Welcome to the first instalment of our new blog series, Inside the Ride, where we dive into the stories and experiences of athletes on their unique journeys with Holohan Coaching. To kick things off, we’re catching up with Chris Pook, a long-time member of the Holohan Coaching family. Over the years, Chris has transformed his approach to training, racing, and all things cycling. From milestones to lessons learned, we’ll explore what keeps him motivated and what it’s like to chase his goals with Holohan Coaching in his corner. Let’s hear it from Chris himself!
Client Interview Questions
Name: Chris Pook
1. Background and Goals
- What inspired you to take up your specific cycling discipline? I have ridden various types of bikes since I was young boy, including riding to secondary school each day. I first become aware of cycling in the wider context, when watching Ullrich win the Tour in 1997 when I was 14. As a fellow tall rider, it was inspiring to watch how good he looked on a bike and I used to dream about powering up and down the big mountains in both the Alps and the Pyrenees. It took until 2010, when I was 27 years old, to finally get into competitive cycling – first exclusively road (for 10 years) and latterly mountain biking, gravel and cyclo-cross. I’d become very unfit in my early/mid twenties and after a long cyclo-tour across Southern Africa in 2009, I’d managed to lose some weight and get some basic fitness back and I was determined not to slip back into my old ways when I got home!
- What were your main goals when you started working with Holohan Coaching? I’ve been coached by Liam Holohan since late 2014, so 10 years now. I did my first competitive bike race in April 2011 (Paramount Spring Road Race Regional A, where I finished 14th). In the first three years, I made all the classic mistakes of training inconsistently, training at too high an intensity when not having the condition to do so, charging around on club runs in the winter, etc and was pretty much always ‘cooked’ by late April every year – i.e. the opposite of winter miles = summer smiles. I would train intensively (more out of fear than anything else) for some absurdly demanding multi-day summertime event that my teammates and I would have agreed to do the previous autumn when egging each other on and then wonder why I underperformed and felt physically destroyed for weeks afterwards. By 2014, I was married with a child and about to throw in the towel on trying to achieve any of my goals in cycling, when I was introduced to Liam, who was still racing professionally at that point and had recently moved to Shrewsbury, where I had been based since 2009. We clicked right away, and I started noticing small but steady improvements over the coming months.
2. Coaching Experience
- How has the coaching approach, including the use of experience and science-based methods, impacted your training? My understanding has developed enormously over the previous 14 years. For the first 4 years (when I didn’t have a coach), I was just making error after error, and if I got fit, it was more by accident than design! Over the last 10 years of being coached by Liam, I have a much better understanding of the science behind getting fit and ‘peaking’ for a specific event, and I also know what does and doesn’t work for me as I balance many commitments both with my family (my wife and I have four children now) and my business (where I employ almost 40 people).
- Could you share an example of a specific training technique or workout that made a difference? It depends on which event we are trying to target, but whilst I don’t overly enjoy it, I find that a 4-hour progressive endurance ride really brings my fitness on.
- What are your “non-negotiables” with your coach? Liam understands that cycling for me is how I relax and unwind. It is not ‘my job’, nor would I ever want it to be. That isn’t to say that I don’t want to excel at it. As someone who likes to give their all at whatever I commit to, I set myself clear goals each year, and Liam handles the training side of it to enable me to get there. That is both the physical and mental element, as sometimes the hardest bit is just believing in ‘the process’, especially when you are in the middle of a series of really difficult sessions, and perhaps the weather has been bad for a couple of weeks.
3. Challenges and Breakthroughs
- What’s been your biggest challenge, and how did coaching help? The biggest challenge was building the condition to get through multi-day races, such as the Cape Epic (an 8 day MTB race in South Africa). I can commit, on average, 10 hours a week to riding my bike, but the Cape Epic is circa 30 hours over 8 days, so it's a big step up in volume. Liam ensures that my training sessions are very specific, and over the years, I have built up the endurance depth that I can do a block of 25-30 hours of racing and not end my season!
- Was there a “breakthrough” moment when you realised the coaching was making a real difference? I completed the ‘Haute Route Pyrenees’ in August 2015, a 7 stage timed road bike event with an emphasis on climbing! I had been trained by Liam for about 9 months at that point, and the brief was to enjoy the event and come out of it in decent condition so that I could then aim to have my first consistent winter of training. It went exactly as planned, and whilst I wasn’t able to go ‘fast’ yet, I rigidly stuck to his plan, and it provided a major confidence boost.
- How does coaching give you the necessary tools to succeed? It gives my riding structure and focus
4. Results and Achievements
- What improvements or achievements have you seen since starting the programme? I have improved a great deal as a rider, and Liam has helped me achieve progression in my overall fitness each and every year. I ticked off all of the road goals that I had (wins in Regional A’s, National B’s and Foreign Nationals, Overall wins in Road Race Leagues, won a stage of a Haute Route plus a Top 10 overall GC, Top 100 in L’Etape Du Tour) and then moved ‘off-road’. I did my first cross season last year and won the Veterans classification of the West Mids Cyclo Cross League, including 8 victories and won my age category of the National Gravel Champs in 2022. I have also podiumed at multiple MTB races, including winning the Vets Classification of the National BMCR MTB Champs.
5. Personal Insights
- How has cycling influenced other areas of your life, such as work, health, or mental wellbeing? Being fit and healthy is a central plank in being able to function at my best, both in my home life and when running my business. If I have had a stressful day, I find that a bike ride helps me make sense of everything and more often, I can ‘process’ whatever was bothering me.
- What’s your favourite part of the training programme or your routine? A social mid week morning ride when the roads are quiet and the majority of the world are in the office.
- What keeps you motivated? New events, new locations, the interesting people I meet along the way, setting a good example (by staying fit into middle age) to my children
6. Feedback & Looking Ahead
- What’s next for you in your cycling journey? I am heading back to the Cape Epic in March 2025 with my close friend and teammate, Matt. We learnt a lot in our first attempt in 2023 and will aim to draw on that experience to get more out of ourselves and achieve a better overall outcome.
- What advice would you give to someone considering structured coaching? Personally, I find accountability and structure are really useful and help me to be successful in other areas of my life. I like routine, and I also like pushing myself, which is something that a good coach can really support.
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