TIME UP HIGH

Annemiek van Vleuten started experimenting with altitude camps in 2014 and found her body reacted extremely well to thin air. “I really enjoy being in the mountains and training up there.” She has her preferences though. She doesn’t care much for Sierra Nevada, “because there is only way down and one way up and you can’t make beautiful circuits.” She likes Mount Teide because many other pros train there and she sometimes joins the male riders. “It’s good for me to ride out of my comfort zone. For them it’s an easy day, and for me it’s a really hard endurance ride.” But her favourite is Livigno, in northern Italy. She went there after her crash in the Olympics “to get her head sorted.” She stays at the same hotel and the owners have become her “second family”. Her trick to staving o f boredom is to invite friends to stay on the mountain at the same time. During the day, she trains while they go hiking, and in the evening they meet up for board games. “I buy them some beers and I drink a Coke Light. Mitchelton-Scott give me that freedom – a lot of other teams don’t give you that freedom to go to altitude by yourself.”