 In this video I'm going to share with you how Caleb Ewan, a professional road cyclist with UCI World Tour team Lotto Sardal and arguably the best sprinter in the entire world, a man that won three stages of the Tour de France in 2019 and a man that tore my legs off in the local Nusa Bunt ride in 2020 just a few days ago now. You see it's the professional off season as we speak so many of the Aussie pro-cyclists are back in town and Caleb is in Nusa in my local hometown staying with his family as we speak. In addition to showing you this leg tearing attack I will also share some Bunt riding tips and tactics in this video and explain what happened to Caleb's bike which pretty much made it a certainty that he would rip the bunch to shreds going up the Coulomb Hills. Just note that in this video I will skip forward pause and or slow down the footage from time to time just to ensure we can make the most of our time together here and hey if you've just landed on this channel a reason to support or subscribe to the channel in 2020 if you already haven't the channel is going to have a new format from February onwards which will be Wednesdays a road cycling training tip video from me a road cycling coach and on Fridays when I say Wednesday and Friday here we're talking Aussie time we'll have a vlog style video which is all about mixing bike racing with a busy family lifestyle so if all that sounds up your alley please consider supporting the channel by subscribing below. Now before we get back into this video I just wanted to take a small amount of time to express some incredible misfortune that is occurring in Australia at the moment notably the severe bushfires that are occurring across the country to date many have lost their lives or homes and families have been devastated by what has occurred many people are in distress and my heart goes out to everyone involved I've left a donation link below for anyone that would like to get behind a disaster appeal the Nichols family have just donated a hundred dollars ourselves but please remember particularly to all those Aussies out there that these communities don't only need our help now but in the years to come help can be as simple as visiting an affected area on holidays simply to help inject much needed funds into local economies over the years so this bunch ride is roughly 55 kilometers all up it's a Saturday bunch ride but the smash fest component is just under 15 kilometers or nine miles from my US friend so essentially where I have started the GoPro from today is where this bunch ride ramps up if you want the full low down on this bunch ride I've made another video about it which I'll link to below this bunch right was much bigger today than it usually is because of the holiday period typically you'd see about 10 to 20 riders on this bunch but this day there would have been somewhere around about 50 I reckon but most of them were behind my wheel so I really do need to invest into a rear GoPro in 2020 so stay tuned for that as you can see though I've gone straight to the front here reason being it's a big bunch today a lot of unfamiliar riders so for safety reasons I don't want to be anywhere near the back in doing so though I find myself at the front and unexpectedly given the volume of riders here today I get left hung out to dry for quite a while here in fact let's play some elevator music and see just how long I get left out here for while we're watching me dry roast at the front of the bunch here I'm going to pull up my zones and power numbers to make a little point you see typically at the start of most bunch rides people get excited quite often you'll see monster efforts by a certain few within the first five to ten minutes and in many cases you never see those riders again so I'm making a concerted effort not to go too hard here lingering in my bottom end the mid-range zone six so I've still got some juice left in the tank for further efforts in this bunch ride today you see if I was pushing 100 to 200 more watts here for the total of this effort I'm currently doing I would have been toast for the remainder of the ride so being smart about your efforts in the bunch particularly up front will ensure you can go harder for longer as opposed to being a one-hit wonder so it was roughly two minutes after I got the bunch going here my good north coast racing mates in the white come to the rescue although I was kind of thinking what bloody took you so long lads as the chain of riders finally commences you'll see two pro cyclists actually freddy ovay I think that's how you say his name I hope from the israel cycling academy and of course Caleb now as you can see there's quite a big conga line in today's bunch with many getting involved between here and where the leg tearing occurred why not I'd say it's one of the great things about road cycling how many other sports in the world can you go out and have a go with a professional alongside you so we're going to skip forward slightly here to a set of traffic lights it was at this stopping point where I must admit that I butted in to get behind the great Caleb youn while I was slightly aggressive about getting into this pole position for those local riders who were directly exposed to this and now think I'm a giant knob please know that I was purely doing this for YouTube viewing pleasure as we lead into the leg ripping area which is brought to you by this 1950s chainsaw Stanley here who is wearing a mask even the level of debris he will be exposed to today will be tearing this bunch of locks to pieces thanks to a brand new chainsaw that is supercharged by something deep inside called you and in fact Stanley only needs to run you and adjust under 60% before logs will start snapping into pieces and the entire bunch will be ripped to shreds nice one Stanley so I'm on Caleb's wheel here and I wanted to point something out for you here and what I found out post ride is that Caleb's di2 was flat apparently he realized as soon as he stepped out in the morning so he rode the entire bunch in the 54 16 so as Caleb begins this leg tearing attack I just wanted to point out that this climb is only an average of 2% gradient according to Strava but it does have some nasty pinches at around 8 to 10% and because it flattens out and then rises again it's a tricky one to get a rhythm for what is just under a three minute effort note here also that I've done a turn into the bottom of the hill so I'm carrying slightly lactate induced legs into a tearing attack so let's just watch this now unfold so not a ridiculous volume of power up that first pinch but definitely going deep into the neuromuscular system which is a point I want to isolate after we get to the end of the bunch here so let's watch round 2 unfold so I've pulled over really quickly here why is that many in this position in a bunch ride would typically hang onto the wheel until they drop for way too longer period see the problem with that is by the time they have dropped the wheel they're normally one two maybe even three bike lengths back and the rider behind them has to make up two to three maybe even four bike lengths to get back onto the wheel so essentially it's inconsiderate to the rider behind you and the others who have to follow so what you're better off doing is what I'm showing you here right now I am starting to cook I'm just under 800 watts for the second mini attack my legs are full of lactate and Caleb is still out of the saddle punching it so my chances of staying on the wheel here are limited and as a result I make a very quick call pull over real quick flick the elbow and let the rider behind go through and that rider which you'll see is Freddy from the Israel Cycling Academy only has one to 1.5 bike lengths to make up and just know I'm not dropping myself here the plan is to have a slight breather and get back onto the back of the bunch so what I didn't know was that Caleb would sit up shortly after I pulled off so potentially I would have been okay if I hung on to the wheel although you are about to see another punch out of the saddle so probably not as I look behind me here I saw some riders coming what I didn't realize though is there were only two remaining of a starting bunch of about 50 riders and what I have since learned after the ride is that there was also a split just after the traffic light stop so what I've done here is I pulled over to the side haven't really rested and now I am in no man's land potentially what I should have done when I pulled off is spend a few moments in a lower gear giving myself a proper rest and then sprinted back onto the group instead what you're seeing here is me dangle for a while and then the light bulb moment to put some pressure down and get back onto the wheel what's also a bit disappointing here is that I am dangling out on the road as opposed to being over in the bike lane which is a demonstration of how fatigue can make you ride and also awareness we all need to have in these pressure cooker situations on the road so the remnants of the bunch are back together we roll through the coulomb area before putting the pressure back down now what I personally found interesting during this section is normally I can recover well through coulomb and get back involved in the turns pretty quickly however on this occasion I was done I rolled a couple of times but I could feel the legs were no good now many of you out there will conclude that it was Caleb's leg tearing episode which caused this level of fatigue but really looking at the numbers Caleb was probably only going about 60 percent and I wasn't pushing out massive watts so why was I so cooked here I pondered aha I did figure it out reflecting later that day about two months ago I transitioned my training from being criterion fit not that I was doing a ton of criterias but that's kind of like the fitness I typically like to maintain I transitioned to getting prepared to tackle a 265 kilometer bike race being the Melbourne to warnable as a result of this style of training I simply have neglected to train my sprint or my neuromuscular system mainly because I simply haven't had the opportunity to blend it into what has been some major endurance rides that has been the predominant focus for me in recent times however normally I would head to the local track and do some sprint efforts after a high intensity workout working the neuromuscular system or my sprint which ultimately teaches you to be able to go deep multiple times in a row so this was a little wake up call for me actually it's time for me to bring the sprinting back into training and quickly on training as we now watch a very unusual finish to this bunch right I think everyone was a bit cooked including myself and not sure where Caleb had gone either I have a free video training below for road cyclists looking to take their cycling performance to the next level and I've actually reopened an online course that I have welcoming 10 students into up level road cycling course for January over the next week links below just know this was a big day out for me actually I rode 170 kilometers all up in preparation for the Melbourne to warnable and let me tell you I enjoyed a couple of quiet ones later that evening you can get it right I'll catch everyone in the next video you can get it slightly you can feel it coming on about four a hard earned thirst needs a big cold beer and the best cold beer is Vic Vic bitter you can get it in a hole or up a pole you can get it doing nothing at all a hard earned thirst