Evenepoel recently said it: at Soudal Quick-Step, they mainly rode quietly in the winter to broaden the base, while he is now training much more intensively under his new trainer at Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe, Dan Lorang. That turns out not to be a lie, because today he completed a training of 243 kilometers. What is particularly striking is the exceptionally high average speed of the training ride: 40.5 kilometers per hour. In competition, professional cyclists can easily reach those speeds, but in training the average speed is often between 30 and 35-36 kilometers per hour. We rarely see a ride of almost 250 kilometers at 40.5 kilometers per hour on Strava.
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Also striking: Evenepoel only had Dutch-speaking teammates in his company. Sports director Sven Vanthourenhout recorded a coffee stop during the ride and it shows Jordi Meeus, Arne Marit, Gianni Vermeersch, Danny van Poppel, Maxim Van Gils and Mick and Tim van Dijke.
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Evenepoel and his teammates during the coffee stop © Instagram Sven Vanthourenhout
Pogacar sets its own record
But Tadej Pogacar is clearly not sitting still either. The Slovenian world champion is on a training course near Benidorm together with his teammates from UAE Team Emirates-XRG and completed a training session of 226 kilometers on Friday at no less than 36.8 kilometers per hour. Slower than Evenepoel’s training, but with a lot more altitude meters (4,302 compared to 1,660).
But perhaps most impressive: Pogacar smashed his own record on the iconic Coll des Rates climb with 24 seconds, 41 seconds faster than the first pursuer.
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