Five Minutes With... Peta McSharry

How do you believe your background in traditional bike racing and sportives, stage races influenced your approach to training yourself and your athletes for bikepacking events?

Race tactics fascinate me, I have watched the Tour de France from start to finish since back in the early 2000s, absorbing all the commentary. But watching versus riding are two very different things. I wondered what it would feel like to ride a Grand Tour, in 2011 I got the opportunity to ride the full Men’s Giro D’Italia route for charity. To experience the accumulated fatigue of 21 days of riding, the loss of appetite after day 3 spiked my interest in what goes on in the body for these events. I was fortunate to join the Cervelo Test Team for dinner on the eve of the 2010 Tour de France and to also join the Endura Pro-Continental team in Nice for a week of training - I was sponsored by Wiggle at the time to race the World Masters. Two things stuck out, the volume these riders could eat was incredible, but more so the variety of colour of vegetables that were served up. It was the first time I saw artichokes, sitting alongside beetroot and carrots. It matched what I saw when I worked with professional rugby - the quality of their food and the selection of protein were tailored to their body composition. They valued their recovery highly but the quality of their food even more. It opened my eyes to a training regime which was more than just hammering out hard efforts on the home trainer. When they did a recovery ride, it was super slow. Even as a group ride, it was controlled, no one was attacking or sprinting for the signs. However, trying to implement this self-coached approach was tough, so I signed up with a coach for the first time. The systems he introduced from the British Cycling coaching programme, the same training I’ve since undertaken, are still the same systems I use with my athletes and my current coach uses a similar system.

Perhaps the most valuable experience is failure. I worked with an ex-teacher who designed failure into his courses. It was through failing at a task where the most learning happened, both on how to do it differently next time, but more so about how different people were in their ability to do a task, based on their personality characteristics - such as humanists and behaviourists. It was on this course I learned my ability to take an overview of information presented so far and to predict what the next steps would be.

My approach to coaching is to evaluate the event, getting an understanding of what’s needed to complete or achieve a rider's goals and then evaluating the rider. My plan is made up of the difference between where the rider is now to where they need to be - this includes everything on the bike and off the bike. I don’t have a single athlete who is following the same plan. I don’t use a pre-designed plan which I apply to every athlete and tweak it every week. Their plan is unique to them and the style of recording and communicating is also unique to them too. I worked with a renowned Diagnostic Consultant on Harley Street in London. Before your first appointment with him, he’d get you to do a psychological test on-line so he could pitch his information to you in a way you could understand. As manual therapists, we tend to do the same, for someone to do the remedial work, they need to be able to assimilate the information correctly. I try to pitch my coaching in the same way. Thus my style comes from a very eclectic back-ground picking the tools that suit the individual client and to reward my need to problem solve. It’s a symbiotic relationship.

You've coached athletes to historic record breaking rides and victories, but what are the most common mistakes you see bikepacking athletes make when approaching training for bikepacking races?

The sheer amount of decision making needed for a bikepacking race far exceeds many other forms of bike racing. The volume of training needed for these races is pretty high and making sound decisions when you’re fatigued from training can be tough. Getting the right balance between how much you need to train versus how much you need to recover is perhaps the hardest part of training for these types of races. My single piece of advice for someone self-coaching is to keep a journal to track training and comments to your training. There are tools out there to plan your coaching, technology to log all your stats, but if you don’t tie the two together consciously then you can’t evaluate how you are responding to training.

The second issue I see is around food and fueling, many riders experience problems eating during races, it’s one of the key elements I focus on with my athletes.

The last issue would be comfort. While we expect a degree of discomfort on the bike, it is possible to finish a bikepacking race without saddle sores, numb hands and neck issues. A periodised programme which covers conditioning, drills and strength can help with wonky biomechanics which result in the issues mentioned above.

Peta and Meaghan at the start of Tour Divide 2024. Photo Credit: Penny Lawless

As someone who’s raced across various cycling disciplines, what is it about bikepacking that’s drawn you to it? And why have you settled into it so naturally?

I hold two jobs, more recently as a bikepacking coach and for close to 20 years as a sports massage / myofascial therapist. This puts me face-to-face, quite literally, with people all day. Listening, evaluating and seeking solutions to problems. Similar qualities I use with bikepacking coaching. This limits my option to day dream, a quality highlighted frequently on my school reports. Solo, unsupported riding gives me ample time to daydream and to ride in a semi-meditative state consumed by my own world or as my teachers would say, ‘away with the fairies’. There are so many things to problem solve with bikepacking, it gives my brain the option to run through endless options of how I would resolve a problem. Like a bear encounter, what would I do? Turns out, I would ride towards it, while two men hide behind me, evaluate its behaviour and then decide whether it’s a threat or not. When it’s snowing and -5°C, waiting around for someone else to find a solution when I’m frozen isn’t going to warm me up. I tend to jump in the deep end, then figure out if I can swim.

When I started bikepacking, these qualities were more essential as there was very little information available online about bikepacking. Jumping in the deep end was the only way to get started and I loved the process of figuring out stuff. But mostly it’s the outdoor adventure, wild camping and riding in remote places which I love the most and knowing I’m not the odd ball, because so many others love the same stuff. I always say if you’re unhappy it’s because you’re hanging out with the wrong people. I could never understand how someone could sit in a pub all day making small talk. They could never understand how I could spend all day riding alone, sleeping wild. The pub friends are lovely, but it never made me happy. My pizza-Friday cycling crew - now that makes my heart sing.

Peta at the start of Tour Divide 2024. Photo Credit: Penny Lawless

Given you hold such a unique perspective on bikepacking and have witnessed the evolution of bikepacking, what changes do you foresee happening within the sport over the coming years?

In my wildest dreams I never foresaw bikepacking becoming so mainstream, the growth in the last six years is incredible. Ultra-endurance sport was traditionally the domain of the older athlete, with endurance touted as coming with age. However, younger riders are proving they hold as much clout within ultra-sport. For Marin de Saint-Exupéry to win the Atlas Mountain Race at the age of 24 demonstrates how younger athletes are showing up at the front end of races. I think we’ll see more young riders coming to the fore. In 2017 I was treating a young rider for knee issues, he was 10 years old and raced bikes at his local circuit. He saw the TransContinental sticker on my bike and started talking about bikepacking (my commute/bikepacking bike would sit on a ledge in my clinic). His Dad was clueless about bikepacking, but this youngster was clearly hooked. Access to information and social media gives youngsters a jump on my generation where you were directed into careers or sports which matched your gender. If you fell outside the norm you were weird or deemed ‘uncontrollable’ or worse, downgraded at school. We’re better informed and understand that people are wired differently and options to find something to fit your nature is an option rather than being shoehorned into something you hate.

For female riders new to the sport, there is always the conversation about getting more women into the sport. While the numbers may not match the men’s field, the growth in women joining the sport has been huge. Generalising wildly, women tend towards knowing they can complete something before committing. Where they see others not being perfect and giving it a go, gives confidence to jump in the deep end too.

Racing the Silk Road Mountain Race in its inaugural edition in 2018. Photo Credit: Jenny Doohan