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Matt Denis Teams Up with First Endurance
photo credits: Sawyer Pangborn & McKay M. Lewis
Have you noticed a slight change in tone in the tone of First Endurance’s online content in 2025? If so, congratulations on your supernatural powers of perception.
New copywriter Matt Denis has loved delivering all the gems from elite athletes and doctors to your inbox. He’s also a competitive cyclist himself, and has been tasked with the privilege of cosplaying as a sponsored athlete by filling out his own Q&A, and the challenge of introducing it in the third person. Word is he’s also extremely handsome! Enjoy.
Name: Matt Denis
Sport: Cycling
Hometown: Ann Arbor, MI
Current Location: Salt Lake City, UT
IG: @mkowalskid
Strava Handle: Yr Old Dragoon
Q: What are your 3 favorite First Endurance skus and why?
1. PRERACE 3.0 – Whether it’s science or psychosomatic (likely a bit of both), I can’t ignore the fact that when I take Pre-Race I reliably have really good legs and a little bit extra focus when the going gets really tough.
2. Ultragen – Every flavor, but specifically the Capuccino. There’s really no other recovery shake I’ve tried (and I’ve tried A LOT) that can hold a candle to Ultragen, in terms of flavor and nutritional profile. It’s also a small blessing to be able to whack a recovery shake right after a hard workout or race and buy myself an hour of being a couch corpse before having to drag myself to the kitchen to make a real meal.
3. MultiV PRO – I’ve always loved to geek out over physiology and performance science, and in the past that meant mixing and matching supplements to find the Goldilocks combo that would keep me healthy and fast. With MultiV PRO, I can roll with one monthly subscription and know I’m getting everything I need. It’s also cleared out a whole shelf of space in the cupboard (my wife is a big fan of this benefit, as well.)
Q: What are your goals for 2025?
I feel really lucky to be racing with a local team here in Salt Lake, LHM Cycling, that is full of my very good friends, and my primary goal is to enjoy training and racing with them. I wouldn’t say no to winning a few races, either!
Q: How old were you when you realized you wanted to pursue the sport and why?
I’ve always loved competing, and have been involved with various sports since I was a toddler. In terms of cycling specifically, I came to it late. As a grad student in Boston, I started commuting by bike at a time when I hadn’t been involved in organized sport for several years, simply because I couldn’t stand waiting for public transportation. Before long, I discovered Strava, which reawakened my competitive spirit, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Q: How did where you grew up/your upbringing shape who you are today?
As a person, I grew up in a household that valued hard work and accountability, while still encouraging me to be weird and pursue my own path. As an athlete, I was living in Iowa as I rose through the ranks, and as a result, I’m well-versed and comfortable in the chaos of hellacious crosswinds.
Q: How do you stay motivated during long, grueling training sessions or races?
When I’m in the box during a hard training session, I find that creating mini finish lines helps me immensely. Instead of thinking about the fact that I’ve got three more five-minute Vo2 intervals to do, I focus on getting through the next one, then the one after that, etc. The beauty of this strategy is that there are endless ways to subdivide a workout. If I’m really waxed, I’ve been known to tell myself that my only goal is to make it through the next minute, because I can do anything for one minute, right? Staying motivated during races is much less of a problem for me. What I love about racing is that it is so dynamic. There’s always something related to course, pacing, or tactics to occupy my mind and set me up for success.
Q: What was your biggest setback, and how did you overcome it?
I’ve had a “career” blessedly free of really major setbacks, but last year was certainly my most challenging as an athlete. I had made the decision in the offseason to accept an offer to step up to the domestic elite level of road racing, but wasn’t ever able to get any sort of momentum going, in terms of training and feeling good about myself, on or off the bike. One of our beloved dogs got extremely sick early in the year, and because I didn’t feel right traveling the country racing my bike when he needed so much care, I forewent the domestic elite spot. Even after he got better, I managed to hit all the traditional roadblocks for competitive cyclists in a six-month window: mental burnout, overtraining, a high-speed crash, prolonged illness, and the realization that at 36 years old, I had probably already reached my potential a couple years prior. Overcoming those setbacks was simply a process of reorienting my goals toward enjoying the sport, leaning into the great riding partners I have here in Utah, and being the best version of myself that I could be. I’m happy to say that I’m feeling fitter, happier, and more confident going into 2025.
Q: What has being an endurance athlete taught you about life outside of sports?
In any sport, but particularly cycling, there is so much you cannot control, and my time as an endurance athlete has taught me that it’s more rewarding to focus on process goals rather than results. You can go a long way by focusing on the things that are in your control: being consistent in your work and accountable for your actions.
Q: What advice would you give to someone who’s just getting started?
Don’t rush: maybe you could be a few percent better if you hired a coach right away, but you also wouldn’t learn how to listen to your own body. Maybe you can target upgrade points like a mercenary, but for most people, I think it’s better to stay in your category a little longer and learn how to win races before moving up.
Q: Who are your heroes or role models in sports (or outside of it)?
I’m consistently inspired by my wife, my parents, and my sister, who are all hard workers that approach everything they do with love and dedication.
Q: What’s the most surprising or funny thing that’s ever happened to you during a race?
In 2021, I participated in my first big Cat 1 stage race at Joe Martin in Arkansas, Due to COVID, it was being held in August, rather than April, and temperatures were well over 100 degrees on the 100-mile first stage. It was a hard race from the start, and 70 miles in, I found myself in a chase group well clear of the peloton, cruising toward a top 10 in my first big race. Ultimately, it wasn’t to be: I exploded in the heat in a way I didn’t think was possible, and ended up averaging more BPM than watts for the final 30 miles of the race, which took me almost two hours. It was surprising (and depressing!) in the moment, and funny to look back on now.
Q: What's the worst training advice you've ever received?
Being better than everyone else is simply a matter of outworking them. Unfortunately, this terrible advice came from deep inside my own ego. In the middle of last year, I was determined to get back all the fitness I had lost due to the setbacks I mentioned earlier. I was riding 16 hours a week with intensity, not taking rest weeks, lifting weights, and eating in a deficit in order to get back to “race weight.” There is no doubt in my mind that I was going as hard as anyone else around me, but when I did turn up to a race, I was completely overcooked, rode like crap, and was forced to take three weeks off to undo the damage I had done by overtraining myself.
Q: What are the most important aspects of your diet and nutrition plan for peak performance?
I’m always at my best when my nutrition is disciplined but sustainable. I make sure that I’m getting the carbs and protein I need to fuel and recover, which ensures that my training can be consistently well-executed. At the same time, I focus on not being overly restrictive in terms of the foods I love that aren’t fuel for peak performance, which allows me to avoid mental burnout.
Q: Describe your favorite place to train and why?
For me, it’s hard to beat the classic Emigration-Big Mountain out and back here in Salt Lake. The climbs aren’t too steep, so they are perfect for anything from endurance to eye-bleeding intervals, the descents are fun, and the views are jaw-dropping.
https://www.strava.com/routes/3322284615068700136
Q: What’s your ideal pre-race meal?
Pizza
Q: What’s your favorite race?
I don’t have a favorite race, either as a spectator or a racer. Rather, I have a certain type of race that I enjoy competing in or watching, and that’s a punchy, attritional course where the attacks are flying in the finale. These races require a blend of strength and tactical savvy that I think represents the most compelling aspect of the sport.
Q: What’s your proudest sporting moment?
A third place on the queen stage of the Baker City Cycling Classic in 2023. It was a race that I was really targeting, and it was so rewarding to see my hard work pay off.
Q; Do you have a coach? Why or why not?
Yes and no. I had a coach, Eric Kirouac, for several years, and he was instrumental in my development as a racer. Now that I have stepped my ambitions back a bit, I am coaching myself, along with about a dozen other athletes here in Salt Lake. Luckily for me, Eric and I became excellent friends over the course of our relationship, and I still bother him incessantly with questions about physiology, training philosophy, and more, and he generously indulges me in that.
Q: Who is your greatest mentor and what did they teach you?
In the sport of cycling, I was really lucky to cross paths with Jason Quinn when I lived in Iowa. Jason was a great racer in his own right (he’s got great stories about racing Lance Armstrong when he was a junior), and he taught me basically everything I know about technical skills, tactical know-how, and the mindset required to be a great bike racer.
Q: What’s your “kryptonite”?
Crits! They are fascinating and fun, but there’s a rhythm to performing consistently in them that has always eluded me. Even when I win the odd one, it feels like an accident, rather than an epiphany.
