Zhenya Gavrosh: sprint on the track, blockage in the Emirates and your own brand of cycling clothing
Title of the issue: "Zhenya Gavrosh: fuck triathlon, let's go cycling!"
Zhenya Gavrosh manages to race, run a YouTube channel about amateur cycling, develop his clothing brand and several other businesses. In a conversation with Ilya, she tells how she got into a jam at the Grand Fondo in the Emirates, why she won several sprints on the track in two months and why she slept in a hypoxic tent three times for three weeks.
Guest
An amateur Moscow cyclist, co-author of a YouTube channel about amateur cycling and founder of the sportswear brand Gavrosh, performs in a sprint on the track.
Useful from the issue
- Don't sit in the middle of a pack
On a flat high-speed race, a blockage is almost inevitable, and those who ride in the center are the first to get into it. Zhenya keeps to the side, in front, or even behind, if the gap still does not leave.
- Merging of groups is a high—risk area
When one cluster catches up with another, the concentration should be maximum. Keep your distance and do not rub the wheel on someone else's rear.
- Try different disciplines
Zhenya found out that she was a sprinter only after trying acceleration and track. Many amateurs just build up kilometers and don't know what their talent is for.
- Starting from a place is a technique
The position of the body, the moment of getting into the saddle and the selection of gears gave her the result after several classes. A few workouts with a trainer are enough to noticeably add.
- Hypoxia — only after tests
Before going to bed in a hypoxic tent, Zhenya passed tests and tests: with high hemoglobin, according to her, it is not necessary at all. Mountains, as she herself admits, are simpler and more pleasant.
- The camp needs a stove and a washing machine
Eating in restaurants all the time is unrealistic, and you can't get enough of uniforms for all days. Choose accommodation with a kitchen and a washing machine.
- Eat according to the feeling of glycogen
Zhenya hardly eats during training, and during the race he is reinforced with gel after acceleration, when he feels that he is wasting his reserves. This is her personal approach, not a universal rule.
- Be open in a new place
In a foreign city, the main thing is to communicate: ask where they ride and join groups. So Zhenya found a company to train in Dubai.
YouTube is for those who are just starting out
Zhenya and his team don't want to do expert content about which star to put on — there are experts for this. They themselves came to cycling in a windbreaker from the mass market and the first bike trails from AliExpress and did not understand whether it was possible to ride in the rain. Therefore, the channel is about how it all starts: the first time on the track, parties, teams, community, and about the fact that you don't need to be an athlete for this.
Long videos where a person travels two days in one frame and tells something, in her opinion, the audience will not be gathered: people need emotions and a picture. One of the heroes of the channel is a newcomer who recently got on a bike, fell down, got up, in six months went the way that others take years, and became recognizable in the crowd. Ilya separately praises Zhenya for coming from triathlon to amateur cycling.
Social rides and get-togethers
The Moscow cycling party has grown, according to Zhenya, in about four years — from the first social rides, when people just gather by message in a chat with a bike, helmet and good mood. Now there are entertainment, training, and country formats, morning intervals in the city center and long weekend hundred.
Abroad, Zhenya says, everything is united: there is a cafe, a shop and a workshop at the club, and the team gathers around this. In Moscow, it is still spread out in different places. The community seems important to her also because the lifestyle of a cyclist who wants a result excludes alcohol, night parties and bad food, and the bike party becomes a substitute for them.
Blockage at the Grand Fondo in the Emirates
The race in February is a strange idea for those who come from the machines, Zhenya admits. As a newcomer without a rating, she was placed in the last cluster with a declared average of 33-36 km / h, although in fact the group was traveling more than 42. Their cluster caught up with the previous one, and at the confluence of six lanes of cyclists, one rider started rubbing his front wheel against someone else's rear and eventually dropped the group. All this was then sorted out by recording an action camera.
Zhenya managed to snap out and began to carefully drive around the blockage, but another participant flew into her from behind at full speed, and the bike broke down. It's a double shame: the finish through the rings and sharp turns and the finishing sprint are her strengths. Friends from her group qualified for the World Grand Fondo Championship, but she did not.
She formulates her safety rule simply: on a flat race, do not sit in the middle of the pack, where you will be eaten sooner or later, but ride to the side or in front, sometimes even behind, if it is clear that the gap will not leave.
Dubai as a cycling paradise
Zhenya thinks it's worth going to Dubai with a bicycle, and it's more budget-friendly than Europe if you live in ordinary apartments. At the camp, two things are important to her: a stove to cook ordinary food, and a washing machine so as not to carry ten sets of uniforms. Most of all, she was impressed by the free fenced and lighted bike path with changing rooms, showers and a cafe nearby, where they ride even at night.
There, according to her, Russian-speaking people who have moved there organize group rides and sprints, their own races gather around club spaces with cafes and services, and there's a pool and treadmills for triathletes. The main quality needed in such a place is communication skills: asking questions, joining in, chatting.
The Unexpected Sprinter
Zhenya opened the sprint by accident: on a trip to France on boring straights, she began to accelerate and felt that it was working. There is nowhere to accelerate on the highway in Moscow, so in the fall she came to the track just for the sake of an experiment and took a coach. He saw her as a finisher — a racer who sits in a pack all day and shoots at the finish line.
She drove the first start from the spot without any equipment at all and found herself in the middle of the protocol among girls who have been training for a long time. After several classes, she figured out the position of the body, the moment when to get into the saddle, and the selection of gears — and in two months she won several sprint races. The next goal is keirin, a dangerous group discipline, where six to eight riders accelerate behind a motorcycle, and then they sort it out themselves. Zhenya explains that everyone has a different base, and she, apparently, has a lot of fast muscle fibers.
Hypoxic tent and plans
Zhenya slept in a hypoxic tent for three separate periods of three weeks, under a specialist’s supervision. She first had blood work and tests: her haemoglobin is on the low side, and she says people with high haemoglobin shouldn’t use such a tent. She hasn’t eaten meat for six years. Sleeping in the tent is difficult: the space is enclosed, the generator is noisy, she constantly needs the toilet, and her body loses fluid. She plans to discuss the results in a separate video because they are mixed. Her conclusion so far is that going to the mountains is easier and more pleasant than sleeping in a tent for three weeks.
From the figures, she calls the weight about 52 kg and the racing pace about 3-3.5 W /kg; she does not reach 4 W/kg. Muscles, according to the test, can hold 200 watts for about an hour, but breathing allows only five to ten minutes, so now she is developing lungs and endurance. Separately, she says that VO2max estimates on sports watches do not coincide with laboratory ones. In the summer, she wants to go on an amateur five-day mountain multi-day in the Pyrenees with escorts, transfers and massage, where only ascents are counted.
Clothing brand, money and food
The Gavroche brand grew out of a broken project about fitness clothing. Russian factories could not do what she wanted, so Zhenya found a factory in China that has been operating since 2005: there you can make tight bibs without elastic bands, water-repellent fabric, pockets and fitted jerseys. The bike form is not about earnings, but about the image and support of cycling: the product costs within 10,000 rubles, and she earns almost nothing on it. It is distinguished from mass brands like Vetra by its reliance on small, unique collections.
Zhenya has several incomes: manicure space, real estate, mediation between people, brand. Financial education helps her to build models and keep records, and the day is scheduled by the hour, with pre-prepared meals. The food is simple and monotonous: eggs, cottage cheese, a cocktail of cottage cheese with milk, fish, no snacks. Since joining cycling, she has lost weight from 59 to 52 kg. Zhenya hardly eats during training, is limited to one or two gels during the race and is reinforced only when he feels that after acceleration he has started to waste glycogen.
Timestamps
Mentioned in this episode
Gavroche · Wind · Grand Fondo · Keirin · Tour de France · AliExpress · Garmin · GoPro