A Root Canal From Hell, Paris-Roubaix Predictions, and AI Comes for Ian's Job

Dialed Podcast 382 Recap

A Loose Open and a Salty Brit

The episode opens the way the good ones do, with everyone a little punchy and nobody in a hurry. Ian debuts a new intro line that lands so well it sticks, Lance opens by declaring war on teeth, and the four of them settle into the easy rhythm that comes from doing this for the better part of a decade. If you are new here, this is a fine place to jump in. If you have been around a while, you already know the feel.

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The Backpedal: Spring Break, Sore Legs, and a Week From Hell

Every episode kicks off with the Backpedal, where the guys recap what they have been up to since the last show.

Matt took the family to Washington, DC for spring break and walked everyone into the ground, racking up double-digit miles a day across the National Mall and Arlington. Lance had done the same trip years ago in full travel-dad mode, twelve hours and every monument, which is exactly the kind of thing that earns you a mutiny from your kids. Ian kept it simple: a few good days on the bike, then a familiar problem flared up. His knee pain is back, which is putting a dent in his structured training right as the local season ramps up.

Then Lance told the story of his week from hell. A root canal went sideways, and not because anyone did anything wrong. The ligament that holds the tooth in the bone got injured and infected, which set off a storm of pain that the meds could not touch. He logged seven straight days of Strava zeros, barely slept for six of them, and skipped a race, which for Lance is the real measure of how bad it was. The upside, if there is one, is that his legs came out of it fresh. He was already eyeing a gravel race the very next day, because of course he was.

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The Leadout: Classics Season and the Paris-Roubaix Picks

It was holy week in Belgium when the guys recorded, with the Tour of Flanders just run and Paris-Roubaix two days out. Mathieu van der Poel had just taken Flanders for the third time in a finish so orderly the top five rolled in almost exactly in their predicted order, thirty seconds apart down the line. The guys also got into Remco Evenepoel's strange tip-over from a stage race, the kind of crash that happens the instant your hands leave the bars and you hit something you never saw. Every one of them has a version of that story.

Then came the fun part: picks for Paris-Roubaix before a single cobble had been hit. Van der Poel was the heavy favorite, with the table agreeing that Pogacar would struggle to shake him on a course with no real climb to do it on. Lance and Ian both leaned van der Poel. Matt threw his chips on Pogacar just to root for history. Jake planted a hot take that Pogacar would crash and van der Poel would get the better of a Wout van Aert who he badly wanted to see win. Recording these picks ahead of the race is a fun listen now that we all know how the day actually unfolded.

One bit of tech news from the segment is worth pulling out, because it is a conversation we have at the lab all the time. The UCI moved to ban the wheelset that lets a rider adjust tire pressure on the fly, the kind of trick setup that would be a real weapon on the pave. The guys split on it the way the whole sport does: Ian argued that runaway tech turns racing into a spending contest that trickles down to the rest of us, while Jake pushed back that the sport has always advanced on new gear, from disc brakes to tubeless. There is no clean answer, which is what made it a good back-and-forth. The honest takeaway for the rest of us is simpler. The pros sort their tire pressure with a banned five-figure wheelset; you and I get there with the right tire, a smart sealant choice, and five minutes with a gauge.

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EPO Chain Mail: A Small World and a Lot of Listeners

The EPO Chain Mail segment is normally where the guys read listener mail, but this episode came so fast on the heels of the last one that nobody had time to write in. So Jake went to the stats instead, and the numbers were genuinely cool. In the week since the last episode alone, people had listened from seventeen different countries. Going back over the life of the show on the current platform, that figure climbs past a hundred countries and territories, across more than a thousand cities worldwide. For four guys talking bikes around a table in Vancouver, Washington, that reach still stops them in their tracks. If you are listening from one of those far-flung spots, the standing invitation is to send a message through the link in your podcast app and say hello.

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The Hot Seat: Do Shallow Climbing Wheels Still Have a Place?

Ian kicked off the Hot Seat by nodding at the brand-new blue Factor road bike sitting across the table, a custom watercolor paint job matching the one an entire WorldTour team raced last summer. Then he asked the real question: with deep aero rims now light enough and stable enough to climb on, is there any reason left to own a set of shallow climbing wheels?

The table mostly landed in the same place. Jake said he has no desire to ride anything shallower than a 40mm rim, calling it the sweet spot that climbs fine and still gives you the aero benefit without getting tossed around in a crosswind. Lance agreed and admitted he plans his rides around the descents anyway, so he will take the deeper, faster wheel unless it is truly howling out. They gave real credit to how far the engineering has come, with the elliptical rim shapes on modern designs taming the sidewind problem that used to make deep sections a handful. There is still a sliver of a case for an ultralight build, the way their teammate's roughly ten-and-a-half-pound weight-weenie bike makes sense as its own obsession, but for almost everyone, a smart all-rounder depth wins.

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The Hot Seat, Round Two: Would You Wear a Cycling Airbag?

Matt brought a second one to the table: a 500-gram wearable airbag system, the kind already used in MotoGP, now being pitched for the pro peloton and built right into a skinsuit. On a scale of one to a hundred, would you wear it every ride if the tech actually worked?

The answers were lower than you might expect. Lance put himself at fifteen, mostly worried it would fire off the second he bunny-hopped a curb. Ian was right there with him, with the very honest caveat that he is a vain roadie who would only wear it if the pros did first. Jake, who has a hard history with a car, saw the appeal more clearly but balked at the price and the bulk. The consensus was that the real home for this tech is probably gravity and downhill, where the weight does not matter and the crashes are bigger, and that it will likely enter road racing the way helmets and discs did: slowly, against resistance, and then all at once.

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The Big Topic: How the Guys Actually Use AI

The main topic started as a quick check-in and turned into one of the more interesting conversations the show has had in a while. The question was simple: what AI tools are you all actually using, and how?

Lance turned out to be the power user. He runs an AI-driven coaching platform built on a real coach's methods, and he leans on a general assistant for travel itineraries, race-day nutrition and pacing plans, even breakdowns of how a race actually went after the fact. His one gripe is that the model constantly underestimates how much training his body can absorb, which, fair, his Strava would scare any coach. Matt uses it as a sounding board and an idea generator. Ian admitted he has fallen a little behind the curve since retiring, having tried it once to draft a blog before deciding it did not sound like him.

That last point opened the real debate: can AI replace a coach? The guys were thoughtful about it. They agreed coaching is one of the things AI is genuinely well suited to, especially for a highly motivated athlete with clear goals. But they kept circling back to what it cannot do. It does not know your rivals or the local course. It does not account for the stress of the rest of your life, which is exactly why Lance can absorb the volume he does. And it will never proactively tell you the hard truth a good coach will, the way Ian can look at a power file and say you are racing too much. Jake closed the loop with the most useful point of all, one we live by here: AI gives people-pleasing answers and will fill a gap with what it thinks you want to hear, so you always vet the output against a real source before you trust it. Used that way, as a fast and tireless assistant rather than an authority, it has become a genuinely useful tool over the last few months.

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One Last Thing

Each host closes with a final note. Matt previewed a run of upcoming tech reviews and wrestled out loud with the honest-reviewer's dilemma, sitting on a watch he cannot really recommend and trying to be fair to the people who built it without misleading the people thinking about buying it. He has glowing things to say about the Garmin Forerunner 970 in the same breath, so keep an eye on his channel. Ian made his pitch, the first of what he promised would be many, for his Barton Park Road Race on May 9th, a 50-dollar grassroots road race he runs for the love of the community and may not be able to keep running forever. Lance teased a video from a gravel race he was lining up for the very next day. And Jake signed off heading to a soccer tournament in North Carolina, still here, still making the show.

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Listen to the Full Episode

This recap only scratches the surface. The full episode is packed with the kind of unfiltered banter, race breakdowns, and hard-earned wisdom that only comes from four guys who genuinely love this sport. Hit play on the player above, or find Episode 382 of the Dialed Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

And if the Paris-Roubaix tire talk or the wheel debate got you thinking about your own setup, from wheels to tires, sealant, and tire inserts, we stock it all at the lab. Better yet, bring your wheels by and we will set the system up right and send you out with fresh sealant. We are always happy to help you get dialed.