É sempre um orgulho para a Gregario contar com seus convidados. São sempre especiais. Nesta semana, essa barra sobe um pouquinho. Além de entrevistado, Hunter Allen e Alvaro Pacheco são amigos.
A relação que começou com treinador/aluno rompeu a barreira profissional e nos permitiu, inclusive, ver o célebre treinador norte-americano por aqui outras vezes. Já falou de treinamento, de automobilismo e agora conta sua experiência de montanhismo no Nepal.
Porém, as conexões com o ciclismo estão todas presentes nessa conversa, onde Allen refletiu sobre seu meio século de vida e sobre como ter uma vida equilibrada. Sem dúvida, belas mensagens para esse começo de ano.
Venha nessa RODA: https://instabio.cc/gregariocycling
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#aero #bike #broadcast #broadcasting #ciclismo #cycling #gregariocycling #holidays #italia #livigno #nopainnogain #process #procycling #raceday #recovery #roadcycling #routine #running #slomo #sportsmarketing #stage3 #stories #strength #takeover #teamwork #tourofbritain #trainingcamp #triathlete #triathlon #valencia
Hunter Allen a mentor a coach a friend thank you very much for being here thank you very much for uh your friendship and your guidance oh thank you alaro it’s a pleasure as always and uh it’s great to to be your friend and and also consider
You uh a great a great Rider and great cyclist and I love love working with you and have for many years so this is awesome thanks for having me on Hunter if you could share your uh history and an athlete uh and so gives us a context of the choices you made uh
Within your personal life your professional life I think is known your contribution to the sport as literature uh being a part of the Venture of training peaks of wko uh your training camps developing products being a consultant for many many power meter developments but let’s talk about Hunter the athlete sure sure
Sure yeah I mean uh you know I started um uh when I was 11 racing bicycles so I started racing BMX bicycles first and um mainly because my mom and dad would not let me have a motorcycle so no you can’t have a motorcycle but we
Can get you a BMX bike and and so I started racing those um and so I raised bicycles and fell in love with bicycles from from that time and raced them until I was 18 went to University and then started racing a good friend of mine
Introduced me to mountain bikes and so I started racing mountain bikes and and realized um during that time that I actually had a I’m not a great Sprinter I I was successful in BMX but BMX is is really a sprinter’s game but uh you know it was much better than Endurance Sports
So um started training ser seriously and got a road bike uh and then started racing and uh realized then that that uh you know I could do something with that so I I graduated from University decided to try and make my way into professional cycling uh raced in Spain for a year on
An amateur team and then came back to the United States and and was fortunate enough to turn pro for a few years and raced here in and around the world is a pro pro cyclist um you know I mean to me uh you know those all that right was was
Uh a means to kind of how do I make a living at cycling right and uh how do I continue to enjoy doing what I love um and at the same time I was very um U and still am obviously uh very oriented on improving and then uh figuring out as as
Kind of a sport sport scientist what makes you better so um constantly researching new training methods looking for training reading about nutrition finding out you know I worked even with sports psychologists to try and improve the mental side of my game so from every perspective trying to improve and of
Course that that then after retiring from procycling then you know using cycling as a way way of uh of maintaining health and enjoying what I do um and and also now um as we’ve talked many times about you know it’s great therapy you know it’s it’s a it’s
A great life is better after your bik cried and talking about therapy uh you are reference and you have been worked with many uh high performance athletes uh with world class comp competitive level and yourself being a professional for some time how to stay healthy at the highest
Level because the highest level of any sport is not healthy no uh even though you only train sleep and eat uh but how have you seen your experience and also the people that you’ve coached on finding The Sweet Spot uh on high performance and health right that’s a
Great point because um at the highest level I there’s a difference between fitness and health um you know the Riders and the Twitter France are incredibly fit but I don’t think they’re very healthy because uh they’re just doing crazy endurance days day in and day out day in and day out and their
Body is is just not recovering so that’s I don’t think that’s a great measure of Health um and I think that a better measure of Health really is is is is finding that balance and saying okay can I one achieve a couple of different things number one um cardiovascular
Fitness right I want to be able to have endurance I want to be able to have stamina and so endurance and stamina are two things that we also need to understand that are different um endurance is the ability to ride your bicycle um for 12 hours and just go ride
Right many of us probably listening to this podcast can do that it wouldn’t be fun all right and uh we’d be tired we need food but we could do it that’s endurance stamina is the ability to hold a certain Pace a certain average wattage or a certain speed for as long as you
Can let’s say if you can hold an average wattage of 250 Watts for an hour can you hold 230 Watts for 3 hours that’s that’s a measure of your stamina so I always look at those two things as part of our health equation endurance do you have endurance do you also have
Stamina uh cardiovascular health those those things are are really important um one you know just because uh that that is going to make a huge difference in your longevity how long you’ll live and then also Your vitality um and when we talk about longevity and vitality those
Are two words also that need to be understood clearly longevity is how long long you live Vitality is how good your life is how vital your life is how full your life is how are you able to move in life um and and be vital so we’ve got those things
And then we’ve got strength component right so so if you’re if you’re weak but have great cardiovascular fitness then I think there’s not that balance there either and then there’s the other side of it too is there’s the nutrition side so what you’re putting in your body is
Really critical to also making sure that hey we’re healthy right I mean if you eat a lot of saturated fats if you eat a lot of junk food um if you’re constantly eating fast food these things are just these are these are things that take life you know years of your life away
From you um so we have to eat good things um and that includes alcohol we have to be careful of alcohol you know and so moderation there is very important and then the mental side of it right I think that that’s also a component of health so um keeping your
Mental side strong isn’t easy it’s always easy when your life is going great right ah you’re positive and you’re excited and life is good and the mental side is great but when your life isn’t going so great that’s when the mental side is so tough so finding
Inspirational um things that help you go through those times I think are really critical to keeping the mental side solid so we’ve got three four things right so we’ve got cardiovascular health strength and then we’ve got nutrition and then we’ve got our mental side as well and nutrition uh it happens
Sometimes that because uh enough is not enough uh people go to restricted substances and abuse uh which is I think something that you and I share about not being acceptable but some people make a choice uh even as amateurs uh which personally I I I’m more uh astonished to see than professionals
But the component of nutrition is that maybe you want to do a bigger volume that your body can sustain or the substances you have and maybe you want to outperform your biological markers uh uh in certain moments and then some people uh show the the illusion of
Shortcuts uh on doping right but let’s get back to the track yes how as a high performance either amateur or professional find The Sweet Spot on the factors that you you you found out that he or she is going to perform at his best at his
Class uh but at the same time not uh uh have bills to pay in the future about his health being compromised his or her health being compromised right yeah so that’s that’s a great question because um it is uh one of those things first off that uh each of us is a little
Different on right so the volume of training that one athlete may be able to do and stay in that Health you know balance Zone um is is different than maybe another athlete maybe they can they need to do less training and they can still be in that Health zone or
Maybe a different athlete can do even more than that so that’s always a challenge as we are you know have very individual responses to training uh and and and what does that mean for you how do you find that balance okay so first off you have to say you know there’s
Always a baseline right for everyone there’s a baseline um I think that uh a minimum for for us in order to maintain our health our cardiovascular health specifically um and and prevent a lot of things from like diabetes prevent uh even some cancers there they think now
Um to increase our longevity and our Vitality as we age I mean we need need at least six hours a week of some kind of cardiovascular exercise now that seems like not a lot right six hours a week okay but still that’s an hour a day
For six days um so a lot of people we don’t have time for that right that’s hard sometimes to find time for that now you could make it up with three hours on a bike ride on Saturday and then you get you know kind of three days a week
During the week that’s also a way to get that six hours in but to me that’s a minimum that we need to do on a consistent basis if you miss a week over the holidays or whatever okay you’re fine right you miss a week here and
There that’s fine but as we as we keep that in our our consistency we’ve got to do at least six hours a week um training from a um a muscular standpoint uh that’s a that’s even tougher to to to build in because for us as cyclists we
Want to be thin we want to be lean but we also want to live life and feel strong going through life so I think that that’s where you have to find um a routine that’s simple but also hits some target areas and that’s where just simple body weight exercises are really great for
Cyclists um you know so push-ups pull-ups um you know yoga um you know you can do all kinds of different things that helps keep our joints strong keep our muscles in a basic place without having to go to the gym or lift weights um from that perspective so uh one eer
Link uh I was surprised on your training camp back in 2011 uh how you respected and have yoga on your routine and actually the training came there was there were yoga sessions initially it doesn’t make sense uh but what did you learn that yoga is very important for endurance
Athletes yeah so endurance athletes um you know not just cyclists not Runners not triathletes I mean all endurance athletes um we do repetitive motions and so when you do a repetitive motion thousands and tens of thousands hundreds of thousands millions of times you develop muscle firing patterns you develop muscle patterns themselves and
Those patterns then shape your body um cyclist is is the the most obvious you know if you see a cyclist most of them are hunched over um you know they never straighten their legs uh you know I always joke um if you took a picture of
Of if you showed me a picture of 40 people in a photograph and um 20 of them were cyclists and 20 were not cyclists I could tell you every single one that’s a cyclist just because the cyclists never stand with their legs straight they always stand with their legs a little bent
Because cycling we never straighten our legs and so that habit pattern moves over into life so what yoga does and and so the the other piece of it right is that you can become very tense okay uh the the extreme are these bodybuilders um who who are crazy huge
And they’re lifting massive weights um you know what they’ve done is they’ve created a very tense body and when you think about it you’re like what do you mean tense like well their muscles are incredibly tight and Incredibly tense so they’re not very Supple they’re not very long they can’t
Relax um and so cycling can do that Triathlon can do that running can do that um and so yoga goes in and starts to force you to move in ways you don’t move normally in your sport it also forces you to stretch out these muscles to help them become more Supple and more
Relaxed um and so that’s important in the health of your joints just think of the knees right the knees themselves you know or the the two legs the upper and lower leg come together at this joint and these things are held together by these muscles on either side and then
Tendons that cross these if this becomes Tighter and Tighter and Tighter you’re just pulling this joint closer and closer together and that can hurt your cartilage that can create imbalances cause pain so just those things alone can we stretch out these muscles around your joints just from the hips the knees
The ankles the toes the foot to give your bones more space to give your muscles more space that’s going to keep you having more vit ality right you’ll be able to move more freely in life and I heard the other day that one uh reference of uh aging well is your
Autonomy that you don’t need help to stand up you don’t need help to walk you don’t need help to shower yourself you don’t need help to go into the bathroom uh and I think it’s a very simple uh but great parameter uh that uh the more autonomous you are for a longer period
Uh is a great sign of Health yeah absolutely one of the measurements that um that they they that scientists have recently been working with is just bending over and and tying your shoes um and that’s a thing like um becomes more and more difficult if you don’t stay
Active um and so you think that we we take that for granted right now oh I just been over Tire shoes right now you don’t think about it um but but that’s something that um you know you have to keep doing and and I think that’s where
Um you know that and and also balance is really critical right um making sure you have balance and that’s another thing that yoga does right is it is it helps you with your balance because the number one um cause of bone breaks as we age is falling over you know people right fall
Over and why do they fall over they fall over because they don’t catch themselves now we’re constantly walking around you and I and and the listeners on this podcast and we’re falling and and we don’t even think about falling we trip and but guess what we catch ourselves
Right and or we hit something we catch ourselves and we don’t fall over so keeping that as uh as part of um your daily routine so that it’s like how can I balance and prevent myself from falling um these are these are these are crazy things to think about like you
Know but at the same time you know it’s a it’s a really big deal so the strength component becomes even more important as we get older so as we get to age 60 and older then going into the gym moving away from body weight um exercises is I think is very important
Um you know and athletes that I work with I have them do at least 12 weeks usually in the gym in the offseason like okay no matter what age they are whether they’re 25 whether they’re 45 whether they’re 65 whether they’re 75 for 12 weeks we do weights okay because they
Need some offseason training it helps to balance muscle groups some other reasons but when we get to be 60 years old and older I really think we need to do it once a week all year round right just to maintain that strength um as as part of
It talk about strength you have another passion that’s not as public which is four-wheels and you and gregario has a program with you uh we’re going to leave a link here in the description of this program uh how does driving a car uh competitive on your car and you can talk
A little bit more about this uh and you have a leverage an Vantage because you are healthy and an endurance athlete which initially uh some people say well what does why do you need to be a good endurance if you’re just using your feet
And your hands right yeah so in a car um in a a high performance car um and in a car racing situation there are tremendous amount of g-loads okay so if we take the extreme of Formula 1 drivers I mean these guys are incredible in the
The number of G’s that they pull five G’s sometimes um and uh in in a a normal kind of sports car like I have um you know I can do two G’s but that’s you know going around a turn heartbreaking things like this and that is always constantly um loading up your
Body even though you’re strapped in with harnesses and everything and you’re still loading your body and and that we see I mean I’ve worn a heart race trrap many times I’ve had uh quite a few I’ve coached quite a few car racers and they’ve worn heart rate straps your
Heart rate can get to 170 inside the car um during a race um so it can be really high at your threshold heart rate um during a race so imagine you know uh especially uh for an hour heart rate at 170 for two hours at 170 breathing hard pushing
Yourself this is not um you know something that if you’re out of shape you’re not going to have the focus or the concentration or the ability to um you know have the the reaction time that you need in a car at you know 200 kilometers an hour 250 kilometers an
Hour to be competitive so while Fitness may not may be a factor in the first three or four laps of the race as the race goes on it continues to become a factor and you see the drivers who aren’t fit because their lap times start to slowly go slower and slower and
Slower and slower by the end of the race where the drivers who are fit their lap time stay very stable the entire time um and and they can hold that position easily so strength and cardiovascular fitness plays a huge role in in car racing and auto sports and uh you know
Everybody at the at the at a very high level in Autos Sports is an endurance athlete of some some some type um you know whe it’s cycling or running or Triathlon um so they all have to do and they’re incredibly incredibly fit because they they have to
Be how many hours a week uh have you uh on on average do you train after you became a professional and you started uh living with the sport as entrepreneur as a coach uh which is very time demanding because uh you have the coaching sessions you have the planning sessions
Uh so you don’t have much available time uh and how many hours were you able to fit historically on average uh every week yeah and and you know I think that that’s you know you have to to realize too right there are times when I didn’t
Ride my bike for three four months five months because uh I had little kids you know my kids are growing up now but uh yeah you know right you have little kids and you’re doing all these crazy things and so you just don’t have time for it I
Think if I look back um I’m 54 now I look back on that time uh back to you know 24 when I turned Pro so 30 years ago and and think about the average that I worked out um I would have to say I’m probably in that sixh hour range um I
Think that’s something that um you know because plenty of weeks that were you know 25 hours um 20 hours 18 hours weeks after weeks after weeks after weeks and then I’ve had plenty of weeks where I had zero hours but if you kind of look
At it and say okay well six hours to eight hours to 10 hours that’s probably the range that I’ve always been in um for for 30 years um and so I think that’s um that that’s a um yeah I mean that that’s a good goal
To have that’s why I think that six hour is important would you say less is more so consistently and I I fall in the same class on being on the five to eight hour week uh volume over the last uh 40 years uh would you say that somebody that has
Been clocking 15h hour weeks for 40 years might be less healthy uh at our age it’s hard to say that’s a hard to say um because there there are other factors involved right um you know somebody who’s 15 hours a week um that they they could be just as healthy or they could
Be less healthy or we could be less healthy I think that’s where you take into account you know what is their nutrition right um you know I mean I know plenty of people who ride their bicycle or run or swim 15 hours a week and have terrible diets uh they’ve been
Living on fast food and crap you know for 15 years and that’s gonna little sleep and a lot of stress yeah sleep not enough sleep not a you know too much stress I mean so those so so just exercise alone is it going to determine
That um you know if if like okay let’s say you know you’re you know six to eight hours a week and you’re getting quality workouts in and when I mean that I mean okay two of those hours is some kind of cardiovascular stress where you’re pushing yourself where you’re
Breathing hard and your heart rate is high and you’re doing intervals of some sort okay it’s not two hours consecutive right maybe 20 minutes here five minutes there 30 minutes here right you’re getting that much in out of your six hours then that’s a really good because
You have to continue to stimulate that cardiovascular system um I think that’s that’s key and then look at it from a perspective of of how else do I do what else am I doing in my life um you know I have a saying that um I tell all my
Athletes when we talk about nutrition and especially ones who are really working on their improving their diet I said you know every choice counts like every time you choose this bad food over this healthy food that Choice counts and that’s that’s a great um thing to keep
In the back of your mind because one it keeps you a little keeps you honest and you’re like oh man you know what Hunter said this Choice counts and so I have to make sure that I’m gonna eat good vegetables here I’m Gonna Get You Know
Reduce all the oils in my life um you know I’m gonna make sure that I’m getting good complex carbohydrates um you know I’m being careful of any meats that I take if you eat meat um you know all those things play a huge role um and like you said sleep makes a difference
Too you uh it’s it’s impossible to talk with you uh without mentioning that you are part of a I can say a big change if not a revolution uh that on the old school that uh it was volume volume volume and then having heart rates and after power
Meters allowed to have the the prescription and uh the execution of interval trainings uh and I’m witness myself and my I’m a big advocate of power because I have a very scarce availability of time because of my family my work uh so I cannot put 8 10
Hours but I can put quality five six hours can you elaborate a little bit about how uh the concept of interval training and how having a very precise to as a power meter change uh Sports coaching yeah absolutely so one thing that um when before power meters came
You know were invented U we trained with a heart rate monitor before a heart monitor we trained with rate of perceived exertion um you know and so um heart monitors are better than perceived exertion and then a power meter is better than that heart rate monitor and
A power meter is is really the best because it allowed us to understand the training dose so what is the training dose so much like if you’re sick you go to the doctor um the doctor says okay you need to take this drug this is your dose of medicine and then what happens
Is the response you get back to your homeostasis or health and balance um so uh we know the training dose now and that’s what really Chang changed um our ability to to shorten a lot of this these junk miles these or junk kilometers right they’re you know riding
That didn’t really make a difference it didn’t really improve your endurance it didn’t improve your stamina it didn’t improve your functional threshold power it didn’t improve your V2 Max your Sprint it didn’t improve health it was almost a torture to be 8 10 hours just riding riding riding riding riding
Right right so so that so that that those kind of those days um you know I think that’s where training with a power meter we’re able to see okay if we spend time in this training Zone let’s say for example um just below our threshold a
Place we call Sweet Spot it’s just below your threshold power um you get a lot of improvement and you don’t have to spend a lot of time there to get that Improvement you get more Improvement than you would had you spent eight hours riding by yourself at a slow pace so
Having that tool alone allowed us to recognize that this kind of training makes a huge difference in the response in your body adapting and so once we we started to correlate these two things together we started to see okay here’s how much straining stress you can handle here is the expected response
Um doing more didn’t create any more response doing a little less you know gave you a little less response so we could find that optimal place um and and that for for for athletes like ourselves you know anybody who’s you know 30 to
85 uh who has a job who has a family has all these other time constraints that they’re dealing with you know we don’t have time to to exercise 15 hours a week right and so that’s been a real Revolution because now we can say okay here’s your six hours here’s your five
Six seven eight hours that you need and you do exactly these workouts and this intensity and it’s going to give you this response your body’s going to respond and so that’s that’s been the revolution is understanding the training dose that gives us the response now talk
Let’s talk about leaving dream uh for 20 years you dreamed on going to Nepal uh and it took you 10 20 years to have all the planets aligned uh on your personal life on your professional life but most importantly on your health State how was it uh to live this dream
And how do you realize that uh the experience you have there the pleasure you have and the less suffering because there’s a lot of suff uffing even from taking a bath or going to the toilet or changing your clothes right to living on altitude on 5 four 5,000 meters for many
Days in a row yeah how did it feel on your body uh and compare with the other people that were in your group also right no and and so um that’s uh you know I mean you know well for me I know that um that elevation I’m I’m pretty
Good at elevation to begin with I’ve done the Mach I raced in Peru in the Machu Picchu epic uh mountain bike race uh just three years ago and that was at uh 3,500 meters and one day even went to 4,000 meters um and so I knew I did okay
With that um I’m I’ve always been in this year has been really good I’ve been training a lot this year riding bicycle a lot I did um a lot of hiking this year in preparation for this as well um and that’s new that was new for me
Because I you know I’m a cyclist I’m not necessarily A hiker um but had to get used to hiking and get used to carrying a a pack right because that’s a different training stress than what I’ve been used to so you gotta get you got to
Train for that um and so getting to Nepal and and going to higher and higher elevations um of course you feel it and and lots of people ask me like what was the elevation like you know how did you feel and I think that um you know you’re
Breathing hard just like you would in a in a when you’re riding up a hill on a bicycle right if you’re pushing yourself you’re breathing hard now what’s you know being fit you know you just go so much faster and recover so much faster
And it doesn’t take it out of you um you know we did uh one day we we hiked um up from uh let’s say I think we were at uh let’s say we were about 3,600 MERS up to 4,000 meters about 4,100 meters and um we went up this nice
Steady climb it was a a fairly gentle grade uh it was about an hour and a half long and uh nice Trail smooth Trail easy Trail and um my my girlfriend and I Diane she’s also a long lifelong endurance athlete and we said okay let’s go fast on this
Let’s see what we can do you know let’s just go fast and so we told our guide we had a guide and we said okay we’re gonna go as pretty much as fast as we can to lunch and we’ll meet you at the stop if
We if we drop you we’ll meet you at the stop so we took off you know and just going boom boom fast as we could with our poles um we most no oxygen no oxygen bottles nothing like that no oxygen bottles nothing like that um you know we must have passed
100 people 200 people um on the trail you know and they’re they’re going at like this slow motion Pace they’re like slow motion and we’re just walking fast you know boom boom we’re breathing hard right don’t get me wrong we are breathing hard we’re you know we’re pushing ourselves
You know so we’re breathing hard it’s not like we’re just but we’re going fast and we got to the the lunch stop which was at the top of this this uh this little uh Peak and um there’s a little restaurant up there and and about 30
Minutes later our guide came who was who was very fit who was very fit and um and and he said wow you know I I’ve never guided endurance athletes before he’s like um I get it now he’s like you just don’t stop he’s like normally we take like
Four breaks on that hill and I’ve never done that hill without taking a break and I’m like well of course why would we take a break we’re just going up the St why the fun that’s right we don’t stop in the middle of a hill to catch
Our breath and keep going like just go all the way the top and so that was really fun because um we would get to places faster than everybody else would um and we would recover faster than everybody else would um we we we felt stronger each day
Than than lots of people we saw people towards when we got closer and closer to the Everest Base Camp um they looked really really tired I mean they were at their limits walking very slowly you know our day to ever base camp I mean we were just cruising up there um and and
Only one group passed us and it was uh these guys um this they had they had Andes Expeditions on them so they must have been somewhere in the Andes uh but there were three of them they were all in their 20s and they they went by us they were
Running so they were clearly 20 years old and training for for a big you know right um but everybody else like uh and that I think was that was exciting right because um we talked to many people and um I mean it’s not an easy track all
Right it’s it’s not and um they said this was the hardest thing that they’ ever done in their life and so you know congratulations to them right they they did this incredibly hard difficult thing that they’d ever done but for us it was like you know we’ve done a lot harder
Stuff than that talk about the perceived uh airort uh which number from uh 1 to n uh which number would you say your perceived effort was yeah so um on the on there were two days that um we uh summited these minor Peaks um so there was one Peak called
Yokoi um and we summoned that and that was 5,3 200 meters and then the day after we did Everest Base Camp we also summoned this little Peak that looks over top of Everest Base Camp and that’s called Kip patar and that was 5,600 meters um and those two you know were
About an hour and a half to go up to the summit of these and and they were tough um we were breathing hard the entire way um we’re going at at a slow pace you know I mean weren’t running up that or going at a quick Pace um and so I would
Say um from an effort level we’re probably you know we were at our thresholds so when you look at the scale of rate of perceived exertion from from that kind of zero to 10 threshold is right there around five and six so we were right about five and six on those
Days pushing ourselves getting up the hill um and the rest of the time three four you know that two you know was kind of where it was how many days and how many uh hours each day on total how many hours how many days and how many hours
In total yeah so it was 16 days of trekking uh it was uh 85 hours of uh of of total hiking um and uh we did um let’s see what do we do we did um let’s see 100 miles so about 120 kilometers in that in that time or 160 kilometers in
That uh time so uh that was that was really cool and how much accumulated uh climbing oh gosh you know I didn’t I didn’t look at that metric but it’s a lot 16 16 days traveling uh working is a lot every every every day every day at least 2,000
Meters you know thou well not every day because we did have two days there or three days that were a climatization days where we didn’t do too much you know we just kind of did some shorter hikes and things um but almost every day somewhere between 1500 to to
2,500 2,100 meters of of of climbing how did your body feel uh and and your girlfriend over those 16 days uh what did change on your your metabolism on your sleep on your how your functioning of your body right yeah so um number one
I mean I I we both I lost weight um I ended up losing like four kilos over the time period so not a lot um our guide lost um like six kilos um my girlfriend Diane she didn’t lose anything she doesn’t have anything to
Lose um and um the uh our our bodies did well I mean we ate a lot and um you know some people complain they don’t they lose their appetite at higher elevations that wasn’t our problem we didn’t have that problem we ate we had appetite we
Ate a lot and I also attribute that to um to being endurance athletes right because you know we know that we need to eat right and and we’re constantly as endurance athletes you know we’re constantly you know thinking oh we we got to put carbohydrates in we got to
Get good carbohydrates we got to get good proteins in all these things in and so we knew that we had to eat and we need to eat a good large volume of food and so we had great food I mean on this track they have amazing food at all of
The different places the little tea houses they call them that you stay at so they’re really good um and now sleep once we were above uh let’s see about 4,500 me ERS um that’s where I started having trouble sleeping and I knew that like you know from our time in Peru that
I would have trouble sleeping at higher elevations so I was mentally prepared for that I was like you know I’m not g to get much sleep those four or five days that’s okay you know I can I can do this you know this is a dream come true
I can push through this it’s just endurance no big deal right um so the first night I had trouble sleeping I was waking up and I was waking up and I would have this Panic feeling and I would feel like I was suffocating and my
Body would wake me up and I would go and I would take this huge breath in and um and so I just thought that you know I don’t know I was like well you know whatever and I kind of dealt with it that night the next night it did it
Again and I slept from 8 o’clock at night because you’re going to go to bed early there 8:00 at night till about midnight and then it was so worrisome that at that point I didn’t want to go back to sleep because it kept waking me up giving me this terrible Panic feeling
Of Suffocation um and so this is called periodic breathing uh the scientific name for it is called Shane’s Stokes breathing um and um this is basically sleep apnea um and having sleep apnea but at a kind of a severe level and and so I was not
Breathing uh for a minute and a minute and a half and then I would take a breath um and so that was concerning I told our guide the next morning and he said oh my gosh you know this is periodic breathing this is a symptom of acute Mountain sickness um you need to
Start taking the drug called diox um which is a very common uh high elevation drug given to Mountaineers all the time and and they they tell us to bring that so I had some of that with me and uh I said well you know this was in
The morning I said well you know we’ve got a big day let’s when we get to our destination at lunch then I’ll take it I don’t because I know one of the side effects is nausea um so I was like I didn’t want to feel nauseous you know
While we’re hiking so I said okay because I wasn’t having any other symptoms we’re still strong during the day feel good no problem breathing good all good um and then um so that afternoon at lunchtime I took a half a tablet of diox and then went and took a
Nap that that afternoon and and my girlfriend Diane she stayed up in the in the room to make sure I was breathing and and I bre I I was perfectly fine I had perfect normal breaths I slept for an hour I was woke up and I felt great and then that night
Again I took another half a diox and she ended up waking me up at 2 o’clock in the morning poking me and say wake up wake up you’re not breathing and you need to take another diox because that one’s worn off and what what does this
Medicine do so this medicine is a it’s a diuretic um so it gets rid of um the some of the the fluid out of your cells um and getting rid of the fluid out of your cells you know it helps to to uh allow you to carry a little more oxygen
Um from that perspective it it um it it forces kind of this uh the body to to you know carry a little more oxygen similar to the way nitrates work in beet juice um and so uh but it’s even even even more pronounced at the the kidney
Level um and so that’s that’s what it what it does but it’s very well um established as as a thing for Mountaineers so I took that the rest of the the time we were above oh 4,000 yeah 4,000 meters once we got below 4,000 meters then I didn’t need to
Take it anymore I was fine the positive side effects not only for leaving your dream for 20 years and seeing a p and being at the base of the Everest uh with your uh girlfriend is you did the 16-day altitude training how did your body respond after
That yeah um well we we we needed some rest after that so for sure I mean that 16 days I mean you can it’s not quite a a stage race it’s not like that I mean I think that I’ve done a 15-day stage race I did the tour of Venezuela it was a
15-day stage race and I was very sore and tired after that and I’ve done the eight day trans Portugal Mountain Bike Race Across Portugal incredibly destroyed at the end of that so I wasn’t you know healthy right I would say that at the end of those two events and and
Also at even at the end of the five-day race at Machu Picchu um I was probably in the unhealthy category I was heavily fatigued um all over sore uh heart rate very suppressed um my HRV my heart rate variability was very low um highly fatigued um however in this I was tired
But I wasn’t um my my body wasn’t overly tired now for sure you know we took a couple days and just didn’t do too much and we got plenty of sleeping in uh took some naps uh and just kind of really took it easy for a couple of days
Afterwards um and and that was really it like uh there was not really any muscle soreness um which is different than what I’m used to from cycling and doing stage races um it was more of just kind of an overall tired and then after that felt great right I mean boom recover pretty
Pretty quick uh my heart rate variability came up really fast my resting heart rate went down um you know all of a sudden you know feel strong because you you’re climatized to this really high level and now you’re down a sea level or wherever wow but but did your power
Numbers improve after when you went to a bike ride or well I mean they were they they were probably the same I mean they they were the same like when I got on my bike afterwards so basically I didn’t ride my bike for a whole month so you
Know I I went into the to the track and my threshold power was around 290 Watts um and then when I came out of the track after not having ridden my bike for a month it was still at 290 Watts I went and did a workout and did that um so it
Wasn’t any higher but I I would expect that because I wasn’t training the same cycling muscles so so I lost a little bit of that but at the same time gained aerobic fitness After experiencing 16 days uh does it feel easier to do long rides on the [Laughter]
Bike you know I mean yeah I mean it’s not um you know it’s oh it’s only four hours it’s only four hours no problem Hunter uh which lesson would you like to share about your choices in life yeah um good question um you know I
Think that um the uh the two things that uh that I think that the most recent thing that I’ve learned a lot about I mean I’ve always been into nutrition right I’ve always been into into understanding diet and nutrition um and I think that that um one of the
Biggest things that um that I’ve learned about and I think that also there’s new science or relatively new science on um is the impact of of these oils right so these cooking oils these these seed oils um these vegetable oils that we use in our foods and how these are really
Impacting um our bodies negatively in a couple of different ways because I think that they’re they’re harming ourselves and they’re harming ourselves especially the ones that help to control um our blood glucose and our insulin and so I’ve been doing a lot of work recently with um continuous glucose monitors so a
Continuous glucose monitor is inserted into your skin you can see the your blood sugar constantly and then there’s a company called super sapiens and they have it that it you can even go on your Garmin head unit and you can see it on your Garmin watch or head unit while
You’re exercising which is amazing um and so I think that one of the things that is really that we’re going to find out and we are finding out right now is that these oils are are hurting our ability to um you know keep our bodies what we call um
You know insulin sensitive right there that we can have a carbohydrate meal and the carbohydrates in our bloodstream goes up but the insulin comes in and it’s very it it it’s easily gets rid of that carbohydrate and drops it back down to a normal stable level because your body’s always trying to achieve
Homeostasis um this balance and I think a lot of these oils are contributing to what we call insulin resistance um and so that’s where you have a carbohydrate meal your insulin goes up but it’s or sorry your glucose goes up and your glucose stays up for a
Long period of time your body releases all this insulin but your body’s resistant to it and then it takes even more insulin in order for that glucose to come down and it comes down a longer period of time um that I think is is
Very uh a great lesson for um for all of us to learn because um you know getting rid of these oils out of your diet is very difficult so many of the foods if you look at the package it’ll say you know soybean oil or cotton seed oil or
Canola oil or vegetable oil and it’s in all kinds of things um and so even though you may not be cooking with it you’re still may be eating it so you just have to keep that in mind be careful with that the other thing that
You know that I think that is is really critical to me is is doing intensity right you need to exercise at an intensity that that pushes your V2 Max all right so your V2 Max for everybody who’s listening that didn’t know what that is that’s the
Volume of oxygen you can carry in your lungs this is a real key factor for your longevity and Your vitality so the as we age our our our our lungs become more inelastic they don’t expand as much uh they can’t carry as much oxygen and So
Eventually you’re going to be at the you know if you live long enough to 100 or or so um you know you’re be your V2 Max while you’re shopping at the grocery store right right and just pushing the brushing your teeth brush your teeth is interval training interval training so I
Mean that’s that’s natural right that’s just part of aging you can’t you can’t stop that you live long enough but you can reduce that slide okay so your goal um as to to increase your longevity and Your vitality as you age is to continue to stimulate your lungs right at a at a
Level that is somewhat uncomfortable for you all right so for endurance athletes we’re more we’re comfortable with that breathing hard breathing big lung big lungs big expansions big contractions we’re used to that getting some kind of training in like that every week is really important um because
That’s what will keep your V2 Max higher and so as you age it’s just going to slow that slide down so maybe when you’re 70 when you’re 80 your V2 Max is still relatively High um and and and you don’t get out of breath just going up
The stairs because you are super fit and you’ve been stimulating these lungs for a long period of time so those two are the ones to take away a little bit Hunter thank you very very much uh it’s a great pleasure to be on your wheel figuratively speaking uh since we
Pedal less together than we wish uh you’ve been North Carolina and myself in Brazil of but although we had some opportuni we’ve been in Brazil a couple years back uh and uh your wisdom and your inspiration to all endurance athletes uh your dedication to the science uh but most important uh you
Walk the talk uh so you just don’t write books but uh you practice them thank you very much listeners it’s it’s a historic program that we have here uh Hunter uh thank you very very much thank youo thank you
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