David Smith - “Just Truly Inspirational”

• All the feedback from David’s episode so far has talked about how inspirational and grounded he was. The trials and tribulations he has overcome in his life must have helped him become such a master of the mind. This can’t be taught in books, it has to come through living life.
• Always the student, never the master. David has a huge appetite for learning, which Phil thinks comes from a desire to heal himself both physically and mentally.
• David was always looking forward to the next goal in his life. Ed feels like this helped him always be driven and forward thinking. Phil agrees, giving examples of high-performance clients he has who do similar things.
• People who don’t do much and don’t look forward can get quite depressed. There are socioeconomic reasons for this that you need to consider.
• Gratitude is important. David was filled with gratitude, and it really helped him keep a happy demeanor. 
• Don’t just turn up, show up. Be your best self with everything you do.
• Dave recalled that his sports psychologist in the past would always be in their office. This created a psychological barrier as well as a physical one, which meant that people would always feel weak if they went to the psychologist. It puts people off from going and getting the psychological help they need.

Colin Jackson - “The importance of empathy”

• The importance of empathy. Colin showed a huge amount of empathy to Ed both during the podcast and when they met in the greenroom of “Question of Sport”.
• Tips for how to transition into ‘The Afterlife’. Ed is currently going through a transition from professional Athlete to ‘The Afterlife’ afterwards, and Colin really guided him through this.  
• Putting yourself first is not being selfish. They are two different things. You need to put yourself first to help other people, as otherwise you will be the one who suffers. Being selfish is only thinking about yourself and not considering other people.  

Pete Kennaugh - “You never know what people are going through”

• Pete really needed to quit cycling, and it was entirely the right thing for him to do. Ed thought maybe it was a mistake and his life wasn’t going too well, but that was far from the case.
• Pete would use his emotion to fuel him, which was completely counter to the advice him and Ed were given by their sports psychologist. It worked for him though, which is all that matters.
• Pete said that the pressure had nothing to do with why he quitted. He loved being there, but he couldn’t shake his mental health issues.
• Pete says he wasn’t a nice person to be around, and gives a big credit to his family and agent. Ed finds this somewhat surprising, as he always thought he was a delight to be around. 
• You never know what people are going through behind the scenes.

Laura Kenny - “Just get s–t done”

• Environment is key. Spending time with your team will help you all perform better. Laura experienced this, and Phil and Ed have also seen it happen with the girls team they both sponsor - Pro Noctis Redchillis. Ed and Phil talk a bit about the camp they went on with the girls team, and how it left them all in a good place. 
• Laura is very chatty and a great people person. This and the fact she is so proactive is what makes her an amazing leader. 
• Laura just get’s s–t done. Phil is the same. Life is about decisions. Making the decision and taking actions off of the back of that decision is more important than whether the decision is right or wrong. 
• There is a part of your stomach that connects to your vagus nerve which is where you get your gut instinct from. It’s why it is important to trust your gut. Research states if you trust your gut you are right 80–90% of the time. 

Future plans for the podcast 

• They want to get someone from a business background on the podcast to talk about high performance. It will be useful to get someone to bring in that perspective. 
• They would love to get a motor sport rider on the podcast. It would be great to have someone with so much experience dealing with flow states. 

References:

• Pro Noctis Redchilli Cycling Team Facebook
• Pro Noctis Redchilli Cycling Team Twitter
• Pro Noctis Redchilli Cycling Team Instagram
• Pro Noctis Youtube Channel
• Pursuit Line Instagram
• Pursuit Line Website
• Pursuit Line Email: team@pursuitline.co.uk

All music by AlexGrohl from Pixabay

Podcast produced by Liam Wilkinson

How Laura has cultivated her resilience and ‘positive stubbornness’ 

• You just need to chase your dreams and desires. You figure out the rest on the way. You may fail, but if you never try you never know.
• When Laura fails she just goes on to the next thing. Laura remembers breaking her shoulder in 2021, and even on the way to the hospital she was planning her next steps in cycling.
• Laura does get nervous before races, but she doesn’t let this stop her. She feels the same about doing talks on stage, it makes her feel physically sick beforehand.
• Laura can be assertive when she wants something. Ed believes this makes her a good leader as it inspires other people and keeps momentum going. She just gets things done. 
• Stay true to yourself. You need to do things for yourself and not for other people. That’s the only way you can make sure you love what you do.

Ed and Laura’s shared cycling experience

• Ed talks about how he knows Laura and her husband, Jason Kenny. They met whilst cycling for Britain, but didn’t have too much interaction due to the means and women's training teams being separate. 
• Ed and Laura both now have experience from the “other side” of the coach-athlete relationship, which has given them perspective on the matter.
• Laura talks about how she has looked up to Ed since Beijing. She related to him, and he inspired her to one day also become a professional cyclist. 
• Without a team, cycling can be a lonely sport. Ed would take a bullet for anyone he cycled with. Laura thinks they wouldn’t have won the 2012 Olympics if it hadn't been for the connection they made as a team. These bonds carry you through the tough times.

Laura and Jason - Power Couple

• Laura has a family, a dog, a husband, and also manages to still be a professional athlete. Ed finds this incredible, and asks her how she does it.
• Laura thinks it may be because she is a bit mental. She thinks it’s quite crazy that she decided to have a baby and go back to being an athlete after. But she can’t help it. If she really wants something, she rarely gives up until she has it.
• She gets a lot of help. Her and Jason’s parents help a lot when things get too hard.
• Laura and Jason are opposites. Jason ums and ers about things, whereas Laura gets things done. Jason doesn’t like talking to people whereas Laura loves it. Because of this, they play to each other's strengths.
• Laura considers her child Albert to be her greatest achievement. He has come out as an amazing kid, even though Laura feels her and Jason don’t put that much effort into parenthood. 

Laura’s Future Plans

• Laura is preparing for the Paris Olympics. Her coaches think she is in the best form she has ever been.
• Laura doesn’t think she could be a coach in the future. She is too harsh, and just tells people to get on with it when they are in pain. Phil thinks that’s just a certain type of coaching style that is actually lacking a bit more in modern coaching. 

References:

• Laura Kenny Twitter
• Laura Kenny Instagram
• Pro Noctis Youtube Channel
• Pursuit Line Instagram
• Pursuit Line Website
• Pursuit Line Email: team@pursuitline.co.uk

All music by AlexGrohl from Pixabay

Podcast produced by Liam Wilkinson

Pete’s Cycling Career

• Pete loved cycling from a young age. That’s what made him work so hard to make a career out of it. His passion. It was internal, he doesn’t feel he was ever pushed too hard externally.

• Pete used to visualize the race all the time, unprompted. He didn't get trained to do this, it was really natural. He would also visualise people who didn’t believe in him or confrontations which annoyed him when he was younger, which he would use to fuel his performance. He was running away from the haters.

• During training, Pete and Ed would often have to do 3 hours of riding on the velodrome as punishment.  Ed once had to do a 7 hour long ride! You wouldn’t get away with that today.

• In his early career, Pete knew that even in the worst case scenario he would be happy.  He would get booted from the team and would go home to the isle and mann and become a postman, and that was fine. Ed remembers Pete saying this right before the 2012 olympics in a conversation they had. He didn’t always feel the pressure of cycling.

• The decision to retire is like breaking up with someone that you love. Ed got there because he was getting older and couldn’t picture going on. Pete got there cause he lost the love for professional cycling. It was a hard decision for both of them to make, as they love cycling.

• You can feel a big sense of imposter syndrome when going into new roles after retirement. Ed repeats Colin Jackson’s advice from the previous episode: ‘It’s okay not to be great at something in the beginning.’. It’s okay to start again.

• When the pressure of cycling as a profession is gone, the childlike joy comes back. Pete doesn’t cycle as much as he used to though, he doesn’t have the same eagerness for it he had as a kid.

Pete’s early retirement

• The issues came when he stopped doing track, as Pete wasn’t finding it fun without being in groups. After 2012 he started cycling on the road. 2013 was okay because it was all still new, and an injury meant the beginning of the year was slow. He went to a training camp and was eventually picked for the Tour De France, which he absolutely loved. He got a 2 year contract after the tour, but only did one race as his injury came back.

• The pressure came with the contract Pete got after the tour. 2014 was a pressure filled year, as he was getting paid a lot and it started to feel more business-like. He cycled because it was his passion, but when the money got involved he lost his love for it. The money put the burden in there, and he felt scrutinized and watched. He started questioning whether it was for him, or whether he was happy.

• Pete’s mental health and some specific events led to him leaving. He wasn’t sure he wanted to keep going for a while, way back in 2014, but decided with his wife to go with it a bit longer and see whether things got better. Between March and the end of May he would always get these really negative thoughts, that were very overwhelming and he couldn’t see past them. They came back in 2015 and he couldn’t face going on his bike because he was worried bag performance would make him sink deeper. 

• Pete did manage to win races when these periods passed, and won the nationals in 2014 and 2015. It would just come back between March and May every year. He kept hoping he could stop it from coming back but it always did, and he would work really hard in winter to keep the momentum going but it just wouldn’t work.

• It got worse every year. Although he would still get good results, between march and the end of may he could barely do 10km on the bike. When it came back in 2018 he decided he was retiring, as he started to lose the power in his legs. He knows now that it was irrational, but he didn’t realise this at the time and he couldn’t be told otherwise.

• Pete, still to this day, doesn’t really know what happened, and doesn’t know why it came every year at the same time. 

• Pete’s biggest regret was not checking in with himself at the time he decided to retire. He wasn’t good at slowing down and looking within. It wasn’t a skill he had developed, and he wasn’t in the low pressure environment he felt he needed to be in. He just didn’t have the time.

Pete’s life post sport - Coaching

• Once Pete retired, he finally had the space to reset and reflect. He could finally settle down and focus on self care. He started to understand the world and life more. It gave him perspective. He feels like he took his cycling life for granted at the time, but he is a much nicer person to be around now.

• It took Pete a very long time to let go of being a cyclist. Only in the last 6 months has he truly stopped seeing himself as a professional cyclist.

• If it wasn’t for Andrew McQuaid, Pete doesn’t think he would be where he is today. Andrew McQuaid is Pete’s agent, and really helped him through the darkest moments.

• Pete really enjoys working with young cyclers on Trinity Cycling. He remembers his training days being like university, so he is happy to be with people at that stage in their career. It takes him back to when he was at the academy.

• Pete has found that the way he was taught is embedded in him, and he is finding himself teaching the young riders in the same way. For better or worse. 

• You need to be a role model for the behaviours you want to see in others, as a leader. Pete finds he gets his self belief from taking himself seriously and his job seriously. This then reflects into his performance as a coach.

• Pete’s plans for the future are to carry on with Trinity; doing some races with them; do some ITV coverage of the Tour De France, and start his own coaching business.

Takeaways

• It’s important not to push the cyclists too hard when they are young. If you do that they may crash and burn, and lose interest. It needs to be fun. 

• If you are not enjoying the talent you are gifted in, it’s not a gift at all. 

• When you are in a bad mental space, it can be like an addiction. You don’t want to face or confront your emotions. You don’t want to stop being the way you are. It’s all brushed aside.

• You have to work on your mental health every day.

References:

• Trinity Cycling 
• Pete’s Instagram
• Pete’s Twitter
• Pro Noctis Youtube Ch...

Dealing with “The Afterlife”

• Ed and Colin first met in the greenroom of Question Of Sport. They had a conversation about the transition of being an athlete to “The Afterlife”; life after being an athlete. 

• Colin’s advice for getting through the afterlife: 1 - Take your time. 2 - Be forgiving of yourself when learning new things.

• You don’t become a champion by just sitting on your backside doing nothing. A champion has a drive and focus that will help them get somewhere even after their athletic career.

• There is a downside to going from focusing on one sport to doing loads many different things. It can be underwhelming to be a jack of all trades and a master of none. Colin explains that being excellent at lots of things and not perfect at one, can still be amazing and fulfilling. 

• Fake it till you make it. It doesn’t work in sports, but it does in real life.

• It is important to say no to things. Colin was bad at this, as he thought if he said no he would lose an opportunity. This led to him taking way too much on and doing a lot of things he didn’t really want to do. 

• It’s important to talk to people about your struggles. Colin didn’t, as no one really talked about it back then, and it made the transition harder.

• There isn’t a lot of support for the afterlife of athletes. It is getting better though.

• People leaving the military, or even other industries after a long period, can feel a similar feeling of “The Afterlife”.

Colin’s Life

• Colin’s first love was Cricket. He picked athletics purely because it was a 5 minute walk away over a 3 hour drive and he wanted to get home to watch tv.

• Colin got gold medals without the funding of the lottery behind him. He did this by having an inner drive and parents who agreed to support him until he was 21. Once he won a gold medal at a major championship he was getting paid to race.

• Colin’s world record. He approached it as his personal best, not focusing on the fact it was the best in the world.

• Colin’s 40 unbeaten races record. He didn’t notice it at first, and it became a burden once it got pointed out to him. When a burden is added, it takes away the fun.

• Colin’s eating disorder whilst he was competing. It was a result of him really trying to improve his game. He was winning medals so he knew no one could challenge him on it. Ed says he has seen this in cycling as well, and it’s a shame. Colin thinks he would of probably broken even more records had he eaten enough.

• Colin’s struggle after retiring. He was lost for a while because he had no purpose. 

• Colin has never found the same passion he felt for sport in the afterlife. He believes it’s because he no longer focuses on just one thing.

• Colin puts his fitness above his work. He considers it very important for both his physical and mental health.

• Colin’s knees have been giving him trouble recently. He is currently getting stem cell treatment for them.

• Colin is working on the “Wings For Life” World Run. This is a run which is raising money for spinal cord injuries.

Lessons Colin has Learnt from his Career 

• It’s important to reframe things in your mind and find the positive. Ed is new at this and is finding it hard to overcome the expectations his career put on him, but Colin says that’s fine. If you are new to something you are not rubbish at it, you are learning.

• Colin’s drive, motivation and commitment were the keystones behind his successful career.

• We should focus on the long term over the short term. We should educate young athletes on this at a very young age.

• Ed talks about how humble and nice Colin is. He thinks these are traits of success, even if most people don’t consider them to be.

References:

• Wings For Life World Run
• Colin’s Instagram
• Pro Noctis Youtube Channel
• Pursuit Line Instagram
• Pursuit Line Website
• Pursuit Line Email: team@pursuitline.co.uk

All music by AlexGrohl from Pixabay

Podcast produced by Liam Wilkinson

Dave’s Life

• Dave grew up on the highlands. All he wanted to do was to get out and do sports, as there wasn’t much else to do. He wasn’t interested in academics, only sports. 

• Sports gave him the skills he needed to deal with Cancer and Paralysis and Cancer and Paralysis taught him how to live. Karate gave him resilience and taught him how to deal with not being the best. This love for Karate turned into a love of the Olympics.

• He had some regional success in 400 meter runs. After that he became a part of the British bobsled team, and then he worked on the skiing olympic programme. 

• Whilst on the skiing team he realized he had skeletal problems which qualified him for paralympic sports. He joined the rowing team but during his time there he was made aware he had a tumor. He had to have surgery.

• Two years after having a life-saving surgery, which left him temporarily paralysed, he won a gold medal in rowing. When he was in recovery he was really thinking about what his goals were, and reading a lot to ensure he was motivated. Surrounded by death and in a really bad mental space, he read Man’s Search for Meaning which really helped him find his purpose again. He had to fight to get his space back on the team after his recovery, but he managed to do it.

• He jumped on the bike after this and really loved it. He decided to make this his main sport.

• In 2015, David was told he had another tumor growing. Having just had a bunch of surgeries, and with Rio just round the corner, he considered not getting another surgery for it so he could compete. His mental health was bad at this time, as he couldn’t live in the moment and was so worried about dying, so he went to Morajoca for Xmas by himself to get some space and clarity.

• David Smith went into a routine surgery in 2016, thinking he would be able to go to Rio and all would be fine, but when he woke up he was paralysed. He had to give up on cycling and couldn’t compete in Rio. He talks about the struggles of coming to terms with it and the mental shift it gave him with time. The pressure of being near people dying all around him for a whole year and then a spinal cord hospital, surrounded by a lot of people in the same situation as him, was incredibly difficult. 

• In 2018 he was told the cancer had once again come back. He got suicidal and wanted to ride his bike off a cliff. He decided he would carry on as he didn’t know what was gonna happen. He wanted to fight through and see it to the end.

• The paralysis is what made him depressed. He felt bad about losing use of some of his movement, whilst being around people who were dying, which led him into feeling bad about feeling bad. This was a really bad negative spiral. He managed to pull himself together by calling British Cycling and getting back on the bike. This purpose helped him through.

The Lessons Dave Learnt from Cancer and Paralysis

• You don’t know what’s going to happen. Ever. you can’t take anything for granted.

• It’s important to focus on the things you can do rather than things you can’t. Focusing on what he couldn’t do is what brought him closer to suicide. 

• Success is not winning, it’s inner peace and contentment. Pain and suffering taught him this. 

• The closer you are to death, the closer you are to life. It motivates you and keeps you in line with what is most important to you. He meditates on his death a lot to help him stay in tune with this.

• It’s important to turn your experiences into lessons, and use these to make the world a better place. Share with others. 

• We need to focus on making the human first and then the athlete. If you make sure people are happy and fulfilled, success will come from there. Organisations should also do this for their workers as well. If you do that, people will be better workers and better members of society. 

• It’s important to be vulnerable. It helps us understand who we are.

• Dark humour helps us get through hard times. He has seen in the athletic world, but also in the spinal cord hospital. 

• It’s important to invest in yourself. Meditation. Exercise. Eat Well. Laugh.

• Take action and your thoughts and emotions will follow. You can change your thoughts very easily if you just get up and do the things you know are good for you.

• Meditation is powerful. It’s beneficial to all of us, not just athletes.

• Be compassionate to yourself and others. We are all just trying to build our own home and do our own thing.

Ed’s surgery

• Ed's experience with drop foot and back surgery. The negative space it put him in and how that pales in comparison to Dave Smith.

• David Smith talking to Ed after the surgery. Ed didn’t really know who Dave was, but Dave was very caring and compassionate anyway. He knew how hard and risky back surgery is. Your identity is being a strong athlete, so being in a hospital gown and feeling very weak can be a difficult thing to process.

References:

• Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl 
• VIA Character Strengths Test
• David Smith’s Website
• David Smith’s Instagram
• Pro Noctis Youtube Channel
• Pursuit Line Instagram
• Pursuit Line Website
• Pursuit Line Email: team@pursuitline.co.uk

All music by AlexGrohl from Pixabay

Podcast produced by Liam Wilkinson

The hosts history with uncertainty

• Ed’s thoughts about the Tokyo 2020 delay and how it impacted his career. He was ready to go in for one last hurrah for 2020 and had already been spending 18 months preparing for it, so it was really hard to deal with the ambiguity of it getting pushed back. He couldn’t keep up the momentum, and it ultimately led to his retirement.

• Phil had a similar experience with Covid. He had a whole business plan at the start of 2020 which was completely thrown off course when Covid hit. He had to completely change routes.

How do people respond to uncertainty?

• Ed goes into his mancave and hides. He plays video games, as he finds it hard to do even small tasks. Phil proposes that this might be due to the fact he has a great analytical mind, and unfortunately when he goes through hard times it all becomes too much and he shuts it out. Other people can do this by burying themselves in work. It helps in some ways as it helps Ed recharge his batteries, but he needs to be careful to not stay down there too long as it won’t get him out of the situation.

• Some people thrive under uncertainty. They have a creative mind that works well under pressure, and they can even enjoy ambiguity in their lives.

So this begs the question: How do you deal with uncertainty?

• Approach it purposely. Assess the damages and make plans for how you are going to deal with it. Phil uses a journal for this purpose; write down all the things on his mind and make a list of what he can control and do, and then, most importantly, prioritise them.

• Being present helps you experience and acknowledge the problem and make practical steps to get out of it.

• Have good people around you that you can use as a sounding board.  People who understand you and you can trust.

• Learning more and educating yourself. It helps us develop ourselves and see that growth is possible. 

• Understand yourself and others. It’s important to understand how you respond to uncertainty, as that way you can notice when you are struggling quickly and make the changes to get out of it. 

• Getting consistent, constructive feedback. Phil mentions that most people don’t get anywhere near as much feedback as Ed got, who would get it multiple times a day. Most people only get feedback from their bosses one a year, if that, which creates a lot of uncertainty and pressure, as they simply don’t know how well they are doing.

• Reframing. Reframing simply means looking at the situation you are in a second time, looking at what you can learn from it and what opportunities it may open up. Phil helped Ed reframe his thinking towards his retirement once Tokyo was canceled by showing him what opportunities it presented. This reframing may be what turns post-traumatic stress into post-traumatic growth.

• Keeping perspective; seeing how the problems you have are actually quite small in the grand scheme of things. You don’t do this to invalidate your emotions, but rather to give yourself more space to process them. You can eventually take your learnings to help other people.

• Adversity builds resilience. The more times you deal with uncertainty and adversity, the more you learn about yourselves and the more resilience you have. Whenever you are going through a hard time, you are getting stronger.

References:

• Article - University of Kansas - Post-Traumatic Growth
• Pro Noctis Youtube Channel
• Pursuit Line Instagram
• Pursuit Line Website
• Pursuit Line Email: team@pursuitline.co.uk

All music by AlexGrohl from Pixabay

Podcast produced by Liam Wilkinson

Today our hosts talk about…

• What Pursuit Line is all about: helping people to achieve peak performance. They strive to achieve this through a three pronged approach: Ed delivering inspirational talks, workshops both online and in-person, and ongoing consultancy programmes for businesses. They believe that the unique pairing of Phil’s military background and Ed’s athletic background is what makes Pursuit Line what it is. 

• Ed Clancy’s background as a medal winning Olympic cyclist, and his quiet lifestyle outside of bikes. How his interest in performance came from his desire to be a better cyclist and become an Olympic champion. He realised that working on his mindset would help him achieve this goal and also be happy. Ed met Phil during this search to improve his mindset, performance and life.

• Phil Kelly’s background as a professional footballer until he was in his early 20s. He then did a series of odd jobs, including being a green taker for a golf course, before he eventually joined the military as a coach, which is where he got his interest in performance. He then left to start his own coaching company Pro Noctis. 

• How success doesn’t lead to happiness, rather happiness leads to success. It’s important to make sure you are happy if you want to achieve amazing things. Mindset needs to come first. Success without happiness is the greatest kind of failure.

  
  

• How people commonly ignore the simple things: doing things we like with people we like. That comes first. Pursuit Line strives to be an organisation that can teach everyone this, bringing them closer to living a more fulfilling life. After all, a fulfilled life is a successful one.

• How it’s important to take stock and regularly appreciate what you have in life, as it’s the journey, not the destination, which brings you true happiness. There is beauty in the struggle. How can we help people become more aware of that beauty whilst they are in the struggle? That’s a question this podcast hopes to answer.

• Pursuit Line ambitions to build a community, so that anyone who engages with them can write in and share their stories and learnings. Pursuit hopes, in return, to help these people find their purpose and build the self-awareness needed to get through the struggles of life.

References:

• Pro Noctis Youtube Channel
• Pursuit Line Instagram
• Pursuit Line Website
• Pursuit Line Email: team@pursuitline.co.uk

All music by AlexGrohl from Pixabay

Podcast produced by Liam Wilkinson