A Student for Life
'I am reading and studying all the time. The more I can take in, the more I can have powerful and clear intuition on what my client needs. And this continuing education extends to my own activities. For instance, I went for a run today in Vibram Five Finger shoes on a rocky, uneven trail. This is something that would have crippled me just five years ago. So I'm unquestionably a student for life.'
Colby Pearce has worn many hats. Professional cyclist, USA Cycling Track Endurance Coach, US Hour Record Holder, directeur sportif in the formative years of the team now known as EF Education First Pro Cycling. All roles that he has performed with distinction. Fast forward to the present day and Colby continues to juggle, and then some. Coaching and bike fitting are mainstays in his current working life, as is designing track frames, hosting a weekly podcast and consulting to World Tour riders and teams. Yes, Colby Pearce is indeed a busy man. But he's not a hypocrite. You see, despite his life seemingly being all things "bike", Colby is not your typical Type-A jock. Quite the contrary in fact.
'While I like accomplishing stuff, life is about more than just "doing'' things', he explains. 'We are human beings, not human “doings”. So there are certain non-negotiables in my life, and these are breathing, sleeping, eating, movement, hydration, and thinking. And I attend to all of these basic aspects every day. So I'm uncompromising when it comes to these principles. I would be hypocritical otherwise. Because as a cycling and life coach, for me to tell other people to get to bed on time and eat well and not do it myself, would mean I am not "walking the walk"'.
And walk the walk he has. With a professional road cycling career that spanned 1996 – 2005, followed by track racing at Olympic and World Cup level, Colby really has "been there and done that" in racing speak. And while his road career on the US domestic scene developed his physical attributes and tactical nous, it was in track racing that Colby found his true metier.
'It was a time when many US road teams raced a full calendar on meagre annual budgets of $300,000 or less,' he recounts. 'Riders didn’t get paid much, and it was kind of duct tape and super glue to keep everything together. But it worked. I learned a ton and got to do some really awesome races. I transitioned from a time trialist to more of a criterium rider at first, but I almost always got beat at the line. So I transitioned again, this time to points racing on the velodrome. The high speed and repeated sprints in this racing format suited me very well.'
Like professional road cycling, the international track circuit is a travelling circus. And while there are some additional similarities between the two disciplines, they are also polar opposites in many respects. Like the confined space of a velodrome for instance, not to mention racing well into the night and travelling to far flung locations like Venezuela and China. How then did Colby adapt to demands of incessant travel, exotic locations and altered circadian rhythm?
'I would say that maintaining balance when you are traveling around the world as an athlete is very challenging,' he reasons. 'I spoke about this topic in a recent Cycling in Alignment podcast episode with Jessi Stensland. We were talking about one thing I would hypothetically do to increase my function and health as an athlete if I could rewind the clock and do it again. In some respects, I think the journey I had led to me where I am now, and thus was perfect. But I do feel some barefoot hiking or hiking in very minimal shoes would have helped me in the long term, structurally-speaking. This is something that I work on a lot these days. One aspect I did manage to figure out during my time on the World Cup was simply connection with breath and body. So I did manage to practice my own form of Tai Chi, even though I didn’t know what is what it was back then.'
Barefoot hiking and Tai Chi? Connection to breath and body? Not exactly activities or practices that one would associate with elite cycling, or most other sports for that matter. Which begs the question – where does this whole view to both sport and life, as well as coaching come from?
'It is simply a view I have come to adopt over my years of living on the planet,' explains Colby. 'Reductionist thinking paradigms don’t work really well in sports, particularly in cycling. What happens in a race is so variable and dynamic. Simply put, if you don’t look at a bike race from a macro perspective, you will not succeed. Everything from diet to sleep to tactics, total life stress, weather, how tight your shoes are, fit, training and preparation, crashes, to how the race unfolds and so on. This helped me realize that athletes need coaching on many more levels than just raising their FTP or trimming grams off their bike. If we don’t consider the athlete as a human, with emotions and life experience that impacts how they express their athletic potential, we are only seeing part of the picture. I have expanded this way of thinking to all aspects of my life. I recognize that every action I make is a choice, and that this choice has an impact on my health, the health of those around me, and the progress I make towards my dream.'
Despite popular belief, coaching and bike fitting is as much art as it is science. In fact, some might argue that the former outweighs the latter. And while there is much debate over modern training techniques and old wives tales (read: tradition), Colby's journey has shown him that coaching is not an exact science.
'My coaching style is neither old school or new school,' he states. 'It's all school. Having started coaching in 2005, I take elements from older styles of coaching and constantly research, learn and integrate new methods and technologies into my own methods. That said, I don’t take on a new gizmo just because it is new. Learning and adopting a new technology comes at a price, so it has to teach me something. And it needs to be easy to use and actionable. There are many devices out there that just add noise.'
But this ideal is not always possible. Case in point the upper echelons of the sport. While technology is synonymous with World Tour cycling, team resources and timelines are not always a marriage of compatibility. Riders are restricted as to what equipment they can use and endorse, a challenge which Colby is very familiar with given his consulting work at the top level. Unsurprisingly, working at this level requires a large element of compromise and respect.
'Sponsorship means you have to use a certain product line, and that product may not always be the first choice for a rider. Being paid to ride a bike at the professional level means you have to ride a certain brand of saddle, whether that saddle fits you well or not. Also, when you are doing fit work with a World Tour rider, they may or may not be open to change. Most of them have relationships with other fitters outside the team. So you have to develop a relationship and make it clear you don’t have an agenda to push your fit on them.
'Bike fit is 75% science and 75% art if you know what I mean,' he continues. 'There are many ways to skin a cat. So I approach a rider with respect and caution, not because they are World Tour, but because this is how you approach any rider. Also, doing bike fits on a hotel room floor in crappy light with limited tools can be a challenge. So you have to adapt as best as you can.'
