The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast by CTS
Coach Adam Pulford delivers actionable training advice and answers your questions in short weekly episodes for time-crunched cyclists looking to improve their cycling performance. The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast (formerly The TrainRight Podcast) is brought to you by the team at CTS - the leading endurance coaching company since 2000. Coach Adam pulls from over a decade of coaching experience and the collective knowledge of over 50+ CTS Coaches to help you cut throught the noise of training information and implement proven training strategies that’ll take your performance to the next level.
The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast by CTS
Caroline Mani on Triumphs, Tragedies, and Lessons from a Life in Cycling (#217)
Cycling champion Caroline Manning joins us for an inspiring conversation about her journey from teenage cyclocross star to an incredible professional career marked by five French National Championships and a silver medal at World Championships. Caroline opens up about the personal battles she faced during her peak years, including the trials of an abusive marriage, and how she managed to leverage these challenges into a competitive edge, and the personal and professional prices she paid later.
Host Adam Pulford and Caroline discuss the burnout and pressure of maintaining high performance, compounded by age's inevitable effects on drive and passion. As she shifts focus from racing victories to personal growth and coaching, Caroline shares invaluable insights on longevity in sports. The concept of chronic adaptation allows seasoned athletes to maintain their edge with reduced training loads, emphasizing the power of consistency and self-awareness in training preferences. Caroline highlights the need for moderation, challenging the “all or nothing” mentality that often leads to burnout. Her story is a beacon for those seeking to redefine success and find fulfillment as we mature in sport.
Key topics in this episode:
- Caroline's early progression to elite cycling
- Pros and cons of fueling athletic performance with personal pain
- Redefining the role of training and competition in life
- Redefining what "success" looks like
Guest
Caroline Mani began competing at age 6, started as a competitive cyclist at 15, and has been racing every since. She won the French Cyclocross National Championships five times and earned a silver medal at the 2016 UCI Cyclocross World Championships. After a period of personal and professional hardship, Caroline rediscovered her joy for competition, cycling, and coaching and she is now a CTS Cycling Coach, manager of the Groove Offroad Racing Team, and founder of the race support company Velomafia.
Links
- Caroline's Socials
- IG: https://www.instagram.com/carolinemani1987/
- X: https://x.com/carolinemani
- FB: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100084694856253
- Resources:
- Groove Auto: https://www.grooveauto.com/
- VeloMafia: https://www.instagram.com/velomafiallc/
- CTS: https://trainright.com/coaches/caroline-mani/
Host
Adam Pulford has been a CTS Coach for more nearly two decades and holds a B.S. in Exercise Physiology. He's participated in and coached hundreds of athletes for endurance events all around the world.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or on your favorite podcast platform
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From the team at CTS. This is the Time Crunch Cyclist podcast, our show dedicated to answering your training questions and providing actionable advice to help you improve your performance, even if you're strapped for time. I'm your host, coach Adam Pulford, and I'm one of the over 50 professional coaches who make up the team at CTS. In each episode, I draw on our team's collective knowledge, other coaches and experts in the field to provide you with the practical ways to get the most out of your training and ultimately become the best cyclist that you can be. Now on to our show. Now on to our show. Welcome back, time Crunch fans. I'm your host, coach Adam Pulford.
Speaker 1:If you're listening to this podcast, you're likely an athlete. Some of you are new to the sport of cycling, while some of you have been athletes your whole life, picking up the sport of cycling later on in life. Still, some of you have been riding and racing since you were juniors and have seen the sport, as well as your participation in sport, change over time. My guest today is much like the latter. Caroline Manning is five-time Cyclocross French national champion, silver medalist at the 2016 Cyclocross World Championships, and she's the 2021 and 2022 USCX Series Champion for the Elite Women. She also has multiple podiums, anything from cyclocross to mountain biking on the World Cup level, and she's had a long, lustrous career.
Speaker 1:She had her ups and downs, though, in the sport as well as life, and how one person navigates their ups and downs is unique to themselves. However, I'm a firm believer that sharing our stories together can help us navigate similar challenges together. Everyone listening here is not a world-class athlete like Caroline, but that doesn't matter, because the story of redefining oneself is something that can resonate with just about anybody. Plus, you'll find Caroline is just as human as yourself. I suppose I should just introduce her at this point. So, caroline, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Hi Adam Hi everybody. I'm good.
Speaker 1:I just saw you at Charm City this past weekend and you know the long drive back is gruesome as you're racing and recovering weekend to weekend.
Speaker 2:So how are you feeling? Do you want the honest opinion? I'm a wreck, so I'm like damn. I have to travel again tomorrow. Lucky enough, I went home for a few days but I am not recovered. But it's all good, we're going to do it again this weekend.
Speaker 1:Waterloo this weekend.
Speaker 2:Yep. Recovery is not a word that I have in my vocabulary these days, so it's all good, fair enough, fair enough.
Speaker 1:Well, before we kind of get into that and get into why recovery is lacking in your life these days too, I want to frame this conversation up a little bit more by because we're going to talk about how you redefine yourself in sport. Okay, with you and the audience. Sure, you know they can look you up. I just read a lot of your results. But give us the CliffsNotes version of how you started competing at a young age, like what you were doing because it wasn't always just a bicycle to where you're at now. Kind of rip through a little bit and we'll then kind of like go into how you navigated it, but then also where you're at right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, pretty simple. I think a lot of people don't know that, but I didn't start riding bike pretty early? I was 17 years old. I actually was competing tennis, I actually did ballet, almost got paralyzed when I was 15 years old and as a recovery, people were like hey, you should ride a bike. So I just got on a bike and ended up being good at it. I was like you know what, I'll do something. I'm good at it. That sounds like a good plan. I never thought, hey, I want to be a bike racer. And just life happened. I ended up on the bike. Ended up on the bike and then what?
Speaker 1:20 something years later, I'm still racing. So that's a short recap. Yeah, that's a short recap. Well, let's, let's start a little bit of the cycling journey, journey from when you're winning a lot of your national championships, uh, both in cyclocross and ripping on the mountain bike too. And I think, too, that motocross background I mean, I think you were. You started racing in motocross when you were like six, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so pretty young, yep, I, um, I compete since I'm six. It doesn't matter what I do. It's like it seems like I like to uh, either have a number or you know a start time and finish time, pretty much Exactly no-transcript. Lot of a good years, I think, like the best year we're gonna say it's 16 because I got metal and. But I also had 2009 where I'm you, 23, and leaning the world cup, you know, in mountain bike there's a lot of good years, but yes, if you think, if you say hey, one year for caroline is 2016. But actually it's funny because a lot of people don't know that it was probably the worst time of my life.
Speaker 2:In some ways, I used what I was struggling in my personal life to be strong on the bike. I was in a really abusive marriage at that time and I was able to maintain. I got into the marriage fast and then I got out of marriage not that fast, let's put it that way. So I think I was in transition where, if I could go back in time the last few years, the years after 2016 would have been different, because I was mentally and physically drained. So I think I was using a lot of personal stuff to be motivated. And when I started racing a bike, I was like I want to be national champion, that was one of my goals. And then I got national champion. I was like well, I want a European championship podium and I want world championship podium. So you're like keep going and going and you keep adding goals. And I accomplished my goal. Well, I failed by 12 second but uh, second place is not too bad yeah, yeah, no for sure.
Speaker 1:and I think, um with athletes too, because they I didn't know the exact timeline of of some of that craziness, but I think my observation of working with athletes is, when you're going good, it's like that flow mode Everything's in sync, everything's like ripping and going. Other times it's like things can be, you can be winning, and they look like they're going good, but oftentimes that is driven by something darker, right, like life is. Life is crazy. So I'm going to, I'm going to be kind of that athlete mode of. I'm going to overcome, I'm going to crush that challenge. I'm going to use that pain to drive me forward. So that was like the 2016 ish timeframe for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I think you know it's. If you think about, like all professional athletes, like high level, we all I always say we all messed up in the head in some ways because we use, we use some like really dark thing to like get the strengths out of it, to like I think a lot of people who are not athletic they're just like if there is a hard time, they're just gonna, you know, settle, sit with it and as an athlete you don't have a choice. You can't just go go through it the same way. You have to be like what can I do? How can I use that? Because it is really painful to have bad days and I always said to all my athletes it's like, hey, you're going to have more bad days and good days. Like there's just few athletes in the world where they can say, hey, I have more good days and bad days. But I always say, if you have good bad days, you also get to enjoy the good one better, because you actually know how difficult those bad days can be. But yeah, 16, 16 was rough.
Speaker 2:I met my ex-wife in like eight of 15, where I was starting to be really fast and then focusing on like waltz and then you know, bad marriage, abuse, cops involved, all the things that you can't not you know when you're not in there. 10 years ago I was like gosh. That does not happen to any athlete. There's no things like that. This is not a abuse, it's just like tv and then other people. This is not my circle circle. That cannot be a thing. But yes, that that was a thing and for a long time I did not talk about it. And you know, eight years later, I'm willing to share, because I'm sure there's other people who are in a situation like I was and hopefully they get more help than I did, because I just hide and then I use it to be faster on the bike and then I completely crashed after that pretty much, and lost my contract because of behavior and not being myself. So, yes, good time and bad time came right after.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I think that's super important and there's certainly applicability to both you know athlete life and non-athlete life too, because even if you were uh, you know continued winning, I would say at some point, like that pain, the, the, what drove you, it's going to end in a bad way and, like you said, it ended up being you know kind of bad decisions at all. You know, it all kind of came crashing down right yeah, and we're not machine.
Speaker 2:I think like the problem is, like a lot of people like, ah, those athletes, they're machine. We're humans. At the end we have the same life than everybody else. It's just like we compete and like I always joke and say, hey, we all like bikes and the only difference is like I may have more resume if you google my name on the wikipedia, but it's pretty much the same. We all do the same things that we want to to ride a bike. It's just different goals, different perspective, but we all humans, so we have to remember that yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it, and I think too, it's like the athlete.
Speaker 1:We typically will um, grab the bull by the horns, overcome things, try to push through, and I gone through some shit in my life too and I've tried that. Uh, it didn't work out too well, and for me it was. I don't know if this was like similar to you as well, but it was like I almost had to let go of that let go of like the athlete way for a while before it could like come back to me because there was just like stuff that I was trying to navigate that I couldn't push through, I couldn't like force it Right, and you, you learn to let go in that way and you're like whoa, the world's changing and it's a very. For me it was just a very different athlete context. I don't know if it was similar like that when you were just like at the bottom of the barrel for yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's just like you have to. You have to sit with everything for a moment and I think, like the issue is in my case case you tell me I can't do something, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do it whatever.
Speaker 2:I can't tell you like, like you're wrong. So I'm always saying we're kind of stupid and stubborn at the same time because we, we just destroy her body in some ways because, like that mental, it's like this mental uh, pushing so hard and then like not feeling and not, you know, getting the help you need, and having to like focus on what's you know the base, the problem, and it's just cover it up. So, like cycling, feel like it's been a cover-up for a long time and it has changed. Like it used to be my escape. It's still an escape, we all have jobs and things and it's like what you want to do, but it's a different escape. So I'm really defining that in a different ways and like living life and using cycling in a different way that it used to be like eight years ago, and trying to be a little less exhausting. That's the goal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it's super healthy. It's super healthy. I had a friend that used to say you know, you're just hiding behind the bars. You know what I mean. You're putting in the miles, you're just going for it, you're hiding.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the bars are getting narrower, so you can't hide as much. You can't hide as much.
Speaker 1:That's so true. So let's, let's talk about that. Like when you started to have bad seasons right, you could like you were using the bike to kind of hide behind, but all of a sudden, your performance started to plummet mentally. What started to shift? Like, like. How did you navigate through that?
Speaker 2:I'm not sure. I sometimes I wonder how I ended up like staying in the sport, like there's a lot of years I was like I'm done, I can't do this anymore. I remember going up this hill and jingle cross, one of the famous cypher ghost race. I had a panic attack so I just on the ground sitting on my knees not able to breathe, because life was too much like the result, the performance, sacrifice. I was just I can't do this anymore.
Speaker 2:So it's so weird how, in the moment, you just want to quit, you want to be done, and then just keep going and, like you know, wait until you get out of the hole. It's just like, I think, one of the things that I for a long time I was never quitting. I would just push through anything and sometimes it's okay to say stop, like there's no shame or weakness, to be like that's it, like this is not bringing me joy, this is not satisfying. I have to do something different or I have to pause. And I think if I could circle back, I would probably change a lot of things, because I went through a lot of bad races, bad season and then struggle with teams and then without contract, but I kept going.
Speaker 2:Honestly, I will have to reflect a little more, because I still tried to figure out why and how I did through like keep going after that many years. But I could see that now it's changing. For example, this weekend I got third at Charm City and then the next day I'm like I can't do this. My ankle is suffering, my foot is bad, I suffer through Saturday and I'm like I can't do this. My body is not handling. I need to say stop. I would have never done that eight years ago. So I'm learning different things and, um, hopefully growing in some ways.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I was going to bring that up. I was like you go from the podium to to DNF at charm, um. So basically, and I I don't think I would have seen that, you know, back in the 2016 years, but you mentioned your ankle what else went into the decision of like this ain't worth it today?
Speaker 2:I don't know, it's just like I I hate to say that because it sounds like kind of you know, that fire did you have on in you when you're like 25 and then when you're 38 it doesn't ignite as quick or stay as long as it used to be. So there's a lot of things I mean. I always say people are like are you pro? I'm like dude, I have so many jobs I have to count when people are asking me how many jobs I have and I'm like cycling is priority number six, probably Pretty close to that. And you think about okay, I have a next race next weekend and then I have to go to work on Monday and if I endure more, I could probably not afford the bill in the US because if I need to have surgery or something like that, so you think about all the consequences of what's going to happen if I keep going.
Speaker 2:I mean, in 14, I raced pretty much six weeks with a molded cast on my bike because I was like I have to race, figure it out. So the doc molded a cast for me to be able to race. I'm not doing this these days. I'm just like, hey, I want my body, I don't want to not walk in five years. So I'm trying to be a little better. I want to say I'm being smarter, but I don't know, this is just me trying to convince myself I'm being smarter. But the buddy in the mind said Caroline, this is it.
Speaker 1:Go home. The risk calculation is a lot different than our latter thirties and forties and fifties and sixties and seventies, right, and in that slides over time, and I think for our listeners who not know you as much as I do, another thing to mention is you're no longer just the professional bike racer anymore. Let's talk about your jobs right now, cause you are a CTS coach bike racer, and then you also have tell us what else you're involved in.
Speaker 2:So I have full-time jobs. So I'm actually U S sales activation manager for panel man studio. Who's a cycling clothes from Denmark? I also coach with CTS. That's kind of my passion. Love job. You know, we always have a job that we really love. So I have, I believe, seven athletes and, uh, we'll take more, take more, but just like it's one of the jobs I love. And then I also. So I do race professionally. I also run the team group of racing, so I'm the team manager of the team and on top of that, this year I launched this project called velomafia, which is actually race support for anyone. So so you can sign up at Cyclocross races and I'm hoping that's going to pick up for their discipline. So, any people, any teams, you just come and then we give you kind of like a little taste of the pro support. So, yes, I am, I did 48 hours in one day these days.
Speaker 1:That's it and Caroline like soft plug for the Villa Mafia. By the way, any Cyclocross racers out there that are looking for some support, you can. We'll have Caroline's contact info on our landing pages. You can look her up on social media, give her a DM there and connect with her and she'll be at the big races. But I think it's super important to realize that anybody who's done a big race if you've gone solo and one time and then you had support the next time whether it's your spouse or friends at aid stations or a mechanic or something like that you come to a CTS, a bucket list event, you get that, that pro support. You realize like how, how much stress that takes away from you and you can just ride and race your bike. When you're doing that and riding and racing your bike, like Caroline is talking about, I've done that for years and I am so blown out at the end of those things I just want to crawl into a hole and die.
Speaker 2:Pretty much, but I mean, this is my way to give back in some ways. So like to circle back of like, hey, this is redefining me. And then the sport, and that's like also like I hate. Like I'm having some resentment these days about the, the age limitation, you know. It's like, oh, you're too old to do this. And, bob, I'm like, go to hell, do whatever you want, you want. It's like it's not because you're 45, 55 or 65 that you shouldn't try the cycle course race like. It's like you, you should be your own limitation. You shouldn't be like, hey, you know what, because you that age, we're not giving, giving you a chance. And I see it myself like I'm not getting a contract with anyone because they're like, okay, our online is 38, this is it, so it's.
Speaker 2:I'm having a little bit of resentment about the diva, where it's like, hey, you have to be 22 years old to get a ride. And I'm like, well, I've been on circuit longer, those kids have been alive and it's still there. So I want to show that people can be welcome and it doesn't matter your age, doesn't matter your discipline, and we all love the sport of cycling. And my recap is like no-transcript, but that was one of my main goals for the last 20 years and I hope everybody can get something out of it and do what you want to do. Nobody should tell you what you have to do and can't do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, completely agree. And what's interesting, just to like observe you and kind of where you're at in the sport right now is like you're at this intersection. Where you're at in the sport right now is like you're at this intersection where I, I, you're feeling some of the age stuff, because it's real, like you know it, the performance will go down due to age. But there I've done podcasts too about all this with Joe Friel and others about how we can mitigate the loss right Over time by staying active, doing good training, getting good sleep and all this kind of stuff. However, with with you, caroline, it's like you're also at this point where you want to, you want to give back and and due to some other like calculations and some other jobs and this kind of stuff, it's like you're giving back and still racing at the same time. I'd say, based on seeing you race and also looking at your results so far this year, it's like if you, if you actually wanted to and if you have the support, you could take away some of those other job duties, not make as much money, right, but then that would go into the risk calculation and you'd still be at the top of your game, not as much as some of the years in the past, but like it's still there. So on that trajectory is like you're at this awesome intersection right now, where you are giving back, you still have the performance. You're walking the walk, talking the talk.
Speaker 1:It's super fun to see and I think it's also inspiring to a lot of our athletes who are out there, a lot of athletes who are listening to be like you know what I can do. This and this. You know elite athlete who's gone through some shit just like me. You know what she's out there doing. I'm going to do it, even though I'm 40 or whatever the case is. So it's pretty cool to see and I just want to mention that.
Speaker 2:I appreciate it. Well, I hope I inspire people. It's like, hey, that we joke about the team and it's like, hey, you have to be mastered to be part of it. But that's pretty much it. If you're over 33, you can be part of my team under 33. You can't too young, but you learn so much.
Speaker 2:I mean, the thing is, you know, I wish I had that maturity of like knowledge and all the things I would learn and then still the. I mean, I still have power and, yeah, sometime. I'm amazed that I'm still like up front at the race because I don't have time to train, but at the same time, I train for so long that I still have, you know, memories and I optimize. It's all about you optimize, like when you get older and you have a responsibility, job, kids, whatever is going on. And it's what I tell my athletes all the time is like, hey, there's no way you're going to be fully compliant to your training because life gets in the way, and then we just have to adapt. And there is this time in life where it's like, oh, I don't have the energy or there's things going on, whatever, so, but you learn to be better adapting and then optimize your time and also like smarter.
Speaker 2:Like I know I can't. There's things I can't do anymore. Like you know, I lose a lot of my. I lose a lot of my punch. So it's like I have to work on that because it's just natural. Your body is not reacting the same way. I used to work on that because it's just natural, your body is not reacting the same way. I used to do two days of intervals back and back and I told my coach I can't do this anymore. I need a day between. So I'm also learning so much as a coach to be like okay, I'm coaching people who are 65. I can't just think about. This is how we do things and the body is changing. Everything is changing in life and you just have to adapt. The only way you can survive in life is adapting anyway, and that's what we do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I completely agree with that. So how, like at this point, at age 38, how are you?
Speaker 2:I'm 37 and a half and three quarter or something like that.
Speaker 1:I've only seen you since 38.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're right, god damn it.
Speaker 1:So how do you, how do you redefine success right now for yourself, your athlete self, your coaching self, your professional self? You can kind of go with it whatever direction. It's probably multifaceted as well. So how do you redefine success for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so success is different. Back in the day, we'd be like, oh, I have to win these races and I have to be, you know, top 10 at the ranking. I'm like, oh, damn, I'm 52 at the ranking, going backwards, I joke about it. But it's like, oh, it's like it takes a moment to digest, like I think you saw my post a couple weeks ago and I finished and I just started crying, like emotional crying, not a bad crying. But be like wow, this is not what it used to be.
Speaker 2:I had to go so hard to get close to that podium in a good way, but it's like I kind of lost a part of me and I had to like, okay, this is the new me, this is what's going to happen. So now a satisfaction is like okay, I had a good, I pushed myself as hard as possible, I was close to like podium with all those international ladies and I'm not like planning to go to Europe and win national. And sometimes I have to remind myself because it's it's really easy to fall back and like, oh, this is what I used to do, this is who I used to be, and you're like, oh, all done, this is, this is not a reality Check, check the box of like hey, I have to go to work on Monday and all this thing. So sometimes you get to like, oh no, this is not what I do anymore. Like you know, learn anything.
Speaker 2:I'm always so happy if someone is like, hey, what do you think of this? The tire choice, the like line in the course and that project I'm launching, hanging out with people who are new to the sport, getting the support, seeing athletes, like one of my athletes who is in her 50s and then she did her first gravel race and now she's all hooked up and she's having a blast, like things like that just give me other satisfaction. And yes, I do like to win still, um, and I will try to win this year, but if I don't, that's okay too. Like five years ago, like uh-uh. If I don't win, if I'm not on a podium, that's not acceptable and and I was on a podium every single time. But I am not as hurt and my ego is a little less big than it used to be. Let's put it that way. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I mean, as an elite athlete, that ego has to be robust at times to handle everything that goes on with the wins, losses, the criticisms and and uh, what we do over time. But I think too, as we age, that fulfillment in the sport changes right, because the ability, uh, declines a little bit. That punch is usually the thing that goes first. We're slower on hill climbs, we're, we're covering our you know normal routes less miles per hour than we used to. You know, and I would say, you know to, to my younger athletes, I don't go there with them all the time, but I do tell them. In fact, I just had a conversation with one of my U23s and I said you're not going to be an elite athlete your whole life and I go. Hopefully, the stuff that we learn through bike racing, the wins and losses, the ups and downs, hopefully we learn how to translate that to life. Hopefully we learn how to work in the high-performance environment and bring that to business. So I plant those seeds along the way.
Speaker 2:That's really smart. No-transcript, it's the same concept. If you race, yeah, there's maybe a little more sacrifice. If you want to be top podium at the World Cup or if you want to be, you know, top three at a master race, whatever, there's different level but at the same time, the values are there. If you can take those and take it to work, and take it to life and how you can interact with people, I think it's just helps you to be a better human and hopefully sports is teaching a lot of uh, younger kids how to like survive in life, because life is hard anyway. It doesn't get any better. You know, when people like I gets better, I'm like no, sorry the bullshit, excuse my french, but it's like this is not true, you're just more equipped to deal with it yeah it's just like you get better at dealing with all the crap because, like 10 years ago, you're like, oh, I can't, I can't handle this.
Speaker 2:and you've, you've gone through so much that you're just like, oh, whatever, this is nothing, it's a piece of cake. So we just, we just learn.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the, the, the human algorithm improves hopefully over time.
Speaker 2:I hope so, Otherwise we're failing. I mean a lot of people. A lot of people don't, unfortunately, but hopefully we're on the case where we're getting better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and athletes, I think that's just it. It's like people who are driven to athleticism and competing they're, they're attracted to that. And so to my age groupers and my master's athletes, it's also a similar message where I tell I do tell them, you know, you can be an athlete your whole life. I mean, that's, what's cool about the sport is you can start doing it at age six and you can keep on doing it to 106. It's just like the participation in the level that changes. And, by the way, success is not linear in this game.
Speaker 2:It's ziggy and zaggy, it's up and down, and I mean success is like how do you like everybody has you can like be last at the bike and that still can be a success. There's no like it's not because you're not on the podium and you're not winning, that it's not a success. And that's where it's crucial for people to know that Not everybody can win and thank God. But it's like, have your own success, like measure your own success. If finishing in the same lap is a success or you know doing this race and you never done it, doesn't matter what it is. Have pride and just be, be proud of yourself and it's just own your own success. Don't tell anyone, like nobody should tell you hey, this is, that was not a success. You're the only judge anyway.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we're our own worst judge. I think in that way and so like and especially to that point I, when I find myself with Leadville, for example, a lot of um masters and age groupers come to me. For that I almost take it like a two year approach where it's like, okay, let's just do the first one to get through it, cause they come with all these performance goals and things like this. I'm like let's just do the first one, get through it. Second one if you still want to do it again and go for the big belt buckle, now we can start to develop.
Speaker 1:You know craft, that performance goal and you know again, kind of swinging back to the master's athlete is we take that same thing from elite athletics and development and we translate it to the master's athlete. It still applies, but I tell them instead of you won't be an elite athlete forever. I tell them, your peak form won't last forever. And for the master athlete it zigs and zags more about like family and work demands rather than like the age decay or um the team contract or something like that. But even more so for that master's athletes like stay consistent. Just like you said before, caroline, is because when the busy life becomes less busy, we can pick it back up more quickly, like the fitness doesn't decay as much, and we can kick it back up. Anybody who's going through some shit in life, whether it is just like busy family, busy work, or my life, is melting down. Try to stay consistent with that sport because it will help get you through and by the time you can pick it back up, you'll be more fit and it'll speak back up.
Speaker 2:It's way harder when you stop for so long. Every year I'm like, yeah, I'm going to take a little break, and I always regret it. So that's like, don't stop too long. You never, you know never going to get out.
Speaker 1:Exactly Two weeks off and quit. That's what we always say, yeah pretty much. Yeah, and I mean the reason. That's a joke for everybody out there. It's like you take a week off. It's healthy. You start riding again the second week and then you start to rekindle and that's a good recovered process. If you take two weeks off, the little voice in your head starts to be like do I need to?
Speaker 2:really keep doing this. I have a. I remember you're going to laugh, but Katie Compton, years back in the day, years ago. She's like Caroline, if you take one day off to multiply by three and I was like, hold on, I just took three weeks off. That doesn't mean I'm going to have that many weeks before I get back to where I was. She's like, yeah, and I was like, damn, you killed me, katie, so I'm traumatized from it, but still.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Katie's a hell of a bike racer and yeah, the elite athletics have that mentality, but you know.
Speaker 2:I don't know. I'm good off the couch too. A lot of people think that the athletes are not lazy, but I'm like I can be a good lazy person too. I would love a couch day right now. I'm still on couch day.
Speaker 1:You should take a couch day. Hang on the couch. Right now we can pause this episode and just go lay on the couch.
Speaker 2:It's right here.
Speaker 1:You make a good point there, because that also plays into um how priorities shift with reality, the fact that you've been racing something since age six and the fact that you've been racing your bicycle since age 15, I've been, I've been training and racing myself for like 20 years and I do pretty good at low CTLs. I do pretty good with a week or two off. I just do a couple of hard efforts that heart rate's jacked and my perceived effort's higher, but I can still be as good as I once was for a day.
Speaker 2:I tell you that secret. But all my athletes have bigger numbers on training picks than me.
Speaker 1:But the reason I bring it up is not to toot our own horns here. It is the reality of what I would say is the real chronic adaptation to endurance sport, not just chronic training load. But if you've been doing this for a long time, you can take two weeks off and not have to quit. You can take two weeks off and become pretty darn fresh because your other life stresses and stuff are so high. It's like you just need to do less. But all the training that you've been doing for years and years and years and for those athletes who I mentioned listening to this podcast that have been doing it for years and years and years, you probably don't have to do high hours all the time. You can take it down for a month or two or a season, come back and you're not going to lose much because of that chronic adaptation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, absolutely I think it's. It's kind of I had um, lauren last year was like we had same coach Like what the hell? You're training way less than I am and still beat me. I was like well, I have. And then jim was trying to tell her it's like caroline has 20 years of you know, you accumulate all those hours in training.
Speaker 2:I also never been to be fully transparent. I've never been someone who over trained. I like the competitive aspect more than training. I'm not. You know some people.
Speaker 2:There's two different, two different, two different types of athletes. There's the one who love the training parts and they also love racing. I would put a number on my back every day over training. So there's two different types of athletes and I think it's important to like determine who you are and what to do. And also, unfortunately, I wasn't able to get into cycling to learn how to just love cycling. I just went full gas my first year, like six months later I'm already part of the French team, racing like World Cup and European Championships. So now I'm like discovering how to love bikes, like going for a coffee ride with my friends and then loving cycling, but just itself, without hey, I'm putting a number in my back and I'm just going to taste the blood in my mouth every weekend.
Speaker 2:So different approach, but, yeah, consistency. And then you can be a little more lazy later on because you've done all those things and it just never goes away completely. Yes, it takes a little bit of time to get back to it, but also you have that maturity and knowledge and you know how to rectify. I always say, okay, I'm going to rectify the situation. We have three weeks and it's like boom, let's do it. When you're younger, it takes months for you to be at the level you want to be. When you get older, then you have that knowledge and you know what to do and what to buddy react to, and then usually that works pretty well. I mean, it may stop at some point, but so far so good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one of my final points here to bring out and you just mentioned it is the all or nothing mentality, and I see that in elite sport. I see that in high performers, away from any you know, athletic sort of competition. But it's the CEOs, the doctors, the ER nurses, you know these people who have this high performance mentality and all or nothing. It's not the healthiest mindset, especially when you apply it to everything in life. I think that there's a time and place for it, especially when you need performance. That's fine. But in this story that we're kind of talking about your story and a lot of other people's stories where it's okay to go for a coffee ride, you don't need to pin up and race it.
Speaker 2:Motivation is what you learn, cause the thing is, yes, I, the all in and out is destroying you in some ways, and I think like if I could go back, I would find a little more moderation in my life. Because showing up, you know, three weeks before national, going to see my friend and say, hey, we have to lose three kilo because I need to win national, and I just wasn't consistent enough, like that extremity, like being streamed, that way I pay the price now, like, physically, my body is not handling things. So what I could say is like the younger to circle back to the younger generation be a little more moderate, like be consistent but don't be the. Moderation could be a good way to stay in a sport too. I think I'm one of the exception where it's like, okay, I went full gas, I went through the arm and stay in a sport for that long. But if you want to stay for that long, I think including a little bit of moderation is the key so you don't get completely burnt.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's it, because, I mentioned before, it's a lifelong sport and that's what's so unique, I think, about cycling in this culture is we can get into it. We just start learning with training wheels, we can race up to the elite level and you can keep on doing it have coffee rides until the sun sets right.
Speaker 2:It's a sport where the age is like no, I mean, at some point I had with my athlete I had a 14 years old to 76 years old, so that tells you, like, how long of a road you have. So I think, like anyone who's scared about whatever age they are, they shouldn't be.
Speaker 1:Caroline, final question to you what brings you joy from a bicycle? Like what one thing, two things name as many things as you want what still brings you joy when you think about riding your bike?
Speaker 2:I like the. I mean it's kind of hard to. There's a lot of things, but uh, exploring you know it's like you can't, there's a lot of things you can't explore. You can't drive in a lot of things you can't explore. You can't drive in a lot of places. You can't explore so much on the bike and then see things that you wouldn't see.
Speaker 2:And then on the racing aspect, I like to be able to escape, like always, joke and say, well, I mean, this is the only time my brain shut up for 50 minutes. That's what I love about racing, because I'm like in my bubble and it's like me, just me, in this entire world, because it's like the world stopped for like 50 minutes and I get to do what I love for 50 minutes, hopefully if I'm not too behind the the leaders and just have a good time and do what I love. And still, you know, travel to places, meet awesome people. There's such a good community that I don't see myself getting out of it. Sometimes I thought I was like, hey, I want to be done, I don't want to work in the industry and I'm full on in. So I just love the sport period and sometimes hate it too, but mostly love it, otherwise I wouldn't be here 20 years later.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, there's, there's always that to every aspect of life. And so, yeah, I think that redefining a journey that you're on, the redefining journey that I think many people are on, it's not easy, you know, but I do think, with sharing our stories, sharing our our, our wins and our losses and how we did it, it's really applicable and really helpful for all of us, kind of like going through it together. We're talking about it in the lens of an athlete and I think so many people who are athletes can resonate with that and we can, we can use some of those like the athlete things to push through when we can. We learned some of the human things where we just need to kind of sit still and and let it be for a while, even though our athlete self really hates doing that. Uh, but hopefully, with Caroline's story and the stuff that she shared, hopefully it inspires a lot of people. So, caroline, it's been amazing having you on the show. Thank you for taking time out of your non-recovery lifestyle right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's very good. It's hard to go to work, but I'd be careful. I say, hey, sometimes guys just feel it. Whatever you have to feel, I had a therapist tell me once just feel it. It's okay to feel whatever it is. So thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, well, no, for sure, caroline no-transcript.
Speaker 2:Anyway, Instagram you can find me, Facebook you can find me. You can probably find my phone number somewhere Two blocks away from the CTS office. I can't hide. I will be at every single races in Cross, so if you have any question, if you want to stop by please, I have drinks, we have good attitude and would love to have you around.
Speaker 1:I can attest to that. I would say um, definitely follow her on on Instagram her her lifelong journey. She's hilarious folks Like. She's literally one of the funnier people I've met on um, the, the bike racing scene of things. So go there for the entertainment but also the unfiltered rawness of Caroline Manning racing her bike and doing life. So, caroline, thank you again for coming on the show.
Speaker 2:Thanks Adam, bye guys.
Speaker 1:Thanks for joining us on the time crunch cyclist podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. If you want even more actionable training advice, head over to train rightcom backslash newsletter and subscribe to our free weekly publication. Each week you'll get in-depth training content that goes beyond what we cover here on the podcast. That'll help you take your training to the next level. That's all for now. Until next time, train hard, train smart, train right.
