An interview with Ed Clancy

 

 

 

There is something incredibly humbling about meeting an Olympian, I walked into the Ned, a few minutes late, rushing with a million things in my hands and a heart beating like I had been running for hours. I mean how can one be calm meeting a 3-time Olympic gold medallist and a bronze. I walk past the doors and I see this tall handsome looking man in his cycling gear looking towards me calmly with a sincere smile. I introduce myself, we sit down, and get straight to business. He is composed and has piercing blue eyes; his hair is short and he has creases round his mouth when he smiles.

 

As I started to ask the questions and listen intently to his answers, I realised that even though to me I felt like through his incredibly achievements, I knew him, watching him cycle in Rio, but in reality, to him I was just one more interview. With that thought in my mind, he seemed so easy to talk to, one minute I introduced myself the second we are laughing and talking about life, Ed was genuine and humble and made me feel like we were friends, who were just catching up.

 

The questions I chose to ask him were a mixture of personal questions, ones that relate to his training and other that relate to FIT(ish).

 

The following extract is an unedited extract of his answers

 

What advice would give yourself five years ago?

The same sort of advice you would give yourself 20 or 30 years even, perspective is such an important part of life. I guess the further through life I have got you realise that your possession are like your achievements. Inevitably the human brain normalises everything, so no matter what happens in your life be it an amazing experience or a terrible experience, somewhere between 6 and 18 months your brain normalises it and your happiness levels simply go back to the status quo. You see it with people who win the lottery, there is a lot of evidence for it, like after they win they go on this massive high, and get everything in terms of what they dreamed of in terms of possessions and where they life and what car they drive and then all of a sudden that becomes a normality and they get used to the life they have, or the car they drive and that becomes a new standard and like people end up back where they started, and I think that is quite an interesting one. I am not saying it is not good to try and strive to do great things or to achieve things because that gives you a purpose and that’s meaningful but if you can manage your self-worth and self-esteem from your talents and ability to do anything in life then that is quite a powerful thing. It is so easy to base your self-worth on what job you go.

 

 

 

Cyclist Ed Clancy’s Condor team were confirmed as part of the line-up for season 15 (Image: © Sportsbeat/Roberto Payne)

 

Let’s talk about prerace jitters, what do you do before a race to get into the zone?

It varies according to what race I am doing, the lads in the team, they get the speakers out and turn the music onto full blast and we all dance around, two or three strong coffees and we just all feel so high on life before we race. Sometimes I am a little bit more reclusive and I get my own headphones on and listen to head space before I get on the turbo train to warm up..

Any particular songs

NO, not really. Sometimes you just listen to anything that will get you ready for the race and other times you just listen to mindful meditation, compose your thoughts and think about what you are going to do and how you are going to do it.

.. on stress

If you imagine your mind state when you get on your bike for team pursuit, it’s the most stressful thing because it’s you, and your best mates, that you have gone through hell and back pretty much to get there and you put however you look at it whether its four months or three years of work, however you decide to look at it could be four month’s work of four years of work to get to the Olympics, and you aren’t just riding for yourself but you are riding for your parents, your trainer, your friends, the physio, the sport scientist , you are riding for the funding of the entire program of the next year cycle . if you think about that you could go insane, if you think about what could go wrong, you can get a puncture, have a crash get beat. If you get all these negative thoughts in your head you would go insane, again it is utilising a different part of your brain just to think with fact and logic, and say, right we are going to as fast as we can, we are going to try and adhere to our schedule for as well as we can, we have done this a thousand times before and the only thing that has changed is the fact that it is an Olympic team pursuit rather than a team pursuit in training. And if you think of it like that it seems a bit more manageable.

 

 

      Bradley Wiggins leads Team GB to a gold medal – and a world record – in the team pursuit final in Rio.(Tim de Waele/Getty Images)

Do you ever find it hard to motivate yourself and what throws your habits?

Motivation is like any emotion, it comes and goes the same way some days you feel happy, other days you feel sad, some days you feel motivated, and some days you feel like you cant be asked to get out of bed. Motivation for sure comes and goes, for every athlete, the difference is there is a difference between motivation and commitment. You have always got the choice to commit, whether you are motivated or not. I live up in Yorkshire and sometimes the weather is just a bit rough, and the snow is coming in in winter and I don’t really feel like doing 5 hours in the snow today but that’s okay, not to be motivated all the time, but that’s okay, you go out and you commit to the ride, and it might not be your best ride you have ever done in fact the chances are it won’t be, and you’ll be a bit miserable and you’ll do an average ride with average numbers. But then if you commit to it, you can pull some sort of achievement out of that, the commitment itself is the key thing here, just focus on the commitment rather than the motivation.

 

What does a day in your life look l like?

• Well, it changes all the time, like yesterday for example, a typical day at the track, I get up as late as I possibly can.
• I get up at 9 am, have some porridge with blueberries in it, have a strong coffee and ill get in my van get to the track.
• Gym session starts at 10:00 we’ll spend an hour and a half in the gym. After that we are all about the protein fuelling the body, we’ll have lunch, sit down with boys at the canteen and then it’s not really that glamorous, head to the mechanics place, piece up our bikes together, we would have had an email and discussion of what we are going to do on the track.
• Carry our bikes down to the tracks 2- 5 well do 6 -8 real quality, thought out efforts in that time and a warm up and a cool down.
• Once it’s all done and dusted, we have a big debrief all the time we are very numbers focused, looking at the heart rate, power, line on the track, video feed back with every single effort frontal area, position on the bike, and your drag coefficient, we are pulling a whole estate of every single effort, so there is always a lot to debrief.
• Then we rock out of the velodrome at 6 6:30 and I got a train back from London, and sometimes you just go home.

 

How do you find the balance in your life? Do you feel like you have struck a balance?

Silence… Well do you feel like you have struck a balance?

Well, this is what I was eluding with in my silence. It is difficult, there are areas in my life that I am ashamed of to be honest. Sometimes I think, that my brother for example has kids, and a wife and you think fair play to him, but that’s never been anywhere possible for myself at the moment. And you think, I have seen his kids 2 or 3 times and one of his daughter is five years old yesterday and then you think what am I doing? You think you neglected your mum and you are rarely there at Christmas, so it is difficult to find a balance.