The Rundown: The guys come off a hard-fought Rowena Rubaix weekend and dig into one of the better debates the show has run lately: in a world where race promoters keep leaning into Eddy class, does the average rider even need a time trial bike anymore? Plus sodium bicarb, durability training, and a Flanders preview.
Dialed Podcast 361 Recap
A wrong turn at Rowena, the case for and against TT bikes, and the training trends the pros are obsessing over.
Backpedal: Rowena Rubaix
The big story was the resurrected Rowena Rubaix, the state championship road race on a course that mixes pavement and gravel through the Columbia Gorge, brought back by Team Morgan after roughly eight years off the calendar. Ian recaps a brutal but fun day that included a wrong turn into Mosier, a dropped chain, and a furious ten-minute chase above threshold to get back on. Lance, sitting in a chase group, went to the front and held a steady tempo to help reel Ian back in, then led out the finish. The team came away with a podium sweep in the 60-plus field, with Kurt Crico winning, Ian second, and Gary Cornelius third.
EPO Chain Mail and the Bicarb Question
Matt opened the hot seat with sodium bicarbonate, the buffering supplement showing up on World Tour start lines in little tubs and spoons. The takeaway: products like the Maurten Bicarb System genuinely help, but they work best for short, high-intensity efforts in the five-minute range, they are expensive enough that you save them for your few key races, and they do little for the limits of a long endurance day. Ian also talked up high-carb gels for fueling longer gravel races.
Topic: Do You Still Need a TT Bike?
The heart of the episode. Ian just sold his time trial bike, which kicked off a debate about whether the discipline is pricing people out. The arguments against are strong: a competitive TT bike can run well past ten thousand dollars, you have to train and travel with a second bike, and the head-down aero position raises safety concerns on open roads. Meanwhile big stage races like Baker City and the Tucson Bicycle Classic are shifting toward Eddy rules, where everyone races a standard road bike, sometimes with clip-on aero extensions. The consensus: keep the TT categories for the people who love geeking out on pure speed, but lean into Eddy class to lower the barrier and get more riders racing, including more team time trials.
Durability and Specific Training
Lance is rebuilding the short, sharp power he needs for a stretch of mountain bike races, doing brutal one-minute efforts after ninety minutes of zone two. That led into durability, the metric pro teams now use to separate the best riders: not who can go hard on fresh legs, but who can still produce huge numbers deep into a long, draining effort. The lesson for the rest of us is to train with specificity for the actual demands of your events.
Leadout News: Flanders Preview
Champ Bailey set up the cobbled classics. Mathieu van der Poel outclassed the field at E3, and Mads Pedersen soloed to a big win at Gent-Wevelgem. With Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix on deck, the table agreed it would likely come down to van der Poel or Pogacar, with the extra climbing at Flanders nudging a few picks toward Pogacar. Quinn Simmons also grabbed his first World Tour win on a chaotic shortened stage at Volta a Catalunya.
Talk to the guys
Got a question or an idea for the show?
Ask us anything about the podcast, pitch a topic for a future episode, send general feedback, or ask about gear. We read every one.