Meier is again from main his Girona group run now and is busy making a drink.
We’re alleged to be discussing his operating profession however as an alternative we’re speaking espresso.
The brew is scrumptious. It illustrates part of Meier’s character that has been integral to his burgeoning new profession in path operating.
Meier likes to ”geek out” on new issues and is due to this fact fastidiously making drinks inside the primary of two espresso retailers that he owns and runs together with his spouse in Girona. He was nonetheless racing professionally once they arrange the enterprise in 2015.
He stop biking a 12 months later, aged simply 31, in a sport the place riders can proceed into their forties. Regardless of having a 12 months to run on a profitable skilled contract, espresso and entrepreneurship was his new obsession.
”It received to the purpose in biking the place I began to really feel like I used to be doing the identical races, and getting too snug,” he mentioned then.
”l felt like I used to be not rising. On the similar time, with espresso, every little thing was so new and so younger and there was enormous scope for me to develop and transfer ahead.”
Talking now, he provides: ”I believe it is that Buddhist idea of simply having a toddler’s thoughts extra in your life. A toddler’s thoughts is stuffed with curiosity; it has not but had issues imposed about what you possibly can and may’t do.
”As a toddler, your creativeness is: ’I wish to go to the moon’. However most individuals possibly decide one thing simpler to do, ?
”However I simply have a mindset of firstly being somewhat naive after which, simply going for it.
”Typically being naive helps you make these steps after which you determine the roadblocks as you go.”
Meier’s operating roadblocks had been twofold.
His first problem was damage. In cardiovascular phrases, he was in unimaginable form to make the transition, with an enormous capability to soak up oxygen, lactic and ache.
However his physique was underdeveloped for the calls for that had been now being positioned on totally different muscle teams. The impression of sole hitting soil in his new sport brought about Meier to interrupt down on a number of events.
”After I began operating, most of my life had been doing endurance sport. The cardio facet of issues may be very transferable,” he says. ”However from a muscular standpoint, it was horrible. I had so many accidents early on. I took a very long time to adapt.
”Street cyclists are simply weaklings to be sincere.”
He additionally struggled to manage when the paths weren’t following an upward incline.
Meier’s entrepreneurship has prolonged to a sustainable clothes model. He says his co-founder – an English businessman known as Tom Austen, with none skilled sporting pedigree – would ”smash” him on their coaching runs if the terrain was proper.
”I would go operating on the flat and other people would simply drop me,” Meier says.
”We had been doing 10km time trials and Tom was beating me by 40 seconds.
”Tom was match, however I am positively fitter. However he was smashing me on the flat. I realised I’ve received a lot to study.”
Usually, Meier leaned into the training.
”I used to be studying, studying and studying concerning the sport, watching YouTube movies and doing no matter I may,” he says.
”I simply needed to soak up as a lot info as I may about this new factor.”
Meier coaches himself and is finding out for his teaching badges. Whereas he has found there’s widespread floor between his new sport and biking physiologically, tactically there’s much less.
”There’s not a number of crafty about: How am I going to win in the present day?” Meier says of his trail-running technique.
”Primarily you simply have to be as match as potential. You present up and also you run your technique. That is how ultrarunning works.
”When you see somebody they usually’re struggling a bit on the descent, possibly you push a bit there – nevertheless it’s not like biking, the place you would possibly sit within the wheel all day.”
There may be much less crafty and nonetheless loads of that child-like naivety.
”My first massive race was 50 kilometres and I keep in mind simply pondering, man alive, I’ll run 50 kilometres,” he remembers. ”It felt insane. Then occupied with operating 100 miles on foot within the mountains – the sensation of that’s simply wild. For lots of people a 100-mile bike trip is a giant trip.
”I did not trip bikes to win. So successful the TDS was positively the spotlight of my sporting profession for certain.
”To win… it felt extra like a dream.”