I think sometimes people would hire him
looking to have the same result as we had.
That’s not always going to happen. He’s not
the right guy for everybody. He only works with
certain people. We’ve seen that down the line,
and I think that we had a good routine in what
we did. His routine worked well with my body
type and what I did on the bike. So, it was kind
of like a perfect match.
That’s interesting. I read in an interview
with him where he said that none of the
modern-day riders could’ve done your
training schedules. What was an average
week for you?
For me, if I had to say what Aldo is probably
talking about, the volume of training I did. I
rode a lot. 3 times a week, minimum. I trained
every single day, cardio. Weight training every
other day. We had a lot of volume in training.
If I had to guess, that’s probably what he was
talking about. However, my body type suited
that. I have a slower metabolism; I store a lot
more energy. That allows me to be able to
sustain more volume of training.
Who’s the quickest guy you think you’ve line
up against, so far?
James Stewart. To this day, I don’t think
anyone’s ever ridden a motorcycle faster than
him. No way.
How did you come up with a strategy to
beat him?
My strategy for James Stewart was - on the
days I couldn’t beat him, be faster than him
and pull away - follow him. Force him, stalk
him. Take my bets that he’s gonna crash. That
was just a single race. For the series, have a
better average finish than him. On the days
that I was as good as him: get out front and
pull away as fast as I could.
Was it difficult to resist being pulled into a
race with him? How did you avoid that?
The reason I was able to not get so wrapped
up in him beating me at one race, is because I
knew that there’s no way he could do that for
a 17-race Supercross series. So, I didn’t have
to dwell on it. Chad Reed, on the other hand,
played with me mentally more than James.
What was different about Reed?
Chad was really hard to beat because he
was just fast enough. At his best, sometimes
he could beat me - other times his best was
enough to keep up with me. So I had to ride
just a little out of my comfort zone, and I knew
he wasn’t willing to take that risk. So on races
where we were really close, I knew I had to
hang it out and really ride that ragged edge -
and that’s what would be able to get me over
the hump to beat him. u
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