The preseason is happening earlier and earlier in cycling. Most riders are already sharp and ready to ride by December.
Vacation? What vacation? Contrary to the habits of yesteryear, the pros in the peloton are now sharp as blades from December when the intensity of training is sometimes similar to that of racing.
Beware of anyone who arrives a few kilos overweight at the first pre-season camp in December in the south-east of Spain where the teams have established their training base.
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“He would be crazy”decides the Frenchman Benoît Cosnefroy, new teammate of Tadej Pogacar at UAE.
After a break varying between two and five weeks, the runners converge on the Costa Blanca to discover their program, get to know the recruits, and test the equipment. And already driving like crazy.
However, the first races are still far away. In extreme cases, like that of Pogacar, the start of the school year will not take place until the beginning of March. But from the first outings on the Costa Blanca “it sends watts”.
“It’s simple: we get in trouble. I remember a training ride where I had the same average power as when I finished third in the Tour of Flanders last year.says the German Nils Politt, one of Pogacar’s lieutenants, in the podcast hosted by his compatriot Jan Ulrich.
The winner of the Tour de France in 1997, who admitted after his career to having doped, had the habit of gaining around ten kilos during the winter.
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It has become completely unthinkable.
“One tennis and that’s it”
“Before, it was more relaxed. You could have an Oscar Freire (triple world champion in 1999, 2001 and 2004) who, during training, got on the bike for the first time since his last race. In the meantime he had played a little tennis and that was it. Today, if you have 2/3 extra kilos in December, you have a problem. Everyone is already packed”warns the German Simon Geschke, retired for a year.
Benoît Cosnefroy confirms. “It was a different ride. Today it runs at full speed every day. Ask Pavel»he laughs.
Pavel is Pavel Sivakov, who has the formidable honor of training in Pogacar’s group 1, “the extraterrestrial” as he calls it.
“When he (Pogacar) left with the classics group (to do the reconnaissance of Paris-Roubaix last week, editor’s note), things were going a little calmer,” he says. But since he’s been here, things have been going strong. Him always in front and next to the guys who take turns. It’s a steamroller.”
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Belgian champion Tim Wellens is clear: some training sessions are more intense than a race.
And this is not just the case at UAE.
In Mallorca at the moment with his new team Red Bull Bora, Remco Evenepoel confides: “I am already doing intensities in my third week after the recovery. If I want to get close to Pogacar’s level, I have to suffer.”
Mental health
At 32, Guillaume Martin, one of the leaders of the Groupama-FDJ team, measures the change: “When I turned pro in 2016, we could still take early season races as preparatory races. That’s completely over. Runners run less. So they have to be ready from the first race.”
Distractions, therefore, become rare. “10-15 years ago, when there was a day off after four days of training, people went out to party the day before. Now there’s no one coming out.”reports Cosnefroy.
This increasingly competitive world is not without impact on mental health, a subject that crosses society and is also catching up with the pack.
Some stop their careers very young, like the Spaniard Unai Zubeldia, 22, who deplores “the black face” of the profession which demands to be “a pedaling machine in the blind pursuit of performance”.
Others refuse to complain. “We have a dream life, even if the travel and the distance from loved ones take their toll sometimes”asserts Slovenian Matej Mohoric, 31 years old. “But,” adds the three-time Tour de France stage winner, “it’s certain that the job has changed. When I started we were on an internship in the north of Italy. One day we were hiking in a meter of snow, the next day cross-country skiing. And yes, in the evening we drank drinks. It had nothing to do with it.”
