TRAINING IN LOCKDOWN
What have the pros been doing to keep themselves sharp?
From digging out the mountain bike (Tom Pidcock), through Everesting (Lachlan Morton), family time and plenty of good food and drink (everybody!), pro cyclists have been making the most of opportunities during lockdown that they wouldn’t normally get at this time of year.
But with Worldtour racing about to resume, starting with Strade Bianche on 1 August, for the past month or so the pros have been knuckling down and putting a fine point on all those sunny, yet aimless lockdown miles. While for most riders this involves following some sort of programme, with training camps involved too, everyone has had their own take. Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecinfenix), for example, recently followed a recon of the final 100km of Parisroubaix with a 138km ride on the Tour of Flanders parcours the next day.
Quick Step’s Classics man Florian Sénéchal, on the other hand, couldn’t wait to pin on a number and ended up winning a low-key Belgian kermesse ahead of a bunch of NTT, Lotto-soudal and fellow Quick Step riders.
Others were sharpening up on Zwift – riders like Ryan Gibbons (NTT) and Britain’s April Tacey (Drops), who won the first stage of the men’s and women’s Virtual Tour de France respectively. Tacey went on to bag the fifth too.
Oliver Naesen (Ag2r) did backto-back training camps in the Massif Central and then the Alps in July. He said he’d spent lockdown feeling “like a retired cycling fan – riding, training, enjoying the bike. But I’ve missed the adrenaline of full-gas racing. So I’m happy we can start thinking about that already.”
He said he’d done 17,000km so far this year (“about the same as usual”) and predicted a potential shake-up when racing starts again
because of the long lay-off. He said: “I’m convinced there will be new riders we haven’t heard of yet, who will come to the front, and big names who won’t perform as well as you’d expect them to do. I’m not worried because I could do the training I wanted – I feel strong. The first race will be something special.”
Ben Swift, who was about to fly out to an Alpine training camp, said he’d had 10 full days off the bike at the beginning, and treated it a bit like the off-season. “We made a plan that we wanted to try and almost replicate what a winter would look like. We just kind of had to adapt,” he said.
“It’s been brilliant being with my family and spending time with our little boy. But these next couple of weeks you’re just going to live like a monk and will help for that next little bit.”