Ryan Mullen had a day that will live with him for the rest of his life yesterday when he occupied the hot-seat after the elite time-trial at the world championships in Doha. He has revealed how a key positional change and training in his homemade sweat centre made all the difference. (Photo: Sean Rowe)
By Brian Canty
Far away from the skyscrapers, bright lights and sweltering temperatures of the Qatari capital, Ryan Mullen steeled himself for the ride of his life in the time-trial at the world championships in Doha yesterday.
The 22 year-old crossed the line after his 40 kilometres under the glaring Arabian sun in a scarcely believable time of 46 minutes and 4 seconds which saw him clock an average speed of 51.4 kilometres per hour.
Mullen was disorientated from the effort and required the assistance of Cycling Ireland’s Martin O’Louglin to keep him upright immediately afterwards.
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“Catch me, catch me,” he muttered to the well-known Carrick man and acting junior manager for this week.
Mullen had emptied his tank and for 15 minutes after his monumental effort he sat slumped, slightly off-centre against a roadside barrier like a man who’d had too much to drink.
“I was camped on the road with a wet towel over my face,” he recalled.
“I remember I tweeted saying I may have passed out and that’s 100% the truth; I had to get Martin O’Loughlin to hold me up. I had cramp in both adductors (inner thighs) and I couldn’t unclip from the pedals.”
By dropping his saddle by one centimetre Mullen was able to get a tighter tuck and more aerodynamic; two factors that contributed to his monster ride yesterday. (Photo: Sean Rowe)
He was told his time was good enough for the hot-seat but truth be told, he was too tired to get excited.
Experience has taught him some cruel lessons, of course, as the last time he occupied the hot-seat he was shoved off it by the last rider off that day.
That was Ponferrada in 2014 when Campbell Flakemore of Australia become Irish cycling’s number one public enemy.
Mullen is in a different league now, though, and yesterday he showed he was very near the top of it.
“I just did my ride, obviously the heat affected my power but I did what I did and I didn’t think it was a world-class ride, there was no pressure on me,” he detailed of how he saw the execution of the game plan.
“In fairness, the pressure was on Nico (Roche) to do a ride because he’s been going really well and I haven’t, really.”
Last month, however, Mullen – after advice from Cycling Ireland technical director Brian Nugent, dropped his saddle by one centimetre.
“My position on the bike was wrong from previous years; I was a centimetre higher through no fault of anyone.
“I just got my measurements wrong and it had a huge effect on my position with my shoulders and my head being higher.
“I can probably put out more (power) or the same power but after we realised, he (Brian) lowered me a centimetre a week ago and I just increased by 2k an hour, it was crazy.
“I was really pissed off with myself. We found out at the Euros when Brian followed me and it was the first time he followed me all year. He said ‘this isn’t Ryan, this isn’t what you look like on a bike’.
Tony Martin was untouchable yesterday and was the only rider to go sub-45 minutes for the 40-kilometre test against the clock. But by finishing just 1:21 off the German's time, Ryan Mullen showed he belongs at the highest level. (Photo: Sean Rowe)
If that tweak was a game-changer, there were other pieces of the puzzle that needed working out.
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Next, he needed races, hard ones and the Eneco Tour and Tour of Britain were perfect.
“I wasn’t in tremendous shape in Britain but I came through it well and pulled out a decent result in the TT which showed I was recovering,” he said, the tempo of his words rising.
“Then it was case a case of recovering. The Euros wasn’t a great course (for me) and was a day or two too early after Britain for me to get a good result but Eneco was like moto-pacing all day for five days.”
Road legs restored, the biggest challenge was arguably the heat he would face in Doha and for this one, he was pretty much on his own.
His base in Girona is warm most of the year, but few places in Spain hit 40 degrees in October so it was to the team’s service course in the satellite town of Salt where Mullen went for his afternoon DIY sweat-box sessions.
“Someone said (in an article) I was in a sauna but that’s not true. I was in a heat chamber in CENIT (a well-known training centre for professional cyclists in Girona).
“A few guys use that and I went to the team service course and there was a tent, a gazebo with the walls down and four radiators in there. I was in there at 40 degrees.”
The podium yesterday was from left, Vasil Kiryienka (Team Sky), Tony Martin (Germany) and Jonathan Castroviejo (Spain). (Photo: Sean Rowe)
Sometimes he’d go alone, more times Norway’s Kristoffer Skjerping would go too.
“I couldn’t do efforts in there, I was doing my efforts in the morning (on the road) wearing winter kit and then riding there in the afternoon doing an hour at 150 watts just sweating.
“There’s no air in there, no fans so we were literally melting. I came out 4.5 kilos lighter in an hour after sweating 6 litres.”
It was the first time he’d taken such measures to prepare for a race but he knew the jigsaw had come together from an early stage yesterday.
“When I feel good I tend to push harder but yesterday I didn’t wanna blow inside 15k.
“Here you can’t do what you’d normally do because the heat alters everything; it’s crazy but everyone’s in the same boat.
“Nobody can do what they normally can; it’s like being at altitude and the air is less dense.”
But when he was still holding a high speed and high power late on, there was a sense he’d perhaps outdone what he thought he could do the night before.
“I thought I’d be around 20th. I’d have taken that as an U23. Nico was in the room the night before and we were talking and I said ‘top 15 if on a good day’. I would have taken that, I’d have bitten the hand off anyone who offered me that.”
But when he sat between Jos Van Emden (Netherlands) and Reto Hollenstein (Switzerland) for a couple of hours, the reality of what he’d done began to sink in.
“Hollenstein was there and he was saying ‘top 5 or 6’ and I was like ‘look at the guys still to go, there’s Kueng, Phinney, Quinziato, Kiri, Tom Dumoulin, Dennis’.
“I expected to be way behind them but I was in the hot-seat with the live footage and they were referencing me the whole time and it was like, ‘what the hell is going on here, has the wind changed? Have these guys got a headwind now?’”
One by one they fell away, including A-listers Dennis and Dumoulin but in the space of a few minutes, the Irishman was finally shifted.
“I knew I’d be knocked off by Tony (Martin) and Kiri but we had no footage on (Maciej) Bodnar and all of a sudden he rolls in six seconds faster and we had no virtual comparison whatsoever.
“It was really weird, he literally came out of thin air and obviously did a good ride but we had no idea, it’d be interesting to see where he was in comparison, maybe he finished really strongly.”
He wasn’t in the slightest begrudging of the Pole and still struggled to come to terms with it all last night.
“No word of a lie I was waiting for some kind of shit to do down like a story breaking saying Mullen cheated or Mullen took a shortcut, maybe I did,” he laughed.
“I just followed the barrier but maybe I missed a section or something!
“I was like this with BBC yesterday I couldn’t think of what to say, ‘yeah, I just came fifth, I don’t know how. I am the last person to expect this.’”
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