That’s right, you are going until October 4 or whatever it is going to be now. But for you, you probably dig this. Like, this is what you thrive on right?
I do, like that is probably one of my favorite things about job is that I really enjoy the process. It's not just the races that I like to do, and I even know a lot of friends that are in our sport that hate every bit of the work they just love racing and winning. But for me, I really like to get up and have what I feel like is a purpose each day and have goals, and work hard. Even off the bike I enjoy it. So that makes it a little bit easier to wrap your head around.

Is there a point where....well you have to know what coast you are racing. Do you even know?
No. I have no clue. I mean I am not even holding back I usually don’t know until sometimes right around Christmas, but usually after Christmas right around the first of the year is when Mitch [Payton] will let us know where we are going and what we are doing.

Well because I was going to ask because at some point you probably have to start tapering back but you wouldn’t know when that is yet because you don’t even know when you are racing. [Laughs]
Yeah totally. But I think his idea behind that is for us to all be ready. Just be ready to race, and if you are East Coast then you have six more weeks to prepare even longer.

Look I know you dig the training and that is not even an issue for you, but are there things you work on as far as skills, bike, sections, and all of that? Is that part of this process too?
Yeah that’s honestly been a huge part of the process, especially ever since I started working with Nick Wey. Because the training side of it really hasn’t been an issue for me in the past, or been one of my downfalls. But I’ve always needed some work, like we all do, technique wise and race craft, how to ride the bike and where to be better. You can train until you are blue in the face and not get any faster on the dirt bike. You can be a great cyclist and still struggle riding. So that has probably been one of the biggest things that I have focused on the last couple of years, and I have felt that I have gotten a lot of improvement from it. Where I have really broken down what I needed to work on instead of just kind of bulldogging everything and trying so hard everywhere every time. That's really hard for me because that’s kind of my mentality and I'm pretty determined so sometimes it's tough. But it's a work in progress.

The great philosopher Phil Nicoletti told me over the summer, “Yeah everybody watches [Chase] Sexton, and ‘Oh look how he rides’ and [Ken] Roczen and Eli [Tomac]. Anyone can do that when you are at 75 percent speed, it's doing it when you are in a race, and you are on the limit and trying to not go back to the bad habits.” So, I am sure you deal with that, every rider does. So just talk about that. I’m sure you can work on it going slow on a Tuesday in November, but what is it like to try and bring that to the actual racetrack?
Totally, he’s so right. Sometimes when Phil says stuff, because I know Phil pretty well too, you’re like, “Oh man this guy,” but he’s very smart with that stuff. He’s exactly right, yeah, I can work sections and do stuff sweet every time. Or we’ll do a moto and call it a technique moto. If we ever did that, we could ride so perfectly and precise. But then you watch a Sexton type, he’s a perfect example, where it's like, “Man that’s no effort” it doesn’t look like it, but he’s going really fast. As a rider you know what it's takes to go similar to that fast around the track. So, he’s giving it everything he’s got it's just being precise and managing your effort and that’s what equates to being better. It's something that I am really working on because I, especially starting late with being serious at racing, like I just rode my dirt bike up until I was probably 16.

Yeah, you didn’t have a coach or anything like that right?
Yeah, exactly. But what those guys do, and the way ride it's good, it's hard to do.

Yeah yeah, but is that the thing though, you could do that just cruising around, you could probably do lap after lap with feet on the pegs and all of this at 50 percent speed.
Totally. Yeah and the goal is to, like Eli for example he can do stuff, like feet on the pegs, but he’s really good at, I study some of the stuff that he does because he’s there every time and you can always count on that guy, and it's not like he’s got this crazy...like sometimes I will watch a one lapper in practice of Roczen or Sexton and they race great, too, but you are like [watching one lap], “Wow, that’s pretty unreal.” And Eli doesn’t make it look like so perfect and…

Yeah, I know what you mean, he’s kind of like in between. No one ever talks about him like that, as far as the great technique, but he doesn’t do anything wrong.
But he does it, and he has his process and figures it out each time. But yeah, I am trying to learn.

It's got to be tough because your instinct in a race to try to ride fast is to try to ride hard.
Totally.

But that’s not always the best technique oddly.
Exactly, sometimes I will sit on the line and just go over the things that we worked on throughout the day in practice like, “Okay, this turn do this. Or this section you have to do this every time, it doesn’t matter where your emotions go, it doesn’t matter who’s where or what’s going on, just do this.” Because sometimes it's hard not to focus on the result, like wherever you’re at and maybe you start thinking about a result and how you want it to be, instead of just focusing on the process. The process is what’s going to get you to where you need to be every time.

This is why I hear so man of you guys say, “I just want to do my best and whatever I get is what I get.” It's not that you actually don’t care about the result, you’ll just get a better result if you approach it that way.
Exactly, and if I did that each time, it is something to be proud of, but we all hold something on the result too.  And that I have had to learn. I am still learning because that has gotten me before, a few times. Like everyone knows I get a little wound up.

I’ve got to say though, I know that supercross ended early for you with the shoulder injury, and we’ll get into that, but I do feel like the rounds before that we weren’t seeing the old McAdoo. I feel like you were getting better.
Yeah, I mean the first five races it went good. I was in a great position, and I didn’t really have any moments. I don’t even think I even tipped over in the first five races. But again, we are racing supercross and you have to respect it every time. What happened to me, what took me out of it, I feel like as a racer you are just like, “That was so dumb, how did I let that happen?” But I was riding press day, it was the very end of press day, like we were pretty much done. It was a simple three out of a turn and you know, maybe not super focused and locked in and just jumped it a little wider than maybe I had been before, and my tire just clipped the Tuff Block and took my front wheel out from underneath me and separated my shoulder. So, you have to really lock in every time even when you are cruising around on press day. I had already hit that section like 20 times that day, it was so simple. But it just goes to show you it's gnarly what we are doing.

Yeah, but that was not a result of trying too hard or anything like that.
No not at all. But it's kind of one of those things where, especially with age and racing more, I need to take responsibility for everything that I do. It's easy to be like, “oh well, stuff happens” but you put yourself in every position that you’re in and there’s a reason that Tomac is racing every single race, and that [Ryan] Dungey’s raced every single race. So that is something that I have worked on and am working on to improve.

I think though, when you are ambitious, and you’re an ambitious guy there’s no doubt about it, it's got to make you sleep better to be like, “Hey there’s something I can do to fix this to prevent it from happening,” as opposed to, “Oh man, what if this happens to me next year and all this work is for nothing?” It's got to help you to know that, “Okay, I learned something from that I can improve.” Instead of just leave it as a big mystery.
Totally. That’s like for me, I am a pretty big thinker, I think so much stuff through and everything. So, like probably early on in my career things that didn’t go my way or whether I lost a ride early on. Sometimes I was like, “Man this guy has a ride.” It's easy to, I guess, look at it and have a victim mindset. But for me if I just look at it as this is a product of me putting myself in this position, something that I’ve done along the way put me there. How do I prevent that or how do I be better at that, that is something that is super hard to be vulnerable with yourself in that way.

I will take it a step further where you’re not even taking it seriously until you were like 16 and now you are on Pro Circuit and you could win races any weekend, you could potentially win the title this year. That is an unbelievable position for someone like you to be in. But I would imagine you can’t really step back and tell yourself that because you don’t want to be complacent. So, tell me about wrestling with that, because you have already made it in a way compared to what your potential could have been. But how do you not rest on those laurels at all? 
Yeah, that was actually something that was a little bit tough for me, I think it would have been 2021, because prior to 2021 I had only had two podiums ever, in supercross, outdoors anything. And then we started going into 2021, and you prep in the off-season, you do all this work and I felt like, “Yeah I can contend for race wins,” and, “Yeah, podiums each weekend.” But then I got six races in, and I had podiumed each race and I had the red plate and was fighting for the championship. Sometimes I would get third and it was hard because where I was a year ago, I would have been stoked on that, but I am getting super frustrated because I felt like I needed to win. It was kind of just that weird deal because third is a good result, but I am not in that position anymore. Now my work has paid off and I am in a position to where I can fight for wins. Especially as a competitor you evolve so much that you kind of lose sight of where you were, or, like this coming year it's not like, “We are going to be celebrating if you get a third,” because it's just how we evolve, I think as humans it's human nature. But it is cool sometimes. I will just sit back even with my family because it is kind of like, “Holy crap who would have ever guessed we could make it this far?” But at the same time, I want so much more, I want to continue, I have so many goals, at all time.

I always figure it's got to be one of the toughest things in this sport because you don’t get to your position without being super ambitious. So when somebody tells you eight years ago you are going to be living in California, training with Nick Wey, you’re on Mitch Payton’s team, you could potentially win a title this year, and you are getting paid, and let’s be honest, getting paid to race is cool. You probably would have been like, “Oh my God, that’s all I ever wanted that’s my dream come true, really it's going to be that good?” But when you are in that position you are probably not thinking about any of that, you’re probably just thinking, “I have to work even harder tomorrow, I’ve got to win either in January or February.”
Yeah, it's hard to because like you said if you would have told me that however many years ago, I would have been like, “Sign me up right now and that sounds like a life that has absolutely no problems and everything is perfect.” But here I am now, and I still have stresses just like everyone else that could be listening right now. I still stress about life things; I stress about you name it and I still want so much more. I think you will probably [only] be able to realize how far I have come when my career is over, wherever I end up or however I do. Look where I started and look where I came to. But here I want to win a championship and I want to contend for multiple championships, I want to be a top 450 guy. I have all of these, like all racers do or all competitors. So, it really hard to let it all sink in because you are always striving for more. It's normal life, for even non athletes, it's hard to sit back and check it out because that’s what gets you better.

Check out the full interview in the podcast below: