Zach Nehr: Pro Zwift Racer, Data Journalist + Cycling Coach
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Pioneering sports data journalist and coach Zach Nehr has always been ahead of the curve. He is one of the first journalists to do deep quantitative analyses of power data from the world's top pro cyclists, and now he’s transferred that knowledge to the growing scene of virtual racing.
An elite level competitor in road, track and cycling esports, Zach has recently taken a slew of victories at the highest level of eracing on Zwift and MyWhoosh with the NeXT eSport presented by Enshored team. Zach joins host Andrew Vontz to talk about how he developed such a differentiated and effective approach as a writer, coach and top-level athlete, and how his study of human performance helped him rocket to the top of Zwift racing.
Zach studied exercise science and raced bikes at Marian University and is the owner of ZNehr Coaching. His revolutionary writing approach - found on the likes of Cyclingnews, Velonews, TrainingPeaks, CyclingTips, and Bicycle Guider - has since been imitated by many writers in the field.
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Choose the Hard Way is a podcast where guests share stories about how hard things build stronger humans. Sign up for the newsletter to get the story behind these stories updates and more. If you’d like to suggest a guest or say hello, DM @hardwaypod on social or send an email to choosethehardway@gmail.com.
Host Andrew Vontz has spent more than 25 years telling and shaping the stories of the world’s top performers, brands and businesses. He has held executive and senior leadership roles at the social network for athletes Strava and the human performance company TRX. His byline has appeared in outlets like Rolling Stone, Outside magazine, The Los Angeles Times and more.
Today he advises and consults with businesses and nonprofits on high-impact storytelling strategies and coaches leaders to become high-performance communicators. Find him on LinkedIn or reach out to choosethehardway@gmail.com
In This Episode:
Zach Nehr Website | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | Instagram | Strava | YouTube
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Andrew Vontz LinkedIn
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Andrew Vontz 0:01
Okay, so yeah, tell me Oh, so what's the deal? So last weekend, you had your first outdoor race of the year. What was the race? Like? What went down?
Zach Nehr 0:11
Yeah, it was the lacrosse Omnium up in Lacrosse, Wisconsin. It's got to be one of my favorite races ever. It's one of my favorite races every year. It starts with an uphill time trial on Friday evening. And then Saturday is the road race. Sunday is the crit, and it's all points based. So you don't need to do the whole weekend. It's not necessarily a stage race, some people skip the Friday time trial because of work or something. And then just come in for the roadway. So the Creator both and yeah, it was my, the time trial was my second outdoor ride of 2023. So I managed to get in, I think, an 80 mile ride sometime about a month ago. And then the weather got really bad again. So I just went back on the trainer. And besides that I hadn't ridden outdoors since last September or October, I think I pretty much fully committed to the trainer life, lots and lots of racing, I was focused on the esport World Championships back in February. So the whole winter was on the train are focused on that. And now I'm getting back into the outdoor racing thing. And it was it was wild, I forgot, almost almost forgot how to break and how to corner definitely felt different than grinding away.
Andrew Vontz 1:24
Yeah, were you on a time trial bike for the time trial? Or were you on a standard bike,
Zach Nehr 1:29
I was on a standard road bike, it's a pretty steep uphill TT the first five, five and a half minutes or an average of I think around 6%. So I think maybe a world tour guy would be faster on a time trial bike. But for guys like me and everyone else. Definitely, the lightweight setup is the way to go. A lot of people, they take all their bottle cages off for that TT put the lightest wheels ever on there. Because there's no there's no descent. So you can take the descent nice and easy, just narrow tires, high pressure and just go uphill fast.
Andrew Vontz 2:01
Did you consider having your team car wait for you to exchange bikes?
Zach Nehr 2:06
It's funny you say that? Actually. Yeah, it's about five and a half minutes uphill. And then the last 2k is rolling. So the last 2k, you're going over 30 miles an hour. So if you if you practice the bike change enough, you might be able to do a quick quick bike swap at the top and then just fly towards the finish for the last 2k.
Andrew Vontz 2:28
Yeah, and Zack, part of how you came into my sphere of consciousness was through the writing that you were doing as a journalist for Vella news at the time, you were doing a lot of quantitative analysis of the performances of professional cyclists. And there are a number of people who do that style of analysis and writing now at the time, I feel like you may have been one of the first people I ever saw do that kind of breakdown. And I thought it was fantastic reporting. It was great analysis, I found it. I find it now and I found it then to be deeply insightful. What drew you to doing that type of reporting? And what did you learn if anything about these superhuman people who raced bikes that you then transposed into what you do, or the work that you do as a coach?
Zach Nehr 3:20
Yeah, yeah, the power analysis was really what kicked off my my writing career. I want to say I started that, at least three or four years ago, sometime around 2018 2019. The first ever power analysis is up on my blog wasn't in Bella news. It was a Thomas to get I want to say it was Catalonia he wanted from the breakaway. And I just, I had this idea in my head for a while of the power analysis, and not just the power analysis, I had seen people screenshotting stuff and putting like peak 20 minute power on Twitter. But for me, the story I really wanted to tell was, why are these numbers so impressive in the context of the race, and I think that's really what separates the amateurs from the pros. And the good pros from the great pros is, I mean, these guys are doing six, six and a half watts kilo for 20 minutes. But if you look at the context of it, they're doing it after three and a half hours of racing, where their normalized power is over 300 Watts, they're coming into the bottom of the climb at 55k In an hour in elite out train, and it states 16 of the Tour de France so those kinds of stories is uh you don't see that in a training peaks file. You can you can look at the raw numbers, but there's a lot of people in the world believe it or not, that can do six watts kilo for 20 minutes, but in the context of a race with all that stress and all that fatigue. Those are really the stories that I wanted to tell the put it into context and and as a writer and as a storyteller, being a cyclist myself. I really wanted to share those stories with people And I kind of put it all together. And that's where the VeloNews power analysis series came from. It's like, I was taking those screenshots from Strava and training peaks, and then putting it into the storyline of the entire race. And a lot of people responded so positively to that, that it was just this positive feedback loop of me writing the story and me posting the power. And then people were like, I love how you don't just post the story, you actually say, this is what happened in the race. I mean, he did a huge power surge here in the first 10k of the race. That's how the breakaway forms. And I've explained that I would explain he bridged across to the break in a minute, here's his minute. And then after that, he did an hour rolling turns, this is exactly the power that he was rolling through the turns and the paceline, then, and then you put that all into context, and, and people love that people love the storytelling and, and explaining it in in terms that at least cycling fans could understand for those races.
Andrew Vontz 5:59
And when uh, you know, as you mentioned, these performances, because they're happening and very high stress. And within the context of the careers of these athletes, they're very high consequence moments. And just from a risk management point of view, a lot of things could go sideways. So there's a high level of risk for the athletes as well. When you think about descending, for example, in a Grand Tour, where they might be hitting 60 plus miles per hour, going through a valley to then get to the climb, where they then have to put out six and a half watts per kilo. And if you're listening and don't have any context for that, it's something that a, an incredibly minut percentage of human beings on planet Earth have the genetic potential to achieve through years and years and years of training at the very highest level to be able to express that kind of fitness. And then to do it in that context is it's pretty incredible. So that's very different from what the average normal person can do. But was there anything that you have taken away from doing all those analyses of professional athletes that apply to people you work with in your coaching practice, or that have changed? How you approach racing yourself?
Zach Nehr 7:18
Definitely, I would say that the way that riders and cyclists handle fatigue is probably my biggest takeaway from doing these articles is because there's a lot of people that can hit really good peak power numbers. But in a race situation, if you're doing a criterium, that's an hour long, or you're doing a road race, that's two or three hours long. When you get to that most important point of the race, maybe it's the final sprint, that's 15 seconds long. If you've been racing for two and a half or three hours, you're not going to do your best power Ever After three hours of racing. So it's how you handle that fatigue and how you recover from those efforts over two and a half or three hours. And then are you able to do 90 or 95% of your best power ever. Because what I've seen with a lot of clients with younger clients and less experienced clients is if they're doing an hour long criterium race and in their training, naturally, maybe genetically, they have a really good sprint, they have a really good 15 second power, they're going to do that race. And for 59 minutes, they're going to be at 90% of their max heart rate, they're going to get to those final 15 seconds of the sprint, and their legs are going to have have absolutely nothing, they're going to stand up to sprint, they're gonna try to shift their gear, and their power is not going to go up at all. And they're going to do less than 50% of what they're doing in training. And, and I think with endurance sports with cycling, so much of your training is just training your aerobic system to handle that fatigue and training your body to be able to handle a big workload for hours and hours and hours. And then still put out close to your maximum power. Because what these guys are doing in pro races at the end of the Tour de France after two and a half weeks of racing. If you think about all that fatigue, most humans would be unable to get out of bed in the morning after two and a half weeks of racing your bike for four or five hours a day. And these guys are going out. And they're hitting 95% of the best power that they can do in training. And that's that's the biggest takeaway is just handling that fatigue and it's crazy.
Andrew Vontz 9:28
And Zach, I know you have an incredibly deep interest in exercise physiology, exercise science, you and I have talked a lot about a number of different studies and I know you're always digging around looking at the latest findings in the literature as it relates to fatigue. Have you taken a look at all at the impact of fatigue on cognitive performance or the central nervous system over time? And is that something you think about as it relates to strategic decision making or tactical implement Vision for athletes or later stages of races?
Zach Nehr 10:03
That is a great question. And that is a great idea for an article because I have not done a lot of research on that one, I am 99% sure that there is definitely a significant effect of the physical fatigue, the body fatigue, and how that affects your mind and your ability to think. But I really haven't researched that one a lot. But you can see it in, in races, in long, hard races, especially in the cold and wet, maybe, I think that one of those races are so interesting, a cold wet bike race, because a lot of times those races are physically easier, physically, they're doing less power, because everyone's going slower through the corners, they're hesitant to sprint, because they don't want their wheel to slip. And they're just more careful all the time. But the amount of mental stress is so much higher, because every single corner, everyone's just thinking don't crash, don't crash, don't crash. And at the end of the stages, if you look at the power meter, those guys are maybe averaging 200 Watts, which is totally doable for most amateur cyclists. And a lot of the time they get to the end of the stages. And you can just see the interviews, those guys have bags under their eyes, they look exhausted, they're completely drained. They're like, I can't believe we made it through that stage. That was such a mental drain. And that has to have an effect, especially the stress levels, I'm sure physically are so high. I haven't seen studies on that. But I would be really interested to look more into that
Andrew Vontz 11:33
exact before we jump into a topic that I am deeply curious about which is erasing and more specifically, the mysterious world of my wish. I would love to go back in time. And could you just share a bit about how you got into competitive cycling? And when did you know that you might have the potential to be competing at the elite level, which you're doing now?
Zach Nehr 11:58
Yeah, to go all the way back it was 2000. And well, I had just come back from Europe on a family vacation. And we saw the Tour de France. It was an amazing experience a really a once in a lifetime. And I had been playing soccer for pretty much my entire childhood, probably the time I was six or seven years old, I was fully committed to soccer, I tried the other American ones basketball, baseball and some other cross country. But soccer was the one that I really loved. I watched all the English Premier League on TV and I was fully committed to practicing on my own practicing with the team and and then when I was 13 years old, I had a really bad knee injury where I dislocated my kneecap and didn't need surgery at the time. But it was over six months of rehab, maybe seven or eight to come back from that. And at that age, it was it was absolutely devastating. It was something that totally changed my life on my my mental perspective and coming back from that as a kid. I mean, I was lucky enough to not have too much hardship before that. But then you face six months of rehab where the first couple of weeks your leg is locked completely straight in a brace and you can't do anything and you're stuck on the couch and you go to school and you're on crutches and, and it was it was a lot to handle. And I came back from that played soccer for a few more months. Same thing happened again. And that time I needed surgery. So I came back from that surgery after another six, seven months of rehab. And my knees still wasn't good. And at this time I was getting closer to 16 years old, I had two knee surgeries under my belt. And that knee still wasn't good. And, and all that time. Every time I had surgery. They were recommending indoor cycling for rehab. And cycling was something that my dad did at an elite level for around two decades. He went to the National Championships and traveled around the country racing in Colorado and did I think it was called super weak back in the day. And now it's two of America's Dairyland boobs, three weeks straight of criteriums. And back then they were two hours long every single day for three weeks, and that was the amateur bike race. And, and so he had all the bikes in the basement. We had gone on rises as kids and we watched the Tour de France in the summer but it never really clicked with me. But when I was when I was in rehab from all those knee surgeries, I was forced to ride the trainer and I would just watch TV and 20 minutes felt like an eternity. It was absolutely horrible. This is before smart trainers before Zwift I was just a kid in high school just doing it for rehab just getting it done. So my knee got better. And after seeing the Tour de France and It was in the age that year after seeing that, I just came back from Europe. And I remember telling my parents I was like, I think I want to start riding my bike more. And then I feel like my dad, maybe in the back of his head, he doesn't show a lot of emotion. But in the back of his head, I think his eyes lit up. And he was like, oh, that sounds interesting. I can show him everything. So my dad set me up with a road bike, and he got me into some practice criteriums he, he helped me organize at that point, it wasn't training plan, it was just just ride an hour every day and don't do any more don't get burned out. At that point. I was just, I was all into my mind. And my dad was probably trying to keep me level headed and, and I came into my first season of racing when I was 17. And my first ever race was the cat four or five race. And somehow I won the field sprint. And it was like 40 miles an hour I was on Jr. Gears. I still don't know how I did it. I was in the saddle the whole time. It was a bike throw at the line. But that was my first ever bike race. And at that point, my my dad knew and I had a little inkling that I had some talent in cycling, I was like, he was like, that never happens. You shouldn't have been able to do that. You're not a sprinter. I don't know how you did that. But you want. And, yeah, I went from a cat four to a cat three, in just a few races. I think I got first, second and third in my first three races ever. And then in my first cat three race I got second. So I think three months into my cycling career was over the cat two. And I went to Canada to race in international Junior race called the Tour de la beta b. And I was racing against the Canadian national team, the American National Team, the French national team was there. And I got dropped and destroyed every day. And at that point, all of a sudden, I was like, Maybe I'm not that good at the sport. Maybe I was just racing against local Wisconsin kids. And I was just a little bit faster than everybody else at home. But I I came back from that it was a huge blow mentally. But I raced a few more times that summer and then trained all winter and got stronger and came back and in my mind I was I was all in for cycling at that point. Before that I was like, I'm gonna play soccer in college, I'm going to try to go pro and soccer and then all of that was out the window. And a year later, I'm a senior in high school and I'm like, I want to go to Marion. That's the number one cycling school in the country. I want to be a professional cyclist, I want to win collegiate national championships. And in my mind, I was all in. And I slowly got better for a couple years. And then my sophomore year at Marian. The knee injury came back. It was It wasn't an impact injury. This time it was all of a sudden on all my bike rides, I got a little bit of knee pain, a little bit of knee pain. I took a week off the bike, tried to ride again knee pain was still there. And then it got worse and worse and worse. And by the time I saw my doctor back in Milwaukee, the same one that did my previous knee surgeries, he was like, all your cartilage is gone. Your knee is rubbing bone on bone you need surgery right now.
And, and that was in the middle of the year, I think I had my I was my third knee surgery when I was 20 years old. Middle of college, it was two days before Christmas. So that was the worst Christmas I've ever just on the couch on on pain killers just trying to forget. And it took me probably two or three months before I was able to ride the bike again. I was going to the gym at Marion and riding the spin bike. And I would take my Garmin in there just to see if I could do any power. And the first couple rides I literally averaged zero watts, I think I was spinning, maybe one RPM, just getting my knee to bend. I couldn't put out any power I could put any force through that muscle. But probably after two or three weeks, I would average one watt, and then five watts. And then 10 watts. I was literally doing 20 minute rides at 10 watts for knee rehab. And I just I listened my doctors, I trusted the plan. I didn't do too much too early. It worked really well because I was studying Exercise Science at the time. So I was like I know I don't want to be stupid. I don't want to rush this and just be injured for longer. I want to come back and be racing and riding outside as soon as possible. And I wrote outside. Three months after surgery, I think it was in March. And we had the collegiate national championships about I want to say seven weeks later out in Colorado at altitude. And I just trained and committed to the plan and I went out to Colorado and won the collegiate National time trial. And I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe that. Two months ago, I couldn't ride a bike, I couldn't do any power. My doctor said, don't ride outside until May. I think I won nationals in the last week of April. So kind of a little bit closed, but I was okay. And then from there, that was really a turning point that gave me a lot of confidence towards going towards bigger goals. At that point, I was like, a really good Midwest, cat one. But winning nationals, I thought to myself, I could be really, really good. I'm writing competing with guys that are racing at the professional level that are fully committed to this. I'm still in school, I haven't really traveled racing for much outside the Midwest. And after that, I really committed to going all in on cycling for a few years and doing the classic move of going to Tucson for the winter, getting out of the snow getting out of the Midwest, train outside do big hours, 20 hours, 25 hours a week, and traveling full time for racing. And definitely got messy after that. Lots of lots of ups and ups and downs with I would have one really good year where I was top 10 and top 20, and a couple of pro stage races, and then the next year, just Crash and Crash and Crash and just be injured be behind on my fitness and struggling to come back. And it all really really really took a toll on me mentally. And at the beginning of 2020 January 2020, I made the decision to step away from the full time travelling cyclist lifestyle, and just live at home reset, try to find, find my way in the world, not just in cycling, but maybe look for a full time job and start coaching and writing and really commit more time to that. And then it was great timing, because a couple months later, all the races got cancelled. So I didn't miss anything in 2020. I had already made the decision before that. And then, after six months of not racing my bike, I was crazy about getting back into it because I'm so competitive. And I got on Swift for the first time ever in spring 2020. And, I mean, it's a cliche, but I was I was definitely hooked from there.
Andrew Vontz 22:25
And to go back for a moment. So you describe having this surgery when you were in college, you had no cartilage in your knee. What is the surgery you get when you have no cartilage? Yeah, so it would put it there just like put a doughnut in there. Like a jelly filled doughnut, like what do they do?
Zach Nehr 22:43
So yeah, the reason that I had no cartilage was that it was so all all of these injuries, all these surgeries on my right knee, it was always the same thing every time. And the first two surgeries were just to repair some ligaments that were damaged or torn when I dislocated my kneecaps. And then the third surgery, they determined that the reason there was no cartilage left was because my kneecap instead of tracking straight, it was tracking to the outside of my knee. But every time I bent and straighten my knee, it was pulling my kneecap to the outside because something got knocked out of alignment, I had a muscle imbalance, something like that. So the surgery that they did, it's called a tee to it's a tibial tubercle osteotomy, where they they cut off the top part of the tibia, where the patellar tendon attaches. And they in my case, they cut off the top of the bone. They moved it up and forward. And then they screwed it in place. And they just said, We think that's going to fix it. We think that if we move it over here, now your kneecaps going to track properly. And since then, I haven't had any theories, knee issues, no serious knee pain, I'm back to running, which is crazy. All of college I was scared to run and I would get knee pain every time I ran. But definitely seems like that surgery worked.
Andrew Vontz 24:10
Well, Zach, is you have experienced medicine is an art. And it's a science. So you described a little bit of this circus of being someone going pro being out there on the road. And I think most people don't really have an understanding of what is that lifestyle like maybe you know if someone's a really hardcore cyclist, maybe you've read Phil Gaiman's. draft animals. And if you haven't, it's an excellent book. I've also had Phil on the podcast twice. You can look for those interviews in the archives. But can you describe a little bit what your experience was like? And then I have a very specific question, which is when you're living that lifestyle, you're sleeping in so many different places. So, sleep recovery are such a critical part of being a high performing person and cognitively, physically in particular, as an elite athlete. What's your sleep game? Like? Are you somebody who can like crawl into a trashcan and fall asleep? Did you ever you know, or you just like, can go from mattress to mattress? I this. It's very specific, but it kind of intrigues me because as an amateur athlete when I travel, I one of the many reasons I know I cannot be a professional athlete. And never was was I'm not very good at that. Right?
Zach Nehr 25:35
Yeah, that's a great question. I, unfortunately, am a horrible sleeper. I need everything to be by the book as high quality as possible. So there's so many things that I've learned and implemented over the years. So blackout curtains, room is darkest possible. room is cold. In my, in my personal spirit experience, 67 degrees is probably the best for me, which is way colder than most people think is best for sleep. You want a cold with heavy blankets, that's that's what works really well. For me. I have a noise machine that I turn on every night. Just just straight brown noise, nothing fancy. Room is super dark, super quiet, super cold. I have a it's not a nightlight, it's an alarm that for the last 30 minutes before your alarm, it slowly gets brighter, so that your room just slowly brightens so that by the time your alarm goes off, it's pretty bright in the room. And that seems like it helps me wake up less less jolted, like my eyes have been slowly waking up for 30 minutes at that point. And then consistent bedtime, I try as as hard as I can to be good with that one. So within an hour, I would say plus or minus an hour for me the best is probably 10 o'clock to six o'clock, somewhere around eight hours of sleep every night, plus or minus an hour depending on social life and everything. But how when I was living on the road, that one was really, really tough. I flipped a lot of post houses, different houses, different beds, different bedrooms. And back when I was traveling that much, I also had an eye mask and earplugs. And that was that was huge for me. Because at home I have so much more control over that about closing the blinds making sure it's dark, and then turning off everything in the house. And luckily, my apartments pretty quiet, I don't hear neighbors or anything like that. So no your plugs needed. But on the road when Yeah, when you're staying in a house with 10 other people and everyone else goes to bed at midnight and you go to bed at 10. It's, it's really hard to make it quiet and make it dark. So I definitely got better at it over the years. But it was always, always a struggle. And that's something that I try not to take for granted at home because it's so precious to me, especially as an elite athlete that is almost tired all the time, I see a direct correlation between the quantity and quality of my sleep and my performance every single day. Even if it's a recovery ride, if I if I sleep poorly of recovery ride, my heart rate will be 10 beats higher and my legs would feel empty. And and that's that's super important for me.
Andrew Vontz 28:32
Back when you were on the circuit, and again, for people who might not be familiar with some of the specifics of what we're talking about for elite amateur and professional cycling, road racing in the United States, it's very common when teams travel, that the race promoter will work with people in the community to provide host housing. And then you're actually you're like staying with a family. Correct? Yeah, you're like embedded in some family's home, right?
Zach Nehr 29:03
Yeah, yeah, host housing is crazy. It is the coolest thing 99% of the time. And then every once in a while, there's a situation that is not super comfortable, not super fun. And then on the last day of the race, you're like, Thank God I can get out of here as quickly as possible. Because some people just I mean, the people that open their doors and take cyclists in and and yeah, like you said, with host housing, a lot of times, you just contact the race and the race gives you an email and address maybe a phone number. And you just show up to this person or this family's house and they just have a spare bedroom for you. That's if it's a good host house sometimes there's couches and other situations like an air mattress, but if you're lucky you get a full bedroom to yourself maybe a full bathroom and then you're just part of that family for two With three, four or five days, it's, it's pretty wild. And it's, you meet these amazing people. And I know people in so many different cities now and families that I would stay with a week or two at Redlands or out in New Mexico. And it's it's wild to think about that. I did it for so many years and so many times throughout the years that it just became normal to me. And then when I describe it to people, I just sound insane. I was like, Yeah, I live there for like a week or two. And people are just, they just can't comprehend. They're like, see, you live there with a family for like two weeks, and then you just left and you haven't been back. And they just did it for free. And I was like, yeah, that's pretty much how it is.
Andrew Vontz 30:45
What was the toughest sleeping situation that you had? I know, I'm like, keep going deep on this. But I'm curious because I've heard of some strange sleeping scenarios. I mean, what a fill of diamonds books, he talks about rolling himself up in a carpet on the side of the road somewhere. Hopefully you haven't had to do that. But How bad did it get?
Zach Nehr 31:06
Thankfully, mine is not quite that bad. Remember, Tucson was one year where we were staying in a house where I think I moved in there just after Thanksgiving, maybe first week of December. And I want to say it was three bedrooms, two baths, or maybe there was only one bath, it's hard to remember. I want to say it was three bedroom, two bath house. And at the beginning of the year, in January, we had four guys living there full time, which made sense was comfortable. I was in a shared bedroom. And then there were two guys that had their own. And then all of a sudden in February, there were a couple local races. We had team training camp. Couple people came visit couple people's girlfriends came to visit couple managers, directors, other racers needed a place to crash. And all of a sudden we went from four guys to one night. I remember coming home and the whole living room floor and dining room floor was just air mattresses all just shoulder to shoulder air mattresses. And I just had to ask how many people are sleeping here tonight. And the number was 12. It's like, so there's 12 People here. And there's two bathrooms and there's just people sleeping on air mattresses over here, a guy on the couch over here. It's like I was I was lucky that I was one of the ones that just was sharing a bedroom. And I think someone was on an air mattress in there. And it was just so hard to walk around. And then with all that everyone is everyone's a cyclist too. So then the part that isn't air mattresses. Everything else is just bikes up against the wall bike stacked over here bikes in the kitchen bikes in the back. You're just like what are we doing?
Andrew Vontz 32:58
I have to assume that someone knocked a bike over at some point somebody probably Benadryl your hanger? Things got messy.
Zach Nehr 33:05
Definitely. Definitely. Yeah, I think I think I knocked over my own TT bike at some point, it's always bound to happen.
Andrew Vontz 33:12
Yeah, it's tough with those extensions. So you get off the road. The pandemic happens, you get you have this you have this moment with Swift if people aren't familiar with Swift Swift is a massive multiplayer online game. That where you control an avatar on the screen using a bike trainer that you put your real bike on, it's connected to the screen, you have sensors that detect the power output that you're putting out, as well as your heart rate. And you then control this avatar that's racing against the avatars of other we believe that they're primarily humans, there might be alien life forms or cyborgs, racing on this web platform based on some of the waters that I saw on there today. So you jump into Swift How quick is it before you get into pro level swift racing? And what is that like?
Zach Nehr 34:05
Yeah, it was, it was a while it was probably six or seven months before I really got to that level of bracing. I, when I first started on Zwift, I only had what they call a DME trainer. So it wasn't it wasn't virtually electronically connected to the app of Swift, so I was getting no feedback. My trainer was basically it wasn't changing resistance. I wish I would just change gears and I had a power meter on my bike, which kind of estimated how fast my avatar was going in the game. But I really just started out with the bare bones setup on Zwift just to try it out. And eventually I think I got a team sponsor to send me a smart trainer to try out. And that was when I really got into this with racing. And it took me a while to get to get decent at Zwift racing because on the road I was always known as the skinny climber, stage racer Time Trial guy. So just long sustained power, I was really good over like three or four or five hour road races. And Zwift is the opposite Zwift it's tons of 1020 30 minute races, super high intensity, super short efforts, like 30 seconds, one minute, two minute all out, and then a sprint at the end. And everyone that knew me, when I was living in Tucson as 140 pound road racer, was like, my biggest weakness is the sprint, I couldn't, couldn't break seven or 800 Watts and on Zwift if you can't break 900 or 1000 in the sprint, you'd have no chance. And when I first started on Zwift, I was just struggling to hang on, I didn't understand the dynamics of like following the draft and learning the game. It really took me a long time to learn that. But I think by that winter of 2020 I was really committed to the virtual racing world at that point. So I I'm a very analytical person, I'm a numbers guy. So I dove into a bunch of articles and, and videos of the professionals with races. I'm like, what numbers are they doing? What do I need to do on this climb to stay with the group? What do I need to train in a sprint to be able to keep up with these guys. And it was just I kind of took that old road racer mentality and just applied it to 20 minutes with races and got as good as I could at those those short and explosive efforts. And by that winter, I was racing pretty much on Swift for five days a week. It was definitely overdoing it, but I was enjoying it. I was loving it. So I wasn't going to stop. And I remember I got a random Instagram DM from a guy named Brian Duffy Jr. and I was like, Who is this guy? I have no idea who this is. I don't get random DMS often. And he sent me this message about he's starting this with team. He saw me on my swift profile. And he raced against me a couple of times. And he said they're starting this new team of just they only have four guys right now. But one of them was a former World Tour pro named Dan Turner. And I just thought, There's no way this is real. There's no way this guy that I don't know, just sent me a DM he's like, we have a world tour guy. And we're starting his gift team. And our goal is to be the best team on Zwift. And I was like, There's no way this is real. And that team turned into next esport presented by in short, and we're the best team on Zwift. And we won two seasons of this with Premier League. And I was I worked my way up to one of the best riders on that team and going to the the esport World Championships on Swift and representing next and all these races and it all started with a random DM back in 2020.
Andrew Vontz 37:56
That's why I'll did What changes have you made to enable you to go to that level? And what did you learn from all the analysis that you did have open source material out there about what it takes to perform on Swift versus real world racing?
Zach Nehr 38:14
Yeah, it's another great question. I think I got a little bit lucky because I think my biggest weakness when I first started on Zwift was the short anaerobic efforts. But I think that was my biggest weakness only because for the last five or six years, I never trained those things. I never trained my one minute or two minute power, I was always focused on the longer stuff I was always focused on the stage races. And I always thought it was a weakness of mine the one and two minute efforts. So once I got on Zwift I really wasn't doing many intervals anymore, I would just do so many Zwift races and sometimes back to back swift races where you would get maybe in 30 minutes, you would have three or four all out one or two minute efforts in there. And that was close enough to the training that I needed to really stimulate those adaptations. And all of a sudden after a couple of years of that those those are my biggest strengths are those those ones in those two minute efforts I'm I'm at a level that I never thought was possible before I remember back in college doing 700 watts for 30 seconds as a power PR and thinking that was insane. And now I can do 700 watts for a minute and 20 seconds and at the end of his with grace and I never thought I had that ability. And I was just scared to train it outside. But on the trainer doings with races, I would just follow the wheel and mentally for me the races were just so stimulating. I wasn't thinking about how much it hurt. I would just do it over and over and over again and I saw in my training peaks in my Strava just those those little increments over time where I was 1% Better than I was a month ago and all of a sudden you look back two and a half years later and Do you think well, my one minute power is 25 or 30%, higher than it was. And a lot of times, I think, especially with my clients, I try to remind them to focus on the long term because especially if you're already a well trained athlete, you're never going to make a significant amount of fitness gains in a month or two months or three months, it's going to take a long time, maybe six months or a year, depending on your specific goal. But for me, I was just committed over time to, I want to be one of the best riders on Zwift. And I know I'm not going to get there in a month. But I just love the racing so much. I'm just going to keep doing the racing, I'm going to rest when I need to. And then over time, after many, many, many months of that, and now a couple of years of that. I've I mean, I'm definitely not at 100% of my peak, but I definitely am at a level that I never thought I could reach before. And it's all you look back and it was two and a half, three years of work behind that.
Andrew Vontz 41:01
When did your mentality shift? Or when did you realize that the feeling that you had that I'm just not good at these certain efforts, and they feel incredibly uncomfortable? When did that shift to Oh, actually, I just need to do this more and become accustomed to how it feels. Because I have to imagine and I'm, of course projecting a bit here, Zach, but a part of my experience on Zwift at the beginning, because like you, I absolutely love racing on Zwift, I find it to be incredibly fun. I mean, I don't know if this makes me a weird person. But I actually really enjoy it. I love the dynamics of it to me, it gives me everything that I love about racing in the real world. But I can just walk into my garage and do it whenever I want. Without any of the hassle. Side find that to be really fun. And it is quite different. Like the race is always started almost like a cyclocross race where, you know, you're a little bit below being totally maxed out, but you're pretty maxed out. And I have to imagine at the pro level, it's even higher. So did you just have to get used to this feeling of I'm doing something that's uncomfortable that I haven't done a lot of training to do? Or did you have that realization slowly over time?
Zach Nehr 42:18
Yeah, I think it was, it was one of those things that it's both a moment and a process. But that I think, for me, mentally, I find that in life and endurance sports, the mental component has always been bigger and harder for me than the physical component. The training, especially as a numbers guy, and an analytical person, it feels pretty simple for me to figure it all out and to write the training plan, but to do it to get through the heart intervals to get through the long rides, to get to sleep on time and recover. And the consistency of it all. The mental part has always been bigger. So So yeah, with these efforts, I remember getting dropped so many times in races, where it was a 92nd climb or two minute effort where after 40 or 45 seconds, I would just hit this wall in my mind where I can't do this anymore. There's no way I can do this, this hurts so bad right now, I can't do this for 45 more seconds. So I did have that moment of realization. But it took many, many, many months before I could consistently push past that moment. Because it was just repetition after repetition of at first I just had to get past that wall of okay, if I if I think that through that process, in my mind is I can't do this for 45 more seconds. But then if I thought past that, my next thought was, what if I tried? What if I went 10 More seconds, I'm not going to die, I'm not going to pass out. It's going to hurt a lot. But what if I try and then I will try 10 seconds, and then I'll try 20 seconds, and then all of a sudden, on a 92nd Climb. I'm with the front pack for a minute and 20 seconds. And then that last 10 seconds. In my mind, it's like, well, the finish line is right there. I can't quit now minus, I might as well finish that effort. And then it hurts like crazy and you hit a new max heart rate. But you did it. And then all of a sudden once you do it once, then you're like, you realize I can do that for 90 seconds. So on a five minute climb, if I get dropped three minutes in, what if I try to make it to three and a half? What if I tried to make it before and I had so many of these races and I remember this from outdoor racing to this happen multiple multiple times where there's that moment in my mind where it feels like my legs at the wall where in my mind I think I can't sustain this. I can't hold this anymore. But then if I shift my mentality and think what if I tried to keep going? What if I pushed past this for 10 seconds or five more minutes and 99% of the Time, probably 99.9% of the time, nothing catastrophic happens. Maybe you get dropped, maybe on a five minute climb, I make it three and a half minutes. And then the pack accelerates, and I get dropped. But sometimes, I would push past that three and a half minute mark on the five minute climb. And then four minutes into the climb, Everyone's tired, the pack slows down, and I make it over the top. And that's what I realized is that, once I got to these higher and higher level races, you get to that point where you realize, Wow, I'm hurting a lot. But everyone else is hurting too. I think I get stuck a lot in my mind where if I'm halfway up a climb, and everything hurts, and I'm at 99% of my max heart rate, I have to realize that no one else is feeling great right now. Maybe if the pack is 100. Guys, maybe there's two or three guys that are thinking about maybe attack you right now. But the majority of the field just like me is about to get dropped. Or they're thinking I can't do this anymore. I just want everyone to slow down. And you get to that point where you realize Everyone's tired. If I can keep going 30 more seconds. There's all these other people that are going to give up before that. And then all of a sudden you get to these races where I was getting dropped into finishing 15th before. Now I'm getting top 10 And then you get top five. And then once you get into that, that podium conversation, once you get there, then all of a sudden you have that other mentality switch, where even though it hurts so much, it's that adrenaline of going for the win. It's like when you see those sprinters in pro bike races, when they crossed the line, and they celebrate, it looks like they're not tired, they have so much energy. Because all the adrenaline of winning just hit them, even though they just went super hard for the last five or 10 minutes of the race and then sprint it all out for 20 seconds. They're probably at their max heart rate. But all of a sudden, they're celebrating and they're running around and they're talking. And the other guys are collapsed on the ground. And then physically, their bodies are going through almost the same thing. But that adrenaline is that mentality switches oh my god, I did it. And I'm so excited. Rather than, Oh no, I got dropped. That was horrible. I just want this pain to end. And that mentality has been so important for me to push past those those walls and those barriers in my mind.
Andrew Vontz 47:26
And what have you had to progress as an athlete? Both with your setup because I have to say like you talked about, hey, I was on. I was on like an analog trainer, basically, then you got on a smart trainer. I'm curious, how has your actual physical setup changed over time? And again, for people that aren't deeply familiar with erasing and the team dynamic and everything? Could you talk a little bit about that and how communication happens during the race?
Zach Nehr 47:57
Yeah, so So I'll start with that one with virtual racing. I'm pretty much on Discord with my different groups and different teammates, we have our own our own chats, and then the chats within the chats of this conversation is just generally about bikes. This one's about pro bike racing. This one's about the next swift race. And then this one is about sharing social content or your live stream or something like that. And within all those channels, my teammates and I would get on Discord and get on the voice channel for for swift races. And through that it's pretty much like being on a team radio pretty much like being on a group phone call or something like that. I've been on a couple of where people have their cameras on. So it's kind of like being on zoom on a Zoom meeting in the middle of a swift race. And, yeah, you can just talk to your teammates on there in the middle of a race with headphones on all connected to your phone. So it's super seamless. And for those races, there's so much tactically that goes into into pro swift racing, especially, especially on Zwift. Now they have all these different new race formats where their their points races, and they're not normal points, races. So there's intermediate sprints throughout the stage. So there's points here, there's points here, there's more points on the climb, there's less in the sprint. Now there's points at the finish. And every race is different with that. So it's very, very complicated. So on there, we'll have my teammates talking through every sprint and who's going to go for which sprint, and then we'll also have a team director who's not racing, but they're watching the race, and they're giving us direction they're telling us what other teams are doing and how other riders are doing and things like that. So that communication within the race as always been super super important. And then go on with going back to my my setup my equipment. I feel like I definitely have a more basic indoor trainer setup than most people think. I I don't have a lot that's that's, that's fancy about it. I don't have a fancy trainer desk. I don't have a ton of like Wahoo kicker fans or anything like that i i have this giant industrial fan that my dad got me from Costco.
Andrew Vontz 50:17
Costco my dad, my dad loves Costco too. He'll be glad to hear that. Yeah, I still love Costco. My closest Costco is just like five hours away in a different state. So I might be in the wrong state.
Zach Nehr 50:27
Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And, and also, what I got to Costco was, a lot of people put put heavy sandbags on their trainer legs, because especially if we're doing hard efforts, or sprinting, sometimes the trainer will actually come off the ground, which is very jarring when you're in the middle of a sprint on the trainer. So instead of getting sandbags, I got rice bags from Costco that are 25 pounds each, and put one on each leg of the trainer. And it holds it down. Great. It's working really well, because I thought, Well, why would I waste money on sand, I can't use sand for anything. But if I have rice in there, then I mean every once in a while I'll am hungry. So I'll go get a cup of rice on the train or leg. I'll have to get a new bag array, a new bag of rice. If I eat too much, I don't want one side of the trainer start flipping over. But But otherwise, I have kind of like a MacGyver setup where it's like an old bookcase with the shelf pulled out and I put my laptop on the shelf. And then I have a monitor on top of that, that has a fire stick so I can watch stuff. I can watch cycling and Netflix and stuff up there. And then my laptop, I'll have Zwift and then I have headphones connected to the display. And then I'll have headphones connected to my phone so I can be on Swift. And then I have a ledge next to all that just the windowsill where I'll have towels towels are super important. Tons of sites wet more than most people. So a bunch of towels. They're a bunch of sweat bands. So I'm bright red one that I look super cool, I'm sure wearing for the trainer. And I think that's that's probably the majority of it. I've a mat under everything, like a big just like thin rubber mat. So I don't want to I'm still in an apartment. So I don't want to damage the floor or make too much noise or anything like that. I try to be conscious of my neighbors. But I feel that I don't know if anyone can hear me can hear me when I'm racing at 5am I haven't gotten any complaints. So I don't think they can hear me. But it's pretty loud. I shift on the trainer.
Andrew Vontz 52:41
Wow. And are you using the same bike that you ride outside inside? Or do you have a bike that you just leave on the trainer?
Zach Nehr 52:47
Yeah, I have two different bikes. So the bike on the trainer is my dad's old giant from I think 2001 or 2002, an old aluminum bike that has a bunch of dents in it from crashing. It has big aluminum wheels on there because you don't need a light bike on the trainer. It's just it just sits there. And it's great because I can I can sweat all over it. It has external cable routing. So like if I need to replace anything, it's super easy to replace. The only thing that's fancy about that bike is the the Kogel oversize derailleur pulley that I put on there that my team was I was lucky enough my my team on Zwift sent me that because I think it saves five or 10 Watts, which on the trainer is huge. At the at the professional level, the margins are so thin that putting that on there has definitely made a difference. And then I have a different bike that I use for outdoor racing. It's an argon 18 that I use with the project Exelon, and that one's definitely like a nicer lightweight carbon frame with nicer wheels on there that I definitely beat that one up outside a little bit. But I don't pour sweat all over it like I do on the trainer by
Andrew Vontz 54:08
the external cables that you can easily access. That's such a fantastic idea because I don't know about you, but I find probably because of corrosion from sweating. I do need to change my shift cables fairly regularly. And if those heads break off inside the shifters, gosh, it's such a drag. It's such a drag that I wish, Schramm would just send me an e tab set up that I could put on my trainer bike. So if anyone from SRAM is listening, and you would like to send me that I would you know, you can contact me at Hardway pod on social or choose the hardware@gmail.com. So Zack, the showstopper, we've just got a couple minutes left here. This is what the people came for. You have a very compelling story. I've really enjoyed hearing about it. But let's get down to business and let's talk about the mysterious world of my whoosh racing. Tell me a little bit about what's been going on in the past few weeks? And what is going on in the mywish? Paradise? How does it compare to Swift? What's going down?
Zach Nehr 55:08
Yeah, it's a crazy, crazy world on my watch. It's so funny to me because there's this hush hush culture about my words, that you're not supposed to talk about it, you're not supposed to spread the word too much. Because there's lots of money in it. And everyone, everyone wants to keep it keep it small. We don't want too many people coming in here. But in the last couple months, I've seen my wish everywhere it's in it was in all of the big cycling news publications when they announced the million dollar stage race, which is what I'll talk about in a minute. But it made the headlines. I mean, it's it's on the jersey of Todd a poacher car, it's right on his back every time they show him any anytime they show a UAE rider in any bike race, it's, it's right on their back right there. So I don't know why people are trying it. why there aren't more people on there. I think people in my experience, the people that I've told about it, most are scared of how hard the races are, because I tell them about the power numbers. And I tell them about what you need to do just to get top 10. And they're like, No way. No way. I even want to try that.
Andrew Vontz 56:18
And at first, sorry, Zack before we go on, because I bet there are a lot of people who are like, are they talking about Dungeons and Dragons? What is my wish?
Zach Nehr 56:29
I would describe my wish, as it's an indoor cycling app just like Swift. It's, yeah, it's very similar. It's you have free rides on on worlds and group rides with other riders, you have an avatar that's connected to a smart trainer. So you, it works the same way you plug in your smart trainer, plug in your bike to the virtual cycling app. And then you can do free rides in a bunch of different worlds budgeted for courses. You can do group rides, and then of course, there's the races and there's workouts and other things like that. But it works and functions very, very much the same as swift.
Andrew Vontz 57:06
And it's I believe that it I don't want to miss speak here. But I do believe that this is funded by the United Arab Emirates sovereign wealth fund or something similar to that, right. Like it is a UAE product?
Zach Nehr 57:19
I believe so. I'm pretty sure Yeah, I haven't done the research on that. But I believe so. Yeah.
Andrew Vontz 57:26
Right. And so they recently had this very high profile lucrative racing series that you were involved in. How did you get involved in it? Was it invite only to get a secret invitation? And tell us a little bit about what went into the racing? When did it happen? What was the level of competition?
Zach Nehr 57:47
Yeah, I think. So. I've been racing on my roof since March of last year. So I had been on it a while I knew the races, I knew the platform, I knew the guys that race on there, and how it all worked with the verification because my watch has their own performance verification system, which is probably the biggest thing that separates them from Zwift. And other racing platforms is it's this internal verification process where you send in all these videos and power files, and that they're double checking all of your equipment and power numbers and everything to make sure that no one's cheating. And that's a big thing that scares a lot of people away.
Andrew Vontz 58:29
But what are the what are the videos? Zack? What videos do you have to submit?
Zach Nehr 58:34
Yeah, so we have to do way in videos, which is totally normal for virtual bike racing. And then we had to do two other videos for the the million dollar stage race, we had to do an equipment video where you show your smart trainer and your dual recording, which is like a secondary power meter on your bike. So you had to do a video of basically your your entire indoor training setup and your bike. And you had to show yourself connecting it all to my wish and your device that shows my whoosh and that everything connects to. And we also needed to do a video that was it was an FTP test, which is basically a power fitness test that you do on the bike we had to do it was all in one workout in like an hour. It was a five minute all out test, and then a 20 minute all out tests and you had to film the entire thing. So you had to show yourself riding you had to show them my blue screen, you had to show your equipment and your trainer all at the same time for that entire test. So basically taking as many steps as they can to make sure you're a real person and you're on a real bike and you're doing real power numbers on my wish.
Andrew Vontz 59:47
And the way in video, how close to race time does the weigh in have to occur and is that a one time thing or does that happen every time you race?
Zach Nehr 59:58
Yeah, so my wish has the biggest Just window out of any virtual bike racing that I've done. Most of the time, it's either like the morning of the race or on Zwift. It's like a two hour window right before the race. With whoosh, it's the video SP taken no earlier than 40 hours before the race and no later than 12 hours before the race. So for most people, they do it about two days out. Which opens up this whole other conversation of are these people weight cutting? Are people taking drastic measures to try to be lighter, and then just refeeding and refueling for these races? So that's another deeper conversation. But yeah, for which it's a very long window of basically two days, two full days before the race that you can weigh in. Yeah.
Andrew Vontz 1:00:50
Yeah. And I mean, in all sports, weight cutting takes a very severe toll on the body. But we see this in combat sports, where competitors will cut 20 to 35 pounds, that's very common. And then they refeed in the 24 hours prior to competing, and seem to be able to do it at a pretty high level. I don't know what the precedent is in endurance sports, but I have to imagine that's horrible for your health. And if there's money on the line, I guarantee people are doing it.
Zach Nehr 1:01:24
Yeah, I agree. There's there's guys that are definitely weighing in on my whoosh. Five to 10 to 12 pounds lighter than they are on Zwift. And that they are on Strava. And you see them in real life races. And you just think there's no way that guy weighs 140 pounds. But I'm why my whoosh if you can, if you can cut. There's a lot of guys that have been racing on my whoosh for a couple of years. And I'm sure they have a protocol that works for them. And I don't know if they have a sauna that they just get into. And they time it with their eating and can be five or 10 pounds lighter. It's definitely really tricky. And I don't recommend it at all. But it's definitely it's definitely happening. Yeah.
Andrew Vontz 1:02:07
And for the racing that you've been doing, I know from our text exchanges, you're not doing this at the ideal time that you typically would be competing on a bike. So can you say a little bit about that? And then tell us about what's going on in the races? And how does it compare to what you've done previously?
Zach Nehr 1:02:25
Yeah, so most of the my route races are for my time, which is central standard time. They are at 5am, which is really, really hard. Most of the mywish races on Sunday mornings for me. So they're hosted in the UAE. So I think it's around noon, and the UAE I think it's somewhere around seven or eight hours ahead of me. So most of the races are ideal for the guys in Europe. There are a couple of guys, that race from Australia and New Zealand, that I think we're racing close to midnight, which honestly, I think I would rather do about 5am than a midnight race. But for me, I do 5am Pretty much every single week. And then for the world championship that was seven races in eight days that were all at 5am. So for those I was getting up at 340 in the morning, every single day habit of banana chugging coffee, and then getting warmed up. So I could be awake and ready to sprint off the start line at 5am. And, and those races are really, really tough. Most of the mywish races are a little bit over an hour long. And they never finish on a flat road. I think the shortest climb that we finish on is three and a half or four minutes. And that's like got to 18% grade net. So it's not an easy climb.
Andrew Vontz 1:03:57
Oh, that's terrible.
Zach Nehr 1:04:01
Yeah. And the longest climb that we finish on is, I think 32 minutes. So it's definitely a it's definitely not an easy race format. There's never an easy finish, and the lean into the climb. A lot of the times are not any easier than the climb itself. It's just it is survival of the fittest. You probably start with 30 or 40 Guys and halfway through the race less than 20 You're left by the time you get to the last 5k Maybe there's six or seven guys still in contention and then the prize money goes five deep so once six place gets dropped. That guy usually gives up and then the top five race for the race for the money at that point.
Andrew Vontz 1:04:47
So how did it work out for you?
Zach Nehr 1:04:49
I finished in the boost stage race. I finished ninth overall and third place team and on my wish most of prize money is in the team competition, which is really interesting. I think out of all of cycling, I don't know if there's another format that really values the team more than the individual except maybe like the team pursuit on the track. But, but yeah, there's way more prize money in the in the team. So I'm lucky enough to be on a super international team called the Italian gelato. And for those who stayed race, we had me a Dutch guy, Swedish guy, an Italian guy, and a Norwegian guy. So we're all racing to different countries at different times. But every day we get on Discord, and just, we weren't really talking much during those races, there's not as much tactics as it is just breeding really hard and sweating a lot and trying to get top five at the end.
Andrew Vontz 1:05:51
When you look at writers like Jay vine, who went from the swift to, you know, being a real hitter at the World Tour level, do you think about doing something like that? Do you see yourself as having that kind of potential? Or where do you want to take things going forward?
Zach Nehr 1:06:11
I pretty much asked myself this question every day for the past couple of months. I am definitely at that point in my life where I am figuring things out, as people like to say, I'm kind of in between the writing world, the coaching world and the professional cycling world, I'm kind of dipping my toe in each of them all at the same time and trying to figure out, am I going to continue doing all three or fully commit to one or fully commit to two and right now, Pro Cycling is probably my number one priority, because I feel like physically, I'm very close to, to my peak and probably being at that physical peak for the next five or six years. So I really want to go for that now. And my fitness and my mentality is that a really good level I've learned so much in the last couple of years. And, and yeah, things like swift Academy is number one on my priority list, because that's basically the ticket from going from amateur to European Pro. I kind of did the in between things surfing around the US doing the Pro Am stage races. And for me, that next step is really racing as a pro in Europe. And getting into those races, the style of racing is so different over there, the races are harder and longer. And that's definitely more my style. So Zwift Academy last year, I actually almost made the finals, I made the worst mistake of forgetting to send in the paperwork on time. Otherwise, I think I had a chance to be invited to the finals in Spain and compete for the professional cycling contract. But there were there were three pieces of paperwork, and I filled out two of them. And I forgot about the third one. So that one's no one's on me. But you have to Khadem II is coming up again, this fall, usually around September time. So that's, that's pretty much my number one goal for the next couple of months is, is training for that and doing a lot of racing along the way. Trying to make as much prize money as possible. And then seeing what kind of numbers I can do for Zwift Academy in September and hopefully getting an invite to go to Europe and basically try out for professional cycling team in October.
Andrew Vontz 1:08:31
Have you submitted the paperwork already?
Zach Nehr 1:08:35
I have not but I have. I have the email of the people that organized boot Academy. And I've talked to them a couple of times, and I've met them virtually a couple times. So at least this time, there's a little bit of rapport, they know my name. So hopefully if I forget to send it in, they'll send me a reminder before it's too
Andrew Vontz 1:08:55
late. Never forget to send in the paperwork. I think that that's a great life lesson, Zach. And thanks for taking time to be here today. And for sharing these stories and for unraveling the mysteries of the mywish world. I think we're going to be hearing a lot more about my wish in the future. And Zack, I know we're going to see you continue to do big things and all three of those domains coaching, writing and in the pro cycling domain, so thanks for being here. Really appreciate it.
Zach Nehr 1:09:23
Of course. Yeah, thank you so much for having me on. This was a really, really cool experience. I loved telling these stories, and I really love this, this medium and this podcast. So thank you for giving me the platform today. I really appreciate it