaks and I'm able to final finally get back to a place where I'm like, I can race mid-April and I can get ready for the Grand Prix.

But I would argue that it's not until probably March that am I doing any type of hard effort. You know, we might do some test efforts, but everything until then is kind of just building up, and that's been, I think, a work over the course of the seasons. But like you said, you know, the interesting part of it is that our season is a little shorter, but also really short in terms of race days. My two years in the WorldTour were like 65 to 68 race days, I believe. And that was small because I was young; I was 21 years old, and so they were holding me back.

I maybe clear 20 race days now, and they're all really hard one-day events. That's the difference. There's no seven-day stage races where you kinda stack days and you sit in the group. Everything I do now feels like it's a 400 TSS effort, which obviously you have to quantify that, but it's a big change in the way that you can prepare and kind of float through the season.

MATT: And when you're sitting down with your coach to talk about this stuff, how much of a collaborative effort is it? Or are you sort of leaning on his or her guidance and expertise in that field? For you, I guess you've been doing it long enough, you maybe have these sort of baseline ideas about what works. Is it a pretty quick process now, like rinse and repeat? This worked last year, we try it again?

ALEXEY: Yeah, there's a little bit of rinse and repeat in there, but also the extracurricular things I add on top are probably what my coach struggles with the most, you know? Me saying, "Hey, I'm going to Chamonix next week to crew my girlfriend at UTMB," you know, like that just pops out of the blue and I maybe purposely, maybe subconsciously hold that back from him until the last minute and I was like, "Hey, let's just make this work as best as it can."

But there's also just a lot of things that I feel like year over year we feel like we struggle with. The two things that I can point out I think we've done really well are we're really good at being prepared for Sea Otter without racing. So that's our first race in the Grand Prix. It's a really hard 10-minute climb that you have to do over 420 to survive. You know, you have to do 6wkg to survive. And that's a difficult effort to prepare for when you're not racing a lot. So I feel like we've nailed that and we've nailed this middle portion of the end of the season, like post-Leadville, going from altitude to Chequamegon, which is completely different, you know? Sea level, two-hour race, mountain bikes, right? Just very, very different effort.

MATT: Reads like a mountain bike crit to me when I see footage of it.

ALEXEY: Hundred percent. Yeah, it's bonkers 'cause there's nothing holding you back. It's just grass. And so like it's everyone there racing their race and it's the epitome of a race of attrition because you'll look back and there's 55 guys here, and the next time you look back there's 12. You know, like it's just poof. Everyone's on the limit the whole day. So I feel like we've really nailed those two transitions, offseason into the beginning and Leadville down to Chequamegon.

MATT: And is it is it really true you do no racing before lifetime starts? And is that by design?

ALEXEY: It's not by design, it's more this idea that less is more in a lot of what we do. And we can get into that a little more, but we try to race once if we can. I think this year I raced Valley of Tears and I raced Mid South. Mid South, when we look back, was probably a mistake, just back to back weekends was a little too much for me at that point. Because again, what you have to remember is these are get on a plane, travel, get there Wednesday, pre-ride, it's a five-day trip to go and do this one thing. And time at home is sacred, obviously, when it comes to that. So I wouldn't say we hold back. We're mainly holding back on like trying to keep myself from getting sick, or injured, or any of the little things that can happen in between training. It's obviously really easy to to control the controllables when you're in your own space, and so we want a race, but we know exactly what it takes to be on the podium or win Sea Otter. And so we know we can do that here, so it becomes kind of a a push and pull of what am I excited for at that given time? And what what works, what fits? So typically, I'd say there's one race before Sea Otter, but it's one of the kick the cobwebs out kind of situations, not for the legs, but more for the head of like, did you bring your shoes and your helmet? You know, did you bring the right nutrition? Like, wow, I I brought three Liquid Shot gels to a race that's four hours long. That's interesting. You come out of offseason and it just becomes something you forget about. How to make bottles, like all that stuff, it becomes a little foreign, to be honest. I I feel like that's always like a kickoff to remember what it's like.

MATT: Off season brain kicks in. So when you turn up to a race like that, are you, obviously you're racing to win or to do well, but is it maybe as much or more of a priority to race it in a certain way that sort of blows the cobwebs out? Race it either aggressively or try to maybe sit in the bunch a bit more and get comfortable in the wheels and and the flow of a of a peloton, or what are you thinking about in terms of that as a preparation race?

ALEXEY: Yeah, it's a good good question. I mean, there's definitely not a like "race with abandon" mentality. You need to have a point to every race you enter, in in my mind. I'd say the biggest point of races like that, like we can use Valley of Tears for example, like the whole crux of the race for me was there's a pinch point at mile nine. Be positioned. Don't ruin your race because you decided not to pedal hard for the first nine miles. Like after that, who cares? You do you, ride your bike.

So think it's usually how my coach works is he's like, hey, how do we find a way to kind of mix the goals professionally? Like it's really nice to get a win at at the first race of the season before you go into Sea Otter, but also we want a good training day. We just traveled here for this, and we also don't want to crash. So like I'd say like when I go in, there's those three thirds, like very little risk, that's probably the first goal. Second goal is racing with tactics that make sense and are intelligent. And then last goal is racing to win. And so I think those obviously change when you go to Sea Otter, where all of a sudden the crashing perspective is quite low, right? I'm I'm there to race, I'm there to win. And then you know the tactics are less important when there's more depth in the field. It's kind of at some point your legs. So it's trying to move that needle a little bit to where it works with what type of rider I am.

MATT: Yeah, so what jumps out to me as you're talking about all this preparation is you're obviously talking with your coach, but you're talking in terms of, I know this is what works for me. And you have a lot of experience, like I imagine you raced at Jumbo with guys who are still in the WorldTour, correct? And and now, you know, you're close with Keegan, you're close with, I assume, most of your competitors at the pointy end of these races.

How much variance is there in the preparation period among elite athletes, even those who have an identical calendar in the case of of the Life Time Grand Prix?

ALEXEY: Yeah, I mean I think the WorldTour is a different beast. I always try to tell people that. You gotta find a way to not compare gravel to the WorldTour. Yeah, it's on bikes and we're racing, but mainly what you said at the beginning, the calendar being so different. If you're racing Tour Down Under or Mallorca in January, December's not like I said, it can't be a play around period. It's a No. I mean you can still do it (get drinks with friends) once or twice, but like at that point you're focused on what you're doing. You're probably at a well, you're guarantee you're at a training camp, right? World tour teams have a December and a January training camp. You're going there with focused efforts already fit enough to take in adaptation that you can create, and so I think it's just quite a bit different. In terms of my peers in gravel, I'd say there's a different focus from a lot of guys. There is, and and for most of them, without calling anybody out, I think most people do too much. And that's, you know, me being able to look back on the last five years and kind of see where I've been successful and where I haven't. And I think it just becomes this stress. What is the stress worth that you're causing by training? And so especially early in the year, if you do your best block ever and you fail at Sea Otter, how are you able to rework yourself to be ready for Unbound six weeks later? I think people honestly forget that the build up from what I'm talking about in February is March to May. It's not to April. And so you're preparing for Unbound in January, February, March. And because you can't go from like I talked about with like between Leadville and Chequamegon, you can't just turn the engine around. Sea Otter is on the path to Unbound. There's no break in between, and so if you're able to kind of look at the season like that, you're trying to find a way to be as prepared as you can for Unbound without sacrificing Sea Otter. And so I think that's a different thought process. Last thing you said that I think is just interesting is I really respect my coach because he listens to what I have to say, as well. I mean you probably feel it as a coach. A coach can only be as valuable as the feedback and data that an athlete provides. Like that is--

MATT: Hundred percent.

ALEXEY: You're not living in the same house. You're not in the same place. And that doesn't mean you need to talk every hour or every day. Doesn't mean you need to ask for your workout to be shortened, right? It's more of a constant communication about the things that aren't seen in the data, or the things that are seen in the data and why that made you feel like that. A good example is: I hate 30/30s. Despise them. It doesn't make me a better athlete. It doesn't, it doesn't do anything for me. Maybe it's because I'm at altitude and I grew up in Michigan; Boulder's just a tough place to do 30/30s. But like I can go do tempo and do, you know, 10-second sprints every day and we're getting the same adaptation to what I was doing. So it's trying to find that balance. We've also worked together since 2009. So we've been working together for almost 20 years, and with that you get this ability to just have an understanding of what that person's going through, right? I've known him longer than my girlfriend, and, you know, outside of my brothers and parents, I've known my coach, right? In the beginning it was just like, hey, can you convince Alexey not to do four sports in one day? And as we go through it, he's understood what works for me in a way of mentally as well as physically. And so that's we're able to kind of work together and build those things out so that I have autonomy and belief in what I'm doing, but it's also a mutually beneficial relationship in that he also wants to see me succeed because his success is my success, right? So that's been really special to me, to be able to kind of rework things when they don't work. 'Cause yeah, it's funny, he'll put a workout in sometimes and I'm like, hey, can we go back and do that workout we did this time last year? I just I still I remember it and I loved it.

MATT: Yeah, I just got such a big effect, and even if it's total placebo, you know, a placebo effect's still an effect. And a happy athlete is is usually a highly performing athlete. I mean, for me as a coach, even stuff as simple as the little metrics in TrainingPeaks: 1-10, how hard was this? You know, assign a smiley face to how good you felt. That allows me as I'm sort of combing through the data to look for patterns of, okay, yeah, so she was feeling really good during this block, or he really cracked during this block. What were we doing around that? And how can we fix it or replicate it at another time? So you mentioned Sea Otter being along the build to an Unbound. As you're coming out of this sort of preparation phase, or you're nearing the end of it, outside of racing, are there metrics, or are you qualifying the success of the period in some way? Are you looking at FTP or durability or are you doing various power tests, critical power? How do you gauge the success of that December through March training block?

ALEXEY: I'd say there's probably two things. The first, and they're buzzwords at this point, but like balance and consistency. Like balance between everything else I'm doing in my life and consistency in my training. One of the things I always preach, especially to younger athletes, is one, not all of your days on TrainingPeaks in a in a given week should be green. That probably means you're lying to yourself or cheating it in some way. Obviously that's the goal, but honestly, real life should be getting in the way of that. That's just in my opinion how the world should work. And two, how do you, how are you able to then take what you're gaining from physical success, mentally? And so I think that's what we see for us, like January, February is there's a lot of suffering. There's a lot of workouts not being at the the wattage I'd want to see, or the relationship between heart rate and power that I want to see. There's a lot of notes about, you know, this felt way harder than it should have been. You know, and slowly seeing that 1-10 number change as we go. Living in Boulder, there's a period of time usually where I'll go to Tucson for two weeks when I see the weather's gonna be absolutely heinous or doesn't work. Not actually because I hate riding the cold. I'm actually a big fan of riding the cold. But there's a period I think where you can get in the training camp mindset where you say, okay, I'm here for two weeks. I wanna focus and do everything I can, do this big build, and then come out of it and have like, you know, two days down, relax, feel like there's progress here. And then you're able to see that in the numbers, also. Day to day, the majority of what I'm looking at on my computer is obviously my workout, and my coach's workouts are usually pretty simple. It's hilarious say that today because today's just heinous. But beyond that, I have the workout in my head and then I'm just aiming for a TSS number. You know, so like I might go in and he has a Vo2 workout in there and you know I'm trying to hit 240 TSS and I know going into the last hour, if I've been a little bit off the pedals, it's an easy way to like close the gap a bit. Obviously, like hours and TSS week to week to week is the goal for progress. So that's usually what it looks like. And I think it's trying to balance that with anything else that might be going on.

MATT: On a Vo2 session, you've got a TSS number in mind. Are there specific intervals as well, or are you sort of letting terrain and legs make that decision for you and you're really just aiming to hit that TSS number?

ALEXEY: I think I wouldn't look at the TSS number until after the workout, when there's the last, you know, hour, hour and a half of zone two that you have, and you're like, where have I been? You know, and there's definitely a lot of times that I don't hit that TSS, right? Whether it's because it was calculated off a different number, or I'm at altitude or something that wasn't changed on the back end. But it's an always an idea for me, right? Like I know if I just go ride three hours, for me I should be 110-130 TSS, like I just need to be on the pedals. I need to find a way to make that happen. And you can go, it's so easy on a bike to become efficient at doing three hours without actually progressing or adapting. And I think knowing that is half of it. We don't change my threshold very much. Obviously, I have over a decade in the sport and that helps a lot, but also this idea that we just want to build back up to it. We're not trying to raise it every year. So the last five years, my threshold's been 370. It isn't always that I could go out and whack an hour at 370 in January, but I still want to train to those numbers. I'm just saying, okay, if I'm gonna do a tempo effort, I'm gonna be on a lower end of tempo in January than I am anywhere else, and utilizing those zones that work well because it allows us to then structure and understand things when we move around the country and go to different altitudes. Like there is a consistent baseline of what I know and how things feel like at certain areas, and I'm just moving inside of those zones depending on where I am. So yeah, we do a lot of tempo. I think that's like very normal at this point, but like from my beginning of my beginnings, that's when I know stuff's getting real in training is like all of a sudden I look at a week and I'm like, there's seven hours, eight hours of tempo. Like we're we're back in it, you know. It's just a lot of time for me at like 280 to 320 watts. And then from there we'll kind of build into April, you'll start seeing, like we'll start to do those, we call them over threshold, but you know, like very rarely am I doing 20-minute climbs anymore. So like Sea Otter's a 10-minute climb, so we'll do a lot of like three, four, five minute Vo2 efforts with short recovery and then a lot of threshold that's over threshold. So a lot of threshold that's like aiming for 400-420 at altitude, you know. And so I'm like knowing that's not sustainable, that isn't actually my threshold, but I'm gonna do it for 30 or 40 minutes total, you know, and you're trying to replicate the race you're coming into, and that allows us to kind of have this arc to the season that we feel works. Last thing I wanna say before we have your next question, what I think is interesting of like what we've nailed, we've also not nailed  the Sea Otter to Unbound build, I've nailed it twice in five years, is what it's felt like. Like multiple years, and this is the hard part of being a professional athlete, I can do a workout and go into Sea Otter and know that barring bad luck, I will be in the top five. Like before Sea Otter this year, I was here in Boulder, I had 2x6 minute efforts and I did both of them over 440, and I was like, barring bad luck, I'm fit, I'm ready, I can do this. Unbound is a different beast, right? It's a lot of different different focuses, but I've come in multiple years and just like kind of known that I have to really gauge my effort to finish in the top 20. And that isn't, like to me, that's not being a lesser athlete. That's actually knowing yourself and saying, hey, this is where I'm at right now. We didn't get all the way to where we need to be, and I need to think about this. And that's the same thing for Sea Otter to Unbound and Unbound to Leadville. I've done them really well, I've done them really poorly. And it hasn't been something we've been able to replicate in a way that works perfectly. So, it's still fun to play games and like I know I can go into the race and still race well. I'm just racing with a limiter and that sucks, but it's just the reality of professional racing.

MATT: Yeah, and 19th is better than a DNF, probably, if you try and overdo it. So when you say that you've failed in that transition before on the same build, was it a build you were trying to replicate from a successful year and it just didn't take as well, or is that life TSS creeping in and interrupting the build in in certain ways?

ALEXEY: As much as I don't want to admit it, a lot of it's life TSS. Just like I have become exponentially more busy the further I've gotten in my career. And I love that side of it. I do love everything else I'm doing, and then secondary to that, like it's just gotten harder. The depth has gotten bigger at these races to perform. Unbound and Leadville are different than Sea Otter, Big Sugar, Chequamegon, a Little Sugar. They're just, they're bigger.

And so you have to be more on a razor's edge and more prepared, and I've just felt like we haven't nailed the early transition of it. And I don't know how to explain that. Some of that stuff isn't even in our control. Like this year, like at Unbound, I got Giardia. Like you're just, you want to rebuild, you feel good, but your body is just saying no for two weeks, you know, and you have to listen to it. But I think a lot of it that I've come to is like, for Unbound, we haven't really focused on durability. We don't because with the WorldTour background, endurance is never my struggle. And so it's trying to figure out when and where to put the effort in at Unbound. Unbound now, what we figured out, or the notes I made after this year, is like I have to be able to do more higher end. There's no pacing this race anymore. It is an ultra, it does not race like an ultra. And that's changed over the last five years. The year that I was 5th and like was racing for the for the win, it was self-sustained for the first 80 miles. Like everyone was like not chill, but like, you know.

MATT: Sort of a gentleman's agreement that let's get through the first 40, 50 percent of this race and then see who's got it.

ALEXEY: Yep. And the last two years, I've had none of that. And so I think when I like, what I told my coach was, hey, we need to find a way to, I think it needs a lot more of the threshold that we've been kind of thinking doesn't exist here. Like we always focus a lot on tempo. But one point that's easy to forget is I'm training for this at altitude, which to most people seems valuable. But when you're going down to sea level, there's a there's a big difference and so lactate can easily build up if you're not prepared for that. And so I think doing shorter efforts at a higher intensity are going to help me with that. And then also finding a way to just know how to build the nutrition. And I think I've gotten pretty good at nutrition at Unbound, but that's never gonna be an easy factor. It's just, there's so much that has to be consumed. It's more of a thing you have to do. Like if I'm not taking enough in, the rest of it doesn't matter. And so it's just trying to find that balance point.

MATT: Fueling wise, how much of that work is happening December through March as well? I mean, obviously you're building fitness, but as you also said, there's a big priority that you don't want to get sick when you're doing, you know, your 20-30 hour weeks in preparation for a big season. So supplementation, how much of a role does that play? And and despite the fact that you've been doing this for a number of years now, are you still needing to sort of kick start that gut training and ability to process big amounts of carbohydrates per hour during these races?

ALEXEY: Yeah, I'm not a massive proponent of high carb all the time. I think it's a little bit of the world I grew up in, but also that I think most of us don't have the data to prove that our bodies function better with that all the time. I'm lucky that I don't struggle to eat anything. And so like Sea Otter, I think at 125 grams an hour, Unbound for 10 hours, a little more than that. Like I think it's 128, 130. And the point of that is just like during the race, I'm gonna eat as much as I possibly can because I don't want that to be the inhibiting factor. It'd be nice if I did more testing or took time to do that and be like, I need 110. I don't need 130. But right now where I'm at, I know I can take it in, and I know that's not gonna be the inhibiting factor. During training, I'd argue like during a intense training day, like today I have a bunch of drawn out sprints and maybe I'll be doing 60-70, 80 an hour max. Most days is more like 30-40, and so the goal of that is like twofold: one is the efficiency of like a lot of the races we do, efficiency's valuable. When you miss a bottle or lose something or can't carry everything, it's super important.

MATT: Yeah. And these are sort of quasi-self-supported races. You have feed zones, but there's a couple, you know, in 200 miles.

ALEXEY: Yeah. Yeah, so I think it's just like trying to find that balance. And that's one of the reasons I've liked First Endurance and it has been great for me is there's there's no jealous girlfriend part of it. Like there's a lot of companies that want to push high carb because it sells more product. My biggest thing when talking to First Endurance was the drink mix EFS-PRO is spectacular and that's what I'm gonna use most of for what I'm trying to do. So my biggest worry when I go out training right now in Boulder at 90 degrees is I need to make sure I'm getting electrolytes and salts in. It's not about carbs, it's about making sure I'm  utilizing everything else that my body can be depleted in, and then obviously at the end, making sure you have sugars and carbs when you need, but over the course of the year, there's definitely times we'll kind of do a check, you know, before Unbound, for example, like we'll go out and we'll do a six-hour ride and we'll make sure we've got a good gut. There's also days like last Sunday where I went out and I just had a burger mid-ride. You know, like if I can deal with burger mid-ride, then I can deal with anything. I just like the real world approach, to me that is always important. And finding the line of what's needed. You know, the races we do are so different physically, but also nutritionally, that that's how you get to think about it. Like Sea Otter is different than what you just said, right? We have three feed zones for three laps. We have nine feed zones in 80 miles.

MATT: Yeah. And certainly 120 an hour is no problem at that point. Yeah.

ALEXEY: Then you go to Unbound and you have, like you're saying, you have two, maybe three feed zones in 200 miles. And then, you know, Leadville's a little bit the same, like it's an out and back course, you have four feed zones, and then Chequamegon is like, dude, should I take a bottle? Like it's, you're taking it to take it 'cause you feel weird. I see people around me, they're like, yeah, I had four gels today and I'm like, dude, it was an hour and forty minutes. How did you have four gels?

MATT: And when did you feel like you could take your hands off the bars to eat them? It's interesting to hear you talk about the drink mix, too, because I spoke with Hannah Otto a couple months ago. She loves the Liquid Shots and will just go through a sort of obscene amount of those during races and less of the drink mix. I'm usually in my own training and racing, more on your side. Is it convenience for you, the drink mix?

ALEXEY: Yeah.

MATT: Just always have it in a bottle. You're gonna be drinking anyway, you might as well combine the two if possible.

ALEXEY: That, and I think all of us are different with the way we feel things. I don't wanna put dirty gels in my pocket.

MATT: That's a really underrated aspect of it. I cannot stand it, and then they're always hanging out the back of my pocket. 

ALEXEY: Yeah. So it's a necessity, but I feel like on a given training day I'll do everything I can through bottles and bring like two or three gels max, and I'll eat it when I know I have a trash can near.

MATT: Right, exactly. So the Life Time season, you mentioned this a little bit earlier, similar-ish in terms of the overall length of the season, but wildly different from the World Tour in terms of how these events are are spaced out. And this is one thing that's always interested me is that in years past it's been maybe one a month. Now I feel like it's more infrequent than that, even. It's maybe one every six weeks. How does that change your your in-season training and what does the in-season training look like? I mean, from my perspective, I feel like maybe just this year I finally realized that in-season the training goal should be a minimum effective dose instead of trying to maximize the amount of work I'm doing between race days. But a lot of that was, you know, local crits that are happening every week. You have five, six, seven, eight weeks between events sometimes. Does that allow you to stay a bit more on a traditional three week build, one week deload kind of thing, and time it to the races? Or are you still just really trying to back it off and prioritize freshness throughout the race season?

ALEXEY: Yeah, it's a funny balance for me. I wouldn't say prioritize freshness because as an athlete, I just do well under fatigue. Like for us, going to a race event, we try to be around -20 CTL, which is pretty low for a lot of people. But like a Thursday before a Saturday event is like a four-hour day. Like trying to, you know, put some work in the legs and a little bit of Vo2, a little bit of this, a little bit of that.

You're right that it's gotten harder. just the races are spread out. But it's also, the way the season goes, is it's very spread out between the first three. A little less between Sea Otter and Unbound, but Sea Otter, Unbound, and Leadville is like, you know, mid-April to the end of August. And then from there it starts to get pretty compact. We got a pretty good four-week block between Leadville and Chequamegon, but then it goes really quickly to the end of the season. And so the way my coach and I look at it is like it's this big build up to Unbound, tiny little recovery. Hopefully you don't get Giardia. And then you go up to Leadville, you get another another mid-season break. Like if you're not taking it after Leadville, you're probably making a mistake because then its busy from August to the end of October. And so if you're fine, you just better know that you're fine and you don't need a break to the end of the season. Because I think a lot of people are so focused on those big events on Unbound and Leadville, and they're so focused on doing everything they can to train, and they get to the middle of the season and they realize, now I gotta start doing Vo2. Everything the rest of the year is at sea level, everything the rest of the year is shorter. Like it is all high-end intensity. And as you know, and as any athlete who had trained knows, it's really hard to force yourself to do that work day in, day out when you don't have the mental capacity to do it.

MATT: Right. And certainly when you've been on the gas for four months a and racing already.

ALEXEY: Yeah. And so we look at it as like, take what you need after Leadville and then get on the horse and know that you have to ride that all the way through October. And obviously, you've had all these big blocks and all of a sudden you have back-to-back race weekends for the end of the Grand Prix, which is pretty tough. It's less than a seven-day turnaround because one's on Sunday, one's on Saturday, and I think people pretend like it's just, you know, a normal a normal thing. But those two, it's very easy to go into Big Sugar kinda blown. And so you kinda have to think about the way the Grand Prix has gone. So we look at it in kind of that wave function that I keep saying, but to us it's really important. The highest priority of anything when we start training in December, January is that we make it through the season. Then you can work through everything else. If we're not gonna make it to October, then we are going to train very differently than I'm currently training. Like if I just wanted to go do Unbound and Leadville, my schedule would be drastically different. You know? And that's I think what you have to consider. You have to live in the world we live in. There's a lot of athletes that kind of what you just said, like that misunderstand that hard work makes you better all the time. I think there's this just this thought as athletes that we have to be suffering consistently to be gaining value. And I wholeheartedly can't say loud enough that that's just not true. So it's just trying to find a way to do what you need to do to be good without overdoing it, and there's two examples I have of that. One is like my Unbound block, you won't find me doing 40-hour weeks. Like there's a lot of guys out there doing it, like a lot of guys out there trying to do 40-hour weeks. There's one guy that I know can handle it. One. And then two, I think for a lot of riders, they get motivated for whatever reason at some point in the season, and they want to go to 110% of their capacity mentally and physically. And they forget that if they're doing that for a month, then at some point they're gonna have to go to 80% of their capacity for a month. And whether or not we believe that's how the world works, every athlete I've ever seen, that's how it works. So you will get burned out at some point. And so my coach and myself, and I don't want to take all credit for this 'cause a lot of this is Lucas, but like our thought process is consistently be 99% of the best version of yourself. Leave 1% on the table. And that 1% consistently can be the life TSS we talk about, can be a lack of sleep one night. I don't need to do a double day. I don't need to be doing my five-hour training and then going to a CORE (heat training) suit downstairs. I don't argue that that stuff is valuable. I just think without proper oversight, you're not gonna go in the Tour de France, right? We're racing gravel races in the US and not to demean what we're doing, but that side that I've seen at the WorldTour, there's so much help to guide you through that process of getting the last 1% out of yourself. When you're doing it by yourself or with a coach that's not with you in person, it's really easy to overdo it. And one moment of overdoing it means you lose every bit of value you just gained. If you have to take seven days off, you lose all the threshold or Vo2 gains you just made. And so to us it's not get injured, not get sick, be as fit as we possibly can, and that's the 99% perspective.

MATT: Yep. Without trying to, you know, thread this tiny eye of the needle where you're 100% dialed without any negative repercussions. The the way I've framed it to athletes, and it's most of them who have this idea of you just need to be suffering all the time, I like to say that you can be suffering all the time, but during the season the suffering needs to be I'm dying to be on my bike, but I know that that's not the best thing for me. It should be, you know, mental and emotional. Trying to overcome your own instinct to overtrain should be the suffering during the season.

ALEXEY: And if you have more time, if you're like, I'm just bored, there's so many things you can do with that time, right? I could spend way more time stretching than I do. Like I could have way more time doing my daily core routine than I do. Like there's all the little things that we want to be quantified in numbers, and that's the hard part, I think. But at the end of the day, like that's fair and this is hard, but from a young age, my coach always tried remind me that like power is a relative number to where you are, what you're doing, and who you are at that given moment. And so, like I said, power is very rarely something I'm staring at through anything, through a race or through training. And it's trying to find a way to move forward and progress. But I wanna leave the the data management to him so I can do my job of riding my bike.

MATT: Yep. Yeah, I mean it's not that you're not looking at numbers ever. I mean, it sounds like certainly in training there's a lot of stuff that you're paying attention to, but at the same time, Jonny said that at Leadville, you went with a Garmin 130, you know, it's like a little bigger than your thumb. Yeah, there it is. So is that an intentional decision on your part that, look, there are just way more important things to be paying attention to during something like Leadville, and I know if I've got this big color touch screen I'm gonna be trying to pace it via power instead of just reading and reacting to a race that's so dynamic you can't really boil it down?

ALEXEY: Yeah, I think it's a couple fold. Like one, obviously Leadville's one of the easiest races to not have to see the course, like it's out and back. So that portion's completely taken away. Whereas like Unbound you could miss a corner so easily. Two is kind of the power point, but it's like I've taken it a step further than that. Like multiple years I have raced without power, and to be honest I think I'm going back with it because the last two years with power haven't been very pretty. The only reason to race with power is because we were interested in what it looks like and how I raced.

MATT: And at Leadville it's probably just depressing to see over the course of six, seven hours.

ALEXEY: Or you're like, wow, I'm going way too hard right now. Yeah, I think the idea of like the way we use things to me is very personal. I'm not a big weight-weenie or aerodynamics guy. Like I'm utilizing these for different things. Like I raced this (Garmin 1040) at Sea Otter and that had more climbing the Leadville this year. Like it's not a weight thing.

It's a feeling, I think, of what I'm trying to gain out of that race or from the data at the time. Sea Otter to me was like most of what I had up on the Garmin was like, I knew the course, but where does this exact single track start? Where does this exact climb begin? Where do I need to be in position? It's a constant game of chess of trying to put yourself in the right place. And to me, being able to swipe through and look at data of where we were on course or what we're doing or where the next feed zone is was really easy when I could see it. Who cares if it's 100 grams heavier , probably 200 grams heavier than this. And I think that's something that just is personal, but it's so easy to make those things feel like they're end all be all, right? Whether it's like the heat training or whether it's the maximum amount of carbs you can eat or whether it's like how light your bike can be or how aerodynamic you are. I'm just, I've always tried to be more real world with what we do. And that I think is from my coach, but it's an understanding of power being relative, right? It's an understanding of like your comfortability on the bike. Like most years at Unbound, I haven't raced a skin suit. This year I was laughing, because it was the first year I raced since Pearl Izumi came out with aero socks and I was like, yeah, you know what, sure, I'll use them. And I went through that mud and they were at my ankles at the beginning. Like, well, this is--

MATT: Yes. Not particularly arrow at that point.

ALEXEY: Are they tested with mud? Probably not. I think it's like I get it and I understand it, but it's also that the the real world where we live and the majority of the things we do or we're aiming for, we're talking about of like, this is mechanically six watts faster. There's so many ways to get there. And at the end of the day it's truthfully your feeling. Like if your back's going at the end of Leadville and you're standing up every five minutes to stretch your back.

There's some loss in aerodynamics there, I can tell ya, you know? And so it's like, it's just this balance, it's a push and pull, and for sure I'm a professional bike racer and I have to focus on the pointy end of it. But it's kinda like you're saying, I think for me it's a mental side of what do I, what's the gut check say, and what do I feel like I have to be doing at a given time.

MATT: Absolutely. I mean, I imagine there's sort of a component too of the mental TSS you're talking about. If you're just constantly looking for every little thing you can do to try and cheat the laws of physics, even if it gains you four watts, you know, over the course of a whole season, worrying about every little detail probably adds up as well, and can contribute to some sort of mental burnout by October.

ALEXEY: And in a race I've never felt better than when I just have speed up on the screen. And I'm like, if you're doing a TT or in a breakaway, I just love being like, okay, I'm sitting up and I'm going 21.6 and I'm crouched down, I'm doing 22.4. Like at the end of the day, that that's the only relative number I need to know, is whether I'm moving faster. And that's, you know, I think coaches talk about this a lot, but my coach and I do this constantly, where we'll say, okay, you're gonna go do a 25-minute all-out effort. This one's for speed, this one's for power. And like they are different efforts, drastically different. Like I can probably hit 10 to 15 watts higher if I'm going for power, right? You're standing up in steep sections, you're slowing down, you're just cranking on the bike. And if I'm going for speed, it's probably gonna be a good 10 watts slower or more because I'm aiming at the apex of the corner, I'm stopping pedaling, I'm like allowing my bike to take the right line and losing traction. And like that is such an inherently different part of what I think we want as athletes. We want the highest number all the time. And then yet when you go to racing, speed is the only name of the game.

MATT: Yeah. And that's still the highest number. I think I heard Taylor Phinney a long time ago talk about that in TT's speed is all he had up (on his computer) 'cause he said the winner is not the guy who does the most power or the most watts per kilo. It's the guy whose speed number is the highest. So focus on that.

ALEXEY: Yeah. Yeah, and I don't know like how much you do it with athletes, but like one of the things we constantly do, especially in the like January, February, March, is we'll do hard efforts like that, like a 15 all-out or a 25 all-out, and purposely it's not a 20-minute, right? Because we have this stigma around 20 minutes a lot of times. And like it's not meant to be a test effort, but like the first 3/4 or 2/3 of it, like if it's a 25-minute effort, for 20 minutes, I'm not allowed to look at my power. And I should be able to be within 5-10 watts of my power without looking at my power, right? And that gives you the ability to like, wow, I was aiming for 360. I've done 367. I know these next five minutes how I feel, what I did, and like where I am, right? And that just provides this whole different attitude to your understanding of balance and how your body can do things. And yeah, I think there's there's a lot of the world that is just, yeah, it's based around how many watts in watts per kilograms can you do?

MATT: Yep. Yeah, and if I think about the best efforts I've done on climbs or in races, it almost always is a time where I realize only after the fact I really didn't look at the computer. I mean certainly I pace it, but I pace it mentally instead of down on the computer.

ALEXEY: Yeah. And data's a weird thing. I mean, with ENVE and First Endurance developers, we started a development team this year and my critique of it and will be critique of a lot of kids that age, and it's hard for me to put myself back in my shoes at 21, but is that there's a lot of young athletes that believe they're professional before they're professional. And that could be a ruthless or harsh way of saying that, but my point is that when I was growing up, when Keegan was growing up, we both had very different pathways. But like Keegan went to Cannondale Factory and raced to race World Cups. I went to BMC Development to take my my pathway toward the WorldTour.

You learn by shutting your mouth and looking at the the established guys around you because that's what existed, right? And that's what I'm trying to build at at with ENVE and First Endurance at the MOG Squad is like, how can riders look at me and understand what can work or what they need to do, and then they can add little things back in that they might think works best for them. But like when I first showed up to BMC, you get in an elevator with Philippe Gilbert and Thor Hushovd and you shut your mouth. I have nothing to give them. Nothing.

MATT: Right. Maybe a leading question or two to get talking about something you're curious about, but yeah, let them cook. Yeah.

ALEXEY: Hey, how many carbs do you eat? But I think that that mindset doesn't exist anymore because we have to, in a privateer setting, be a little bit arrogant to prove our worth of why we're selling something. And my biggest pitch is that you shouldn't be selling anything. It should be a a function of who you are. And that's a really tough thing to do and learn at a young age, but that with results comes validation, with validation comes trust, with trust comes the ability to interact and communicate and educate people in a way that provides value toward what they're doing. Right? And that can be as simple as, we'll use nutrition because obviously we're on the First Endurance podcast, but like there's people who tell me like Maurten's the best thing in the world. Dude, you couldn't pay me to eat Maurten gels. It's it's just a personal thing. It's not that I think--it's the same amount of carbs. It's doing the same thing, but I can't get over the texture.

And so what you have to remind people is like why you're doing something and why it works, right? I'll use the ENVE example with Specialized. The Crux is a spectacular bike. Innovative. It will push most gravel bikes to be on that pointy edge when they've been more adventure focused. But all the data is BS. It's tested at 45 km/h. Keegan didn't win Steamboat at 45km/h. 

MATT: Yeah. You're going to Unbound and the mud is four inches deep.

ALEXEY: There is not one amateur on the planet that's gonna ride a gravel race at 45km/h . And so when you take all these points, like that's of course the selling is done by the company and that's fine. But my biggest point to athletes and companies right now is it's education first, is what actually sells product. You don't need these clicks people talk about on the internet if you have a human-to-human connection where someone trusts somebody else. Because that's that's what actually works, right? So all those things to say when I put this example back into the MOG Squad and development is that I want to find a way to provide numbers and data that's valuable to them and their coaches that can move everything in the right direction. Because at that age, you shouldn't be thinking that you're defined by results. You're just trying to progress, right? You shouldn't be thinking you're defined by by numbers. How do you work toward things that are valuable to you that your coach still wants, but that your coach also understands they have to let you as the athlete figure out how to communicate back. Because if the coach is overbearing, the athlete can't talk back. And then you don't get the actual growth you could get if you know how they felt at a race or how they felt in training before the race. Because that's a scary thing to tell your coach that you think they messed up because they made the training. Right? And it's a communication. But I have to sometimes go to Lucas and say, hey, I don't know what happened, but we nailed these workouts for the last three weeks. I don't feel like I gained anything. And that me saying that is more valuable to him than anything else I could do.

MATT: I was just gonna say, for me as a coach, I wanna hear it. Because as you said earlier, you know, your success is my success because I'm the one putting the workouts in. I mean, in general, too, it's a refreshing perspective to think about. I mean, we've talked about pacing a season, essentially. You're talking about pacing a career, as well. And you mentioned in your Leadville video that you feel like that maybe more than anything else, I don't wanna put words in your mouth, but is sort of like your superpower as an elite athlete is your ability to sort of pace both a season and a career in order to keep getting the most out of yourself consistently and avoid these big peaks and valleys.

ALEXEY: Yeah, I think the the world we live in now is based upon we talked about, is based upon numbers, but also this this feeling of validation we're getting, whether that's from results on the race course or from social media or whatever that thing might be for us. And it's hard to find balance, but I think that's for me the most important thing consistently, whether that's month over month, for the season, or year over year for a career, is I've realized that I perform best when I'm happy, and two when I'm not stressed, right? And those are like very simple things to say out loud, that should make sense to most people. But majority of athletes are scared shitless going into events. And I believe that it's twofold. I believe one, they're probably not prepared for it. When I'm saying prepared, I'm not saying training. I'm saying like, how are you only making your bottles at ten o'clock at night? You know? Or two, like, how are you just now talking to your coach about the tactics that you want to have for this race? Like, there's so much time to prepare for an event that isn't on bike. And the happiness portion of it is having people around you, even if that's a life stress, that pull you out of your your zone when things don't go right. Because they're not gonna go right. As an athlete, beyond the professional side of it, it's constant failure. All the time. Like constant failure. And everyone says that, but when you're not in a team sport, it's never-ending failure. Like literally my job is to fail. And that has to be okay.

MATT: Yeah, I mean 20 race days for you, how many wins?

ALEXEY: Right now, one.

MATT: Right. So you know, on pace to, I guess, fail 19 times this year, right? So and the stress component is the same. I think people worry that thinking about how a race might go wrong is stress. I would argue that it makes you less stressed on race day to have thought about and accepted the fact that there are things out of your control and that you're ready to make adjustments as you go.

For for athletes who are self-coached, and then I'll let you go and do these 40 second sprints or whatever you've got on the docket today. For athletes who are self-coached or even people who have a coach but are looking, and like me, finding your take on this stuff refreshing and in in terms of like tuning out a lot of the noise and thinking about the sustainability of a season or a career, what are your top three things maybe that the people should be thinking at?

ALEXEY: One is probably that all of these things that we think are adding value, you could also take one step back and see them as stresses. So weighing food, weighing yourself, sports psych, nutritionist, all these things, they, for different athletes they can be spectacular. But when things don't go right, we sometimes forget to blame the things that we're trying to add on as the cherry on top. And I think that is very indicative for a lot of athletes I see that there's too much focus on perfection, not enough focus on understanding that a lack of perfection is progress toward the goal. 

MATT: Kind of like a when in doubt, simplify, don't add. Try and subtract some things that are stressors.

ALEXEY: Yes. And that's I think it's a hard to stay at 100%. And that's like, it's a hard thing to say. We talked about this a little before, but like I've been very against wearables my whole career. Garmin came out with the Circa, I've been wearing it. Do I think it's validation that I now know how I feel? Yes. But like I haven't woken up every day, I wake up and I write down how long I think I slept and how I thought I slept. And like I have been within half an hour every single time. Now I'm gonna wear it until I think I'm getting sick and see what that looks like and have that idea, right? But this idea and you even said of like, you have people that, you know, they want to get something like that because they wanna be able to see it and track it, but already the life is not in a routine. Right, or as stressful as it is, because they have a kid or you're trying to train for something, or work's stressful. The only data you're gonna get is, it's just gonna tell you you're stressed. That isn't helpful unless there's a way to fix it. And that's the same thing for me with eating food: losing weight or focusing on losing weight is ineffective in you being a better cyclist unless you're doing everything else perfectly. And so again, like I don't fight that these things work at the highest level. I fight that they aren't good at certain ages and levels of people when they're trying to make progress. You know, that was very long one. Yeah. And I think, I always say if you want to try something, turn it on for two months. Like say, hey, I'm gonna try something. Like Boulder this year has been bonkers hot. So I got a hydration monitor. I was like, I think I drink well. I think I drink enough sodium. But like, let me just see how much I'm losing in a ride. 

MATT: Yeah. I think that's a nice mindset too of coming at it from a perspective of curiosity and checking your own interpretation of your training as opposed to outsourcing it to the wearable or outsourcing it to the hydration.

ALEXEY: Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, that's our first thing. So like have a start date, have an end date, and then know again now that you have a baseline how it feels without it. Because that's a really valuable thing. That was very long-winded one. Next two will be shorter. Two is communicate with your coach, right? I think we've talked about this a lot on this podcast, but just consistently, not just the good stuff. Honestly, the good stuff doesn't matter, right? All you can do is whack a smiley face or a one out of ten on TrainingPeaks and that's enough if it if it was good. If it was bad, why was it bad, right? Did you not eat breakfast well? Did you not sleep well? Or did the workout just not fit with you? You know, like that's data points that are valuable. And then I always make a note of like, hey, you know, here's how I felt. This was great, but like, can we also talk about this? Because it's easier than writing it next time we talk. And then last is like, it's a double-edged sword, but like I believe in having life stress. The good and the bad, right? Like knowing it, having it. We talked about the happiness of an athlete. Go out with friends, make dinner, do things that make you happy. There are times, right? Timing is everything in any athletic sport. But it's so important to have that feeling of just freedom away from the failure, right? Because that failure is part of what we do. And anytime you can find a way to progress without having to do work is success. Like that's just free. That's just free. It doesn't cost anything. So may as well take it.

MATT: Yeah, I've got a running joke with my North Project teammates this year that it just so happens, my wife and I love to go watch live music. I've won, I think, three races this year the day after being out till two or three at a concert. And it's just sort of like you balance the loss of sleep versus I know I'm gonna be happy tomorrow 'cause I had a great night out with my wife and now I'm gonna go race, like life is good.

ALEXEY: Happy. Yeah, 100%.

MATT: This has all been super valuable. Thank you so much for your time. It's a refreshing perspective, I think, in an increasingly data-centric world where people are outsourcing a lot of what they should be feeling to to devices and numbers. So it's great to talk to you and and good luck the rest of the way.

ALEXEY: Thanks a lot, Matt. I think as someone told me the other day, I think I'm just an old man staring at the clouds, but that's okay.

MATT: We could all be use a little bit more of that in our lives, so I appreciate it. Take care.