From Oxford Mathematician to Cycling World Record Holder - Vittoria Bussi

I'm kind of obsessive about everything I choose to do. If I choose something, it just starts to be the reason of life. She is a PhD mathematician, but also the first woman to ride over 50 kilometers in a velodrome over the time of one hour. What is your connection between maths and sports? I started quite late cycling. I started at 27 years old while I was finishing my PhD in mathematics in Oxford. I came into professional sports as a mathematician, as a scientist. So I wanted to bring my own approach, my own idea. I don't want to be scared. I just want to do things without being scared about that. I don't like the word dream. I speak about mission. I hate with your own value, even if all around you forces you to do something different, even if you feel alone. It's the only thing that we can tell at the end when the story finish. Hello and welcome to this episode of Going Mental Busy Going Mental, Vittoria Busy. Quite an achievement. I think anybody who's ever written an hour will realise this is the longest hour in your life, quite possibly. Welcome to the show, Vittoria. Nice to have you. Hello, thank you for the nice production. An absolute pleasure. So I would love to start with the traditional start of the show. When you hear Going Mental, to go mental, somebody is going mental. Does that mean anything to you? Does that ring a bell? Going mental. I think all my life is going mental somehow. So I think, yeah, if I choose something, it just starts to be the reason of life. I'm very vertical in what I choose. So at some point, it's a line between a good obsession and a crazy obsession to be constructive, but also sometimes it's mental. Yeah, I can very much relate on the obsession and the singular focus on one or two things and just going a little bit too deep. I almost feel embarrassed to say this, but the one thing that may connect us in terms of your mathematical approaches is that it always helped me tremendously throughout my career. To break things down into mathematical fractions. So whatever the distance was left, I would say, okay, I've done seven-eighths of the course or something like this. You know, this would forever be my inner thinking in my mind. And I know this is obviously primary school mathematics, but I would love to know for somebody like you who has a true passion for this, what is your connection between maths and sports? Well, I based all my career on mathematics. I started at 27 years old while I was like finishing my PhD in mathematics in Oxford. Actually, I started, I remember us to say with, but I started with triathlon because I come from truck and field. And then at some point, I found that I was good in cycling, but it was very late. It was 27. So my approach to the sport is quite different. I didn't start as a young person in professional cycling, but I came into professional sport as a mathematician, as a scientist. And that's why somehow I decided to do my own team and be outside the professional team because I wanted to do things my own way. And when I started in 2013, maybe it was still too early to speak about aerodynamic, to speak about artificial intelligence in sports. So I decided to do my way. And yeah, I chose that. Today's episode is brought to you by Ryzen, that's our YZOM. Ryzen makes high performance endurance sportswear, cycling, running, swimming, triathlon, a whole beautiful endurance family. Technical, clean design, and they actually care about how things are made. A huge step for us has come in the form of women cycling. For years, women's gear was basically an afterthought in pretty much all of the industry. Take the men's product, pink it, and shrink it, job done, which is of course complete nonsense. Different anatomy, different biomechanics, different needs. You can't just resize your way to performance. And so they built the women's performance wear from scratch. Propocuts, proper fits, developed with athletes. People like Lucy Charles Barkley, who knows more about pushing on a bike than most of us will ever want to find out. That kind of feedback loop matters. That's how you get gear that actually works when it counts. Women's cycling is growing so fast right now, the visibility, the talent, the excitement within the sport, the infrastructure around it, and it deserves kit that keeps up. Not an eesh, not a pink version of something else, the real thing. So if you want to check out Ryzen, use code for Dino 10 for 10% off the full collection until October 31st, includes anything limited or already reduced. Pink and code are in the show notes below. Yeah, absolutely. I think you are living a lot of triathlon. Well, I wouldn't say age groupers, but a lot of very ambitious athletes start quite late into the sport and using kind of the whole aerodynamic scene is becoming so incredibly popular. But before we go there, I would actually love to know that your personal story, which you shared is in 2012, you had your father passed away. Whilst you were finishing your PhD at Oxford. And I really would love to know how this was something that got you into sport perhaps or into more professional sport and how it changed what you see as what matters. Yeah, it's, wow, we start with difficult question. Yeah, I think, I mean, at the beginning, I didn't see the, my father was the reason I started sagging. It took a little bit of time to have consciousness of that. I think what happened is that in 2011, actually, one year before, while I was again in Oxford, my mother called me and said, your father is having a stroke and it was like half of the brain away for an explosion of this vein. And so I came to Rome, my city, and my father was still alive, but in terrible condition. And when you are 25 years old and from one side, you felt like the head of the world because you just won a scholarship in Oxford, you know, the best school ever, the best university ever in the world. It's your first time away. It's in UK that from point of view of an Italian, it's like very cool. And from the other side, life say you don't have anything in control. I didn't have the chance to say something to my father and ever reply that is not just a signal with the hand, asking if he understood or not. And I had to reply to some question in that year, like, do we do dialysis to conscious, to maybe conscious person? You know, it's our brain person. So it's a very difficult, ethical question. And I decided to go on with my PhD. So it was a year I was between Italy, not just Rome, but everywhere in hospital where my father was transported because it's economically, it's heavy for a hospital. So he keep moving. And UK. So I remember that year, having a shower was a privilege because I didn't have time. I was in the hospital with my father or in PhD studio with my supervisor to have my weekly meeting because I had to produce a paper. I have to publish a new piece of mathematics in Oxford, which is very demanding. And it's fun because in my life the best thing for me always come from the worst part of my life. I don't know why it's something horrible from one side. When I go really down, then I don't know what happened. But in that year I had my best publication as a mathematician. And in the meantime, my father passed away. It was March 2012. When I came back to Oxford with a lot of published paper with a division of a good career mathematics, hungry for life that was bad with me. Nothing was the same anymore because I realized that the debt exists. So when people say we are all going to die, maybe they don't realize that it's intrinsically true that the time is not in our control. And this is like it's heavy. It's hard to have this consciousness, this deep consciousness, because you realize that the only thing that you have in your hand is the present. Now when you say I do later, it's arrogant because you don't have control of later. So this is the fun part of the story. I took the bike just because you know, it was really a nox for everyone. I have a bike. They do a lot of triathlon. I come from truck and field as I said, but like national level, not even national like regional, I would say. And I stopped it to a day of 20, more or less. So I said, I don't know how to run. I kind of know how to swim. So I just need the bike. And then I found that with the bike, I was really good because I was like pedaling with the hungry, angry with life against life. I lost the up. I couldn't forgive myself for my choice. I could keep asking what I write when I said yes or not to some question like, should we move your father? Should we do the dialysis? Should we take these or morphine or not? I couldn't forgive myself. And the only way was the bike like pushing on the bike alone. I could be like in peace with myself, the kind of the lucidity that you miss when you are under fatigue, under strong fatigue. I could have a dialogue with myself. Everything started like this. Wow. Okay. Yes, that is very deep. But it does fascinate me. How you are able to metabolize this kind of pain and turn it into forward motion. Because I can very much relate to life coming at you and being forced to make a decision and being forced to change away and making something positive of this. And I often ask myself, why can I not just turn something positive out of my own kind of momentum? And what do you think it is in your approach or in your mindset that allows you to find the strength to let something grow rather than fall into a heap and be said. Or accept that life is incredibly tough and that things happen to us that are not fair. Well, I would say I try always to change the point of view that if I feel sad about my life, I don't go anywhere. And I'm just losing time and time for me, as I said, was at some point the central concept of my life. It's everything that I don't have in control. It's like the only thing that I really don't have in control, time goes. So I just try to take the chance, have an opportunity for every moment of my life. So my mantra, have an opportunity every second I leave. So every second, I have an opportunity to be better, to feel happy. You know, happiness is like that. It's those. You can say you are centralised. Are you saying, sorry, my English is not very good. No, a balanced store, whatever, you're centralised and makes sense. So you can have a control of that for a quite long period of time, but happiness, if you think when you say I'm happy, it's very short. Because on the peak of the mountain, you don't stay for long. In my mind now there is the question, I do feel when you broke the record, and they say sad, because it's gone, because happiness is so short. You take the record and the second after, and now, what's the sense of my life. So every second is an opportunity. That is kind of what I do. I agree, and this is actually I wanted to get to this a little bit later, but now that you've touched on it, I mean, you've had four successful World Record attempts, if I'm not mistaken. And you've had a few that didn't go your way as well. And namely, you've had attempts the day before successful attempts that didn't go well. And I would love to know exactly this. How did you feel when you got it versus when you didn't get it? Well, failure is something I work at a lot in my life, because let me go back a little bit in my adolescence. I come from a family where my education was that I took nine, you know, nine out of 10 as a vote in school. And he asked me, is there anyone that took 10? So like nine is a good vote, but it just the first question is not, oh, good girl. It just anyone else took 10. So more than you, or if I struck and filled out it, I was like doing cross country. And I remember a day, I won a race. And it didn't say anything to me. My father didn't say anything to me. Just said to me, oh, the second was quite close to you. No, this is not good. It should be like very far away. You should win by a lot. So I came as an athlete as a person in my life, very ambitious. Never enough. I feel never enough. I always feel I could do more, I could more, which is good and bad, you know, is good because you look like really long head in your life. You look really ambitious, but also when you look so far away, you have to understand that failure is part of the process. And this is again, another thing that people keep saying failure is part of the process, but then really make this a real process is difficult. And when I failed my record, that was, I would say a mistake that made me growing so fast because I realized that my mathematical model was perfect, but was not in line with the physiology. To be brief, the first attempt that I made self-founded because I couldn't find any sponsor. And because was my first thing in cycling, I know in a paper that I could break the record. I put myself in a very aerodynamic position. But I was so constrained in this position that my diaphragm couldn't be relaxed. So after 40 minutes, I start to get an inflammation to die from the diaphragm start to suffer. So it's the mathematical model that was perfect. My aerodynamic coefficient was perfect, but was not sustainable. And this is the best lesson you can learn. So when it's nowadays everyone speak about AI and everyone is scared or too optimistic, but the real thing is that it's always a compromise between the maths and the real reality. So that failure was for me the big opportunity to learn and to start actually make a real. Well, you said it earlier in 2013, maybe the AI and the science and the mathematics wasn't there, but for me personally thinking back on that time, there also wasn't a sharing of knowledge. It wasn't that, you know, it was everybody working towards breaking records or athletes willing to share their knowledge and their experiences. And I still very much like, you know, I do my thing and this is my secret and I hope nobody finds out. And if they do find out they're going to have to pull every little string to get this. So nowadays it's probably quite common knowledge that you need to balance. the aerodynamics versus the position in triathlon, more so because you still have to run afterwards. But I'm really curious to find out whether for you the mathematical models that you speak to and the numbers and the calculations help you sleep the night before the race, having ticked every box, having the safety blanket. Three swim sessions, four rides, three runs every week and you wonder why your legs feel like concrete by Thursday. When recovery isn't happening, most athletes look at sodium or carbs or they spend 30 minutes on the foam roller thinking that's gonna fix it. But the one thing that actually supports your muscles relaxing overnight, your nervous system resetting and your sleep during its job is magnesium. And most athletes aren't getting enough of it. Now you might have tried magnesium before, a lot of athletes have, but there is a good chance it wasn't formulated for you. Most magnesium products use very cheap forms, oxide carbonate that the body barely absorbs. So you take it, feel nothing and ride it off, fair enough. But that's exactly why I use pillars, triple magnesium. Three highly bi-available forms that actually get absorbed. This isn't a generic supplement. It's built for athletes doing real training volume. And that's also why I became an investor in pillar. I looked at what they were doing and believed in the formulation. Head to pillarperformance.com and use code going mental for 15% off first purchase. Give triple magnesium a go. Your next morning will tell you everything. Yeah, for sure it helps a lot. I work it a lot on this because for cycling, in professional cycling, you have to communicate four months in advance to the UCI, the International Cycling Union, that you want to break a record. So months and months in advance, also when you find, when you search for the team around you, you need to say, "Loud, I want to break a word record." The expectation just make a lot of pressure on you. So you need a way to sleep at night. And my way, for example, is it's maths, but also is the routine. So when I get used to things, I'm in comfort, for example, for the big record, the 50, when I break the 50-wall kilometer in 2023, my strategy for two years, because I prepared the record for two years, was to have one hour record weekly. So each week, I have a simulation of the day of race, so that I knew that day, everything was automatic as much as possible. I need to be like perfectly conscious that I was the right person in the right place, in the right moment. And so I need that kind of automatization. So it was very hard for my team, for me, mentally, to have that day repeated every week. If you think about that, it's crazy. When I say to my coach, to my nutritionist, to everyone around me, to my psychologist, they said, "Wow, are you sure you want to do that?" And I say, "Yeah, I don't want to be scared." Many athletes say, "I don't want to do anymore the hour." It's the most caretling of life, but I just want to do things without being scared about that. - There's a few things we need to unpack here. So the first one is for anybody who has never time-trailed for an hour and done an all-out effort for an hour. This is, it doesn't count in the same way. I think maybe Graeme Obrey was the guy who said that, it's almost like dying, but you don't quite go to the other side. And I've done this in my life probably less times than you have done record attempts, but it is excruciating. I've never had time pass so very slowly. But I find interesting that you chose the way of repeated, what's the way I'm looking for, repeated that you expose yourself repeatedly to the fear if I'm not mistaken. It's not the physiology you're necessarily after because I don't think physiologically, it's necessarily the best training to do a one hour all-out time trial every week. But for you, does it definitely a psychological measurement, right? - Yeah, but also I took the chance to have many tests. Like I tested everything from nutrition protocol to the mechanical part on the bike, the choose of the chain rings, procreate, chain, several positions on the bike. And this test takes a lot of time in not just one day in the wind tunnel. I heard about professional sagus that say they prepared the hour record with just one day in the wind tunnel. And this is not right to me. Okay, you can have one day in the wind tunnel, but you have several tests in the velodrome, but also you need to try that configuration for the hour. It's not five minutes, it's not enough. You need to take that race and repeat because if you have a long crank, you understand after maybe 40, 45 minutes if it's the good choice or not. So every choice I tested for one hour, every, you know, every tip on the chain ring, I tested like, I mean, I had the limit obviously from this to that. So I didn't test 50 ratio gear, but I mean, probably 10, 15. So it was a good opportunity to learn now. - All right, I know a lot of listeners are quite geeky on the aerodynamics. So please just take us into the opportunity of what you think is, or what actually not what you think, what worked for you the best in terms of crank length and also, you know, the actual physical, the gear ratio that worked for you. - Yeah. - Do you remember? Or did it change? - No, no, it's, it changes over the several records. I did the thing is that everything came from the thing that I started, I didn't quite late. So I didn't have the coordination, I don't have the coordination to be a track cyclist. I don't know if you ever watch a track race, but they have a, they spin the leg really fast, they can go more than 100, I mean, 100 is not even high. As a cadence, the sprinter can go 130 and so on. But I couldn't do that. So I was always for the big gear, long crank, and also I don't have mobility at all. I'm not patient enough to do yoga, to do stretching and all these kind of things. So my mobility improved, but not so much. So I was always with, I really high stock, so many spacer under the elbow rest, so I can like be, you know, I have a big angle, hip angle, so I can have a great, and big gears. And also, I mean, it's very personal, because if you want to do this, you have also to accept to do a lot of strength training and the low cadence effort, who are two marks low cadence effort. And, but it depends on the person. For me, everything started because I don't have coordination, so it's not something born out of the constraint of not having enough flexibility. It's fascinating because there are so many ways, right, to do things and there are so many approaches, and to realize that we are all individual is probably for me one of the most beautiful things of sport, because you are able to actually carve your own way, and in a way, you have to, you have to invest this time. But what I find curious is that you chose to go your own way always. You chose that this is your project, and you got into the details, and you didn't allow any constraints in terms of material by joining a team. You know, you were able to test every single piece, which makes the project, I mean, X amount bigger, and if you are the one doing all the calculations, I was always fortunate to have, you know, the scientists and the bike manufacturers, and we tried to build something together. But what do you think was so important for you to choose this freedom over the easy way, or easier way? - Freedom, it's everything to me. It's everything. I mean, it was not about the number of the kilometer that I broke, but it's about the story. I can tell. It's about the story I can tell to young people. Now when they need to choose a way, in life and society, social media now tell us that we have to follow a standard, we have to follow a model. When I started cycling, they told me you have to do this way because it's here that is done in this way. So you have to follow this path, no other path. And unicity is our, is the most precious thing that we have. When I didn't find sponsor because the hour record was the first thing I wanted to do in my career and obviously it's funny. I didn't find any, any sponsor that came for me, then to doping, commissar and whatever. I told that invest on myself was the best thing I could have done. I just want to tell a story, not because it's, my story is the best story in the world. It's just another story, a different story. Again, when I started cycling, I did the Fianneur flander, I do say in English. Tour flander, yeah. Because I had a big model. So I can push on the pedal really hard. So when I was in the stage with the, with the team at the very beginning in the professional team, they said, oh, you're ready to do this. And then I found myself really alone in the peloton because everyone looked at me in a strange way. I was a new one. I was like quite funny on the bike. Really stressed in the peloton. I couldn't stay inside the bunch because for me was like something that in a rational way was not possible to be with 200 rider at 50k per hour minimum approaching, you know, the climb really. Cobblestone. With Cobblestone. So I felt so alone. Everyone looked at me like so, you know, like she's different, you know? And so I started to say I had to find a way to be, to never feel alone. And so I started to work deeply to be with myself. Ourself is the person that we have to be the most of time in our life. So we need to find a way to be with ourself in a, in a good way. And there were again many, many times that I felt so alone in a bunch of people. And the hour record somehow was the way for me because it was alone on the track. I wrote an amically curious because my at position it's famous to be really low. I don't watch HUD. I just watched the black line. And that was something that happened at the not for aerodynamic, not as a mathematician, but just because I wanted to be with myself. I want to say a child ward. I just stay with mouth and just go this for one hour. And when I rest up my hand, my head after the hour, I'm another person because I had a dialogue with myself for the hour. I don't know if I'm spaining myself. So just please interrupt me because. No, no, no, no, I'm absolutely fascinated. This is this is a really beautiful approach because exactly like you say, we spend so much time with ourselves. Why is it so hard to be nice to ourselves? You know, I have this this conversation, especially in sports, there are so much emotions, sometimes involved. And I've talked to other athletes as well because I many, many times was very unkind when things didn't go right in terms of training to myself. You know, you quite frankly speaking, you lose your shit. And this was something that happens all the time. And I find it so interesting that you manage to focus all this energy on the black line, which brings me to a quote of yours where you said, I had to change my relationship to pain. And I'm wondering what it was that you changed and how you managed to transform this. Another difficult question. Pain is something that is so difficult to accept because it's, I mean, to me, was always a dialogue with myself when the pain approached. And you're at say, stop, stop, you know, that that's boys that force you to stop. But I mean, for me, I'm not saying that I never stopped training. I'm not saying that I finished all my training because sometimes I had one over my physical, my body. But the thing that really saved me many times is to be kind with myself and start a conversation. Okay, we want to stop. Why? So, okay, you're telling me, you know, that voice is something like the result of you that say, stop. And it's like every second, say, stop, stop, stop. And you're not using it in that moment because you're under fatigue. Maybe you're doing a vo2max effort. And you're just, you don't have the oxygen enough oxygen to have something like a conversation. I really try to have this conversation. I really try to ask why I have to stop. So what's happening? I'm dying because I need to stop. There is something dangerous. What up? I mean, the thing that up to me at the beginning of my career was the was something's curious. I mean, I remember a national time trial championship in Italy. I was the first one, you know, the time was I was going to win. And then I had the fear to win and I stopped and I quit the race. This is something like a monster for me. When I sometimes I'm scared to win. And it's something I'm still working on this. When I start something with a really high expectation, with the only focus that I want to win, well, I'm not successful. My successful record were because I was thinking about something different, not just broke the record. But tell a story, tell something. The first record was for my father was to show as a woman that I could be a manager of a team. I said no to manager because I wanted to speak with sponsor. I wanted to do this as a scientist. I wanted to do in an unconventional way. So there was a story around the 50-woll was something different was to prove that woman can break that wall. And then when I did the individual pool suite was another story. I wanted to show that also woman came all the both the record in the same time, not just men. And to show that physiologically, published paper in sports are not for woman. There is only white men. That's every methodology every protocol is applied to. And it's not right. So there is always a story that is always something bigger, not just think about win. I like that. I mean, hold that thought for a second because I was talking to Cassia and Nivia Donga Finney about exactly this difference. Why there is such a big difference, especially in cycling in men and women's events because in triathlon we are not used to this. It's always been the same same distance, mostly the same day, same prize money, all these kind of things. But did that story just coming back to finish on the topic of you needing a story to justify your success or to distract you or to focus your energy on something positive? Did that story have to change? Or did you find a narrative that you could stick with when you said you wanted to prove that you as a woman were able to break the 50-hour, 50-kilometer mark? Because that's another thing I actually just realized is in this hour record is the only discipline in the world where you are not racing a distance, you are racing a time. And it's very, it's quite curious because any other time trial distance, you are always racing a distance and never for a time. So was there a narrative that you found for you that still works or something that you can continuously apply? I think it's about life, every chapter, every piece of life as a story. Now I have another story for example, every record can tell a story because when you start to work on a goal, you need to cancel the word "sacrifice". You just need to understand that it is your choice to prioritize that. So you don't have to speak about "I'm sacrificing my time to train. I don't like that." So I want to construct everything around that, so I want to involve my family, my beloved woman. one, my cats, everyone. If I go to a training camp, my cats can't go with me. And I go with them in the mountain. And so they can go up to trees and we have a walk. So they enjoy the process in another way. My husband did lived his own story with the record, my mother. And so it's, I think it's important because I help you to don't say I'm sacrificing my life for a goal. This is, I don't like this. I don't like added that say that is a choice. So we choose to have a priority. We choose to have a scale. I do say first, second, third, the scale of value that can change in time. But for the moment, I choose that. So the first, there is this and the second is this. And you have to construct. You have to be also, I am something that I learned in this process is to be a leader in the sense that leadership, what is leadership? It's not to say to people, do that, do that because we have to do the record. It's to involve them in something big. So they can be a better person. They can take the chance to leave a record to become better people. It's leadership to me. So this is something I learned. I didn't have enough money to pay people. Most of the people that worked for the hour record, the individual pursuit record, worked for free. What I hope, I gave them, it's a story. It's the opportunity to be better somehow in a way. Maybe even a sense of fulfillment. I mean, there is something that I really, we spoke about happiness earlier, but I find fulfillment something far more worth chasing because it really is so much more inclusive of all the hides and lows and all the emotions that come with chasing an audacious goal. I mean, that really is what it comes down to. And when you can involve somebody and make them feel alive, in that sense, I think is quite a unique privilege, which brings me back to the beginning of you being a leader. Your husband, Rocco, you just mentioned him, was sort of the one who nudged you into cycling. And it was from what I read, within two years that you said, you want to go after a world record. Now, I have a lot of friends that start cycling. And the best they are chasing after two years is maybe a Strava Comm on their local driveway. But this is a really audacious goal. And maybe the first time you had to take this role as a leader, consciously or not. What was the outside reaction and how did you do with it? That's a really good question. Thank you. I've lost so many friends in that time. I remember the first reaction was, she lose her mind because of the loss of her father. Because when you say to society, I'm pulling out Mademadi Galakadmi for a moment. And I go for something that is not a job. I have to put a lot of money in this. Society say, you have to have a job there. You work it up for this. You cannot quit. You cannot change. When someone changed life, the first reaction is, it's crazy that what is the income is the first question. You do for money. And so this question about you do for money, what's the income of doing these? They don't pay you enough in university. So you go to professional cycling. You want to earn money with social media and things like that. So I just, I changed all the company around me. And in that period, I actually investigated myself, what it means to change life, to be brave enough, to change life. I was 27 and actually I was going from money to non money. So it's like, you need to explain. What is the drive? And I think it's a deep consciousness of that sentence, I said at the beginning, about time. If you feel something, you cannot postpone. So I just took the chance to do this. And I said, it's not so dangerous. I can go back to maths if something goes wrong. If I fail, I can go back. There is a way back. And I felt that and I rockled with me, the thing with my father. So I think not directly, but indirectly, it felt the same sensation about the time. When you have a conversation with another person, it can be the last time we have a conversation with that person, it can be the last time you do this action in your life. So he understood and he approved. Then it was a little bit too long, because after the third record, when I said I want to do the fourth, it was like a little bit annoyed, but it's. It's what you. I don't know, it becomes a part of the package, I guess. But it's something it's hard to let go. And you did try to let go for a little bit. You retired for a few weeks, a few months. And you said, I'm trying to look for the exact quote, because it was so beautiful. It was, hang on, I have to find it. It's too great of a self-inflicted punishment for you to leave the bike behind. Please explain this to me. Yeah, after the 50 kilometer record in 2023, I wanted to approach the individual poor suite for people that are not used with cycling in the individual poor suite. It was a discipline for women, three kilometers. You start with another rider on the other side of the track, three to one, and you go for three kilometers, and the first one that finished the three kilometer win or win the first that approached the other one on the other side of it. So it's physiologically very similar to 800 meter in running. So when I was doing. But it's much longer, no, than 800, sorry, to drop. Yeah, it's in in terms of time. But the 800, 800 is somewhere around two minutes, and this would be three, three and a half, something like this. Three minutes, it's around three minutes and 15. So it's much more similar. So when I was young, I wanted to do the 800, but people always said, "No, your body is more for 5,000 in the truck." So I couldn't never do properly a train on 800 meter, even if I like a lot. And I was too young to say, "No, I want to do that. I don't mind." I like that. So when I was 37, I said, "Okay, now I want to have good fun." Because in Sagan, it happened the same. So the individual puts something that is in the European World Championship. It's not like the hour record. So you have a call from the national team to go for a European. It was an Olympic distance also for the Olympic performance. An Olympic race. Discipline. Yeah, a big discipline. Till London 2012. So I really wanted to have a chance. And it was really hard because I had to learn how to start on a truck, which is on a van in a van, which is 42 degree inclined. Your bike is fixed and you have a big year and you have to go from 0 to 60k per hour in 20 seconds, in less than 20 seconds. So it was really hard. But I had only one year to try because after that year, the dishy bling changed it from 3 to 4 kilometers to unify the distance with men. So I said, this is the last year I can do. So I have only one year and was not enough. So I missed the record and the sale came going to retire because I don't want to do a world record as a first one for the 4k. Because it would be too easy because it's a new discipline. It's a new distance. I mean, not new discipline is a new distance of the same discipline. But I don't want to be, you know, to have an easy world record because I'm just the first one. So I don't want to train for that. It's done. I failed. Let's do something different. But then there were many racing, the 4k. And actually one of the best riders in UK at the moment, the best track cyclists of. Like many years now, said a really nice time, and they said, "Wow, this is an opportunity for me." And then I started to train again. And I took also the opportunity to do in the same week, another hour record to prove that in the same period of time, the female body can sustain that effort, because I think Grime Obrie, Boardman, Philippo Ganna, are riders that all did both record in the same time. So it's like the endurance in track cycling, but at the end, tip of this. So the shortest and the longest. You don't push it in the hour, and I wanted to show that. And yeah, and I did. Like, I think one year ago now, it's actually one year ago. Yeah, I think yesterday, one year ago. So happy record day. It's quite fascinating, but I guess in some ways, you proved this already with your 2018 World Record attempt, and we're basically the day before you did a max effort. It didn't quite come to the thing, to sustain for the hour. But the next day, you broke the hour world record, which, physiologically, scientifically, I don't know, from a training perspective, is definitely not the recommended way. I mean, there are a lot of ways that you can do something, but I don't think anybody would recommend to do a 44 minute, all-out full-guess time trial the day before a world record. And there goes so much planning and so much science and so much evidence into this, that it really makes me curious as to what you think it is mentally that allows you to go that extra step forward, to go and break with all of the preparation, to break with perfection and show resilience. Well, I have to say that day, when I-- I mean, those two days, when I did the 44 minutes, our record pace, and then an hour record, I found something interesting in myself. So I go really well, if the day before a competition, I have a really big activation of my heart rate. I can sustain a more afatic leg than an art that goes high really fast. So this is something you're right. I mean, it's probably not written everywhere. It was just personally to me. I don't know if you have a experience that your approach arrays that you are to rest it and your rate rate is just going high really, really fast. I don't like this sensation. So I found that the best day before a race for me needs a big activation of the heart rate. Like, I mean, for a time trial, it's not an hour. A time trial that is high intensity, 30, 40 minutes, I can do even a water max effort the day before, because I just want to activate the heart rate. And I can sustain the fatigue in my leg much better than this sensation of the heart that is very high. So I like to be activated. But I think it's something like very personal in my life, when I'm to rest it, I'm lazy. I always feel that I am like in the adrenaline mode. I can perform really good at work in training. Obviously, you need to control that. Sometimes, I mean, many times my HIV was red. So because-- No. But I think it's, as I said, I was also really young. I was-- it was my first experience. It was a self-founded attempt. I had a lot of pressure because I didn't have any more money. I mean, I remember the call with my mother was, "Mom, I broke the record. It was for that. It's for that. I'm so happy. But I didn't have to sell my car." So I had a lot of pressure and was much more than just a race. It was, as we said before, I mean, OK, I was a leader in the sense of leadership, in the sense of involvement of a team, of people around me. We are friends, my husband and so on. But I was also conscious that was very heavy economically. Yeah. And again, you show that you can use this as a fuel, right? For you, you keep going. And I have seen many, many-- I mean, I call them Tuesday World Champions, who are able to perform incredibly well. But as soon as the pressure is increasing, as there's a real race day coming, as there is outside stress coming, I wonder if you have a conscious tactic that you would be willing to share of how you stay rational in this moment. Is that your scientific mindset, maybe, that you are just approaching things by OK, trying to control the control of bulls? Or is there something else that really-- it sounds like almost you need it to get into gear. Like, you need the outside pressure, or you need some kind of adversity to get the very best out of yourself. This is true. As I said, at some point in this conversation, I said, the best thing in my life up and at when I realize that I cannot go more down than that. So I'm really at the bottom of everything. And then something special happens. You need to realize how important are things. A little bit before that you realize that you can lose them how many times, like, when we were young, with my husband, with Rocco, we were fighting and said, oh, I'm leaving home. And then we spend some days alone. And then you really realize, OK, this story can finish. So I really love him. I need to come back. And so it's this kind of things. But more professionally speaking, I would say that my way is, as I told you, it's creating a routine, a habit. So I know that that Sunday there is the race. But I lived that day so many times before. And you could say, OK, this is for the hour record. But how can I do for a normal race? I think there are many ways to simulate the race. I mean, to me, also, for time trial on the road, I simulate everything. I know the start time. So I take a piece of road in the middle of nowhere, with the roller. I do the warm-up on the roller. I go with the car. And then I jump on the bike as Rocco to follow me with the car. We tried the radio. Because we have, for example, sometimes I'm used to train with music. And then on the race, I hear the voice of someone in the car behind me. And I'm not Rocco. So things that you're not used to do are dangerous because you realize that, oh, there is another-- this is a day that I don't know. And never lived this day. So I'm scared. I need to be in our lurch. But if you tried everything, even the radio, the voice of someone that's picked to you, when you ride the race, it's very important. So just repeat and repeat and repeat. Yeah. And I guess never be afraid of what may happen. Because, yeah, again, you said it before, but trying to control everything is difficult. I mean, it's a huge cognitive task, really, to be everywhere at the same time. I'm really grateful. I mean, my best friend was there throughout my career. And he was taking care of all the little details. So sometimes I always said, I have the legs. He has the brain. So I can just keep going and focus on all the things and try to be resilient. In case something happens, I cannot plan for. And that would be something I'm curious about. What do you react when the planning or the spreadsheet or all these things don't quite come together? I'm very severe with myself. And I'm not with other people when they fail, I'm always a little bit more kind. With myself, I can really destroy myself. And again, I work so much to accept the failure in the sense, if this were ever make a sense. It's-- I always try to focus on that opportunity to learn something. It's so difficult. I'm still working on this, but it's all in the process to be in a good way with myself, you know, because you feel so alone when things are not going well, you also are not kind with yourself. So you need at least to be kind with yourself because all the rest of the world don't look at you as a winner, as a loser. So it's a big process. And again, it's every time I think about a failure, I think also, okay, it can happen when you think big in your life. I'm used to think big dream, big goal, big mission, I don't think the world dream because dream makes like it dream, it's always like impossible. They are like really near us as world, but I speak about mission because I want to feel the right person in the right moment in the right time to do this. And when I start to think about a mission, I have to think about failure also. Like every day, there is a moment, I think about what happened if I fail, I keep like really focus on the process. And even if I fail, these days is not lost because I learned these and that. Yeah, I mean, it's really fascinating and I can really relate on so many levels because exactly what you say, it's kind of daunting, right? And in the end, I've talked to a few athletes and we've always said, you know, in the end, when it's successful, it's not like, oh, thank God, thank you. This was amazing. It's just thank God we didn't fail. Like there is so much truth to this. And if I can just share from my experience, what really helped me is similar motto, except it's probably more poster, momentum, more, you know, remember that your time is finite and having this opportunity is actually a privilege. And this for me kind of at the very end of my career made me realize, okay, this is, this is actually just fine. It actually doesn't really matter. Like it's super cool when it works, but it's also super cool that you even just tried. But yeah, I don't know, this was something. Maybe before we go, I would like to know if you have any tips for the listeners who might have a mission who might have a notacious goal, how you go from today and just starting and just working towards something really big. Wow. I should have prepared something, but the first thing like from my insight without thinking much is when you choose a mission, please stay faith, have faith with your own value, even if all around you forces you to do something different. I had to do a lot with Federation is not a story that I hide because I did my own way. And when I were the Italian team, I couldn't do my own way. And the fact constraint. So I had that sensation that that jersey, so important jersey, the blue jersey of the Italian team was not my, I couldn't feel properly mine because was not part of a process that I created. So everyone that starts a mission is the best thing is to create something with your own value, with your own ideas is not because all around you forces you to do something. So you need to be faithful with yourself, even if it's different, even if you feel alone, even if even if you don't feel normal, it's the only thing that we can tell at the end. When the story finish, you can never story to tell. That's beautiful Victoria. I'm truly inspired. It was really, really nice to hear your story, but also the perspective that you offer and the ways you think about is really unique and I think quite beautiful. We have a closing tradition here. And the same way I started, I would love to know when was the last time you went mental? I think even today, there is, if you understand correctly, being mental for you is something like being obsessed with being like in what you mean by being mental properly. No, no, for me, it's really interesting because to go mental in English is really, it's completely open, right? To go mental is sometimes when you do a crazy trick scheme, you know, people with, oh, that's mental. Or you go to party until six o'clock in the morning, it was totally mental. Or your, your, your, your by computer is not working. And you have a complete explosion. For me, this was in the beginning, very times when I went mental. So it can be anything really where you are just consumed completely and ripped out of your day to do something crazy or out of your routine to do something positive, negative, it can be anything, whatever you feel like. Yeah, so I was right. So, okay, because I think, as I said, I think every day, I need that, that kind of things that put my adrenaline really high. I need, I'm addicted to that kind of adrenaline. And so at the moment, I'm in the mountain. And at some point, it was knowing the weather is crazy in May in mountain, but I really had to feel something that I had to pause from job. And, and I took the bike was like really cold and with the, you know, snow and low clouds. And I just went with the bike full gas for a half an hour. And, and that's it. So I, I just searched for adrenaline. I think it's, I want to feel alive in a very strange condition. I mean, I try to not be dangerous, obviously. You know, so I'm just, you know, it's something that ever, ever since. But yeah, I just, I just want to do things that are not in the planet at some point and just do what, what I feel in that moment. So, I just do all out effort in the 2000 meter in the snow, watch our end go back to work, but I felt good. What a way to go mental. Again, so much admiration, Victoria. Thank you so much for your time. I really enjoyed this and I wish you all the very best of luck in going mental and your upcoming projects. Thank you so much. It was a real pleasure. Thank you. [Music]