Welcome to the podcast is dedicated to making you a faster cyclist the Ask a Cycling Coach podcast presented by trainer road and we have second place from the Mediterranean epic with us today.

We have Hannah, Otto, Hannah, this race, you got second, you won more stages than anybody else, which is pretty darn cool.

Four-day stage race. Can we go into, like, first of all, why the heck did you do it?

Like it's so like, it's like early in the season big stage race like are you already going

and ripping and this is just the plan but like why did you pick this race

and then let's go through what you learned. Yeah, that's a great question.

Yeah, I'm super pumped, like you said, it went really well.

I, so this race is a UCI H.C. stage race, so H.C. is the highest category of stage race there is,

which means it offers the most amount of UCI points.

And so given the fact that Marathon World... offers the most amount of UCI points.

And so given the fact that Marathon World Cups

are a big goal of mine this year

and Marathon World Championships is a big goal of mine.

I wanted to snag some points,

but I also wanted to do some early season marathon racing.

And there's just not a time of...

I was going to snag some points show up, you know, if they're there to pick it up.

If Nate and I were going, we'd be like, yeah, the points would not even be in the cards.

Yeah, but I mean, there's just, I wanted something that would really challenge me and test me of where I'm at right now as well

You know going there and winning wasn't necessarily the goal the goal was to go there and see how my training was going, how the

trajectory of everything was kind of playing out, see where my gaps are, and then come back and fill those gaps with another big training block.

And so I felt like if I'm going to go all the way to Europe, a stage race is obviously a lot of bang

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