from Dr. Allen Lim
Today was our last day of our Pyrenees or “Pre-Tour” training camp. For the last ten days, David Millar, Christian VandeVelde, Ryder Hesjedal, and Danny Pate have been finding their form in the mountains just outside of a little ski town called La Molina. At about 6,000 feet in elevation, the town sits just above the beautiful Cerdanya Valley that separates Spain from France. It was the perfect location for what turned out to be a truly productive training camp.
Along with myself, our Kiwi mechanic Kris Withington, and our Irish sogineur Sandra Ni Hodnae, we put in some long days with the guys working on everything from time trialing, speed work, sprint work, attacking-the-living-explicative-out-of-each-other work, and or course climbing -- lots and lots of climbing.
With limited time for training after recovering from the Giro, the key for our Tour prep has been about quality and a little bit of everything. Over the last ten days, the guys were able to get in three blocks of two consecutive days of very hard training separated by one day of recovery. Add one pretty decent ride to get up to La Molina and the boys put in 7 really hard days of training over the last 10.
Initially, I don’t think anyone was too happy to start things up again. Since the Giro, the guys have basically been resting with only a few of rides over four hours. So getting up to the mountains and putting in the big quality miles at the beginning of this week was pretty rough. But, I think it’s paid off as the guys definitely had their best day of the camp today.
The plan for this last day was to ride from La Molina back to Girona behind the scooter. Though mostly downhill, we also planned for two half-hour climbs to break up the motor pacing and for the guys to test their legs by attacking one another. With Michael Barry from Team Columbia joining us, the guys seemed pretty excited to get home and motivated for this final workout.
Long story short, the guys put in a pretty massive 5.5 hrs of work in at an average power between 250 to 300 watts while behind the scooter and an average of 400 to 450 watts on those two climbs with attacks in the 500 to 600 watt range for up to 2 minutes. With our scooter wired with PowerTap computers coded to and receiving data from each of their PowerTap hubs, I was in a unique position to watch and help encourage a truly impressive performance by all the guys.
With less than two weeks to the start of the Tour, the plan for this week is to maintain the intensity with some shorter group rides and time trial work while also heat adapting the guys here in Girona. At almost sea level and further south, the temperature down here is in the 90’s, almost 20 degrees hotter than the mountains. This week won’t be as hard as last, with the guys going a little more by feel.
That said, this is still a crucial week of training, especially with the heat. It will be our last week to fine tune, get equipment issues settled, do a bit of testing, have the entire Tour squad ride together, and do one or two good rides that build our confidence for the Tour. The first phase of our Tour prep is done. I’ll be checking in throughout this week and again during the Tour. Until then, it’s time for some rest. The next month we’ll all be taking some massive pulls.