effort: first week fifteen hours’ riding; second week, eighteen hours; third week, twenty-one. Before I knew it, we’d got to Christmas and I’d put in nine weeks of good, consistent, on-the-ball training. Sky went to Majorca the week before Christmas for the team training camp and I turned the wick up a bit: forty hours in seven days out there, six hours a day with Eddie Boasson Hagen. For someone who works in an office, that’s like pedalling every hour of the working day. It’s not the kind of week you can do off the cuff; you have to build into it, which was what I had been doing over the previous six weeks.
I didn’t just spend that winter on the bike. I made sure to be in the gym three days a week from 6 a.m., working to a strength programme devised for me by Mark Simpson, British Cycling’s conditioning coach at the time. One of the things that had been flagged up at the Vuelta, specifically at the climb of the Angliru, was that because I’d broken my collarbone, my left arm was very weak. That meant I couldn’t work hard enough when climbing out of the saddle. All-round, I didn’t have enough upper-body strength to deal with the steepest climbs. It’s always been known that steep climbs aren’t for me; I struggle on them.
Tim and Shane’s view was that at some point I was going to have to perform on those climbs if I wanted to win the biggest race. My answer was that I’ve never been great at it; my core strength has never been that fantastic; my upper-body strength has been poor at times and I’ve never worked on it. I had always been known for my good pedalling speed on the track, but to perform on some of these steep climbs, you have to work on your power and your torque, producing that power at a lower cadence. That was why we had started looking into torque sessions for time trialling, and that was why I had to get to the gym. It was not only to get the power back in my left arm but also just to increase my general physical fitness and strength. I had to do it without bulking up, without ending up looking like a panel beater, becoming stronger physically without putting any muscle on. I felt a huge difference straight away.
The gym work was a classic case of the three of us working out where I had a weakness and refusing to be reconciled to it. A lot of athletes will simply accept that they aren’t so good in certain areas rather than trying to do anything about it. You can’t just say for the rest of your career, ‘Well, actually, you know what? I’m not that good at climbing.’ If that’s the case you have to work on climbing. The art is to work on your weak areas without losing what you’re good at, and that’s very much what we achieved in 2012. Personally, I used to really struggle when the climbers started attacking at the foot of a mountain. I lacked the explosive power to deal with it. That and my lack of power on the steep climbs; these are all weaknesses you show in public – ‘Ah Brad, he likes a consistent pace on these climbs, he does struggle when they start attacking.’ They’re things that everyone knows about, so why not deal with them?
This change in attitude came partly from Tim asking all his questions as a non-cyclist coming in from another sport. Cycling is very traditional and set in its ways about how you train. Since I was a kid it had always been the same: cyclists had October and November off, we would start training on 1 December, and that would be runs to café stops – the social side of cycling – using fixed wheel if need be. On 1 January you up the miles and intensity a little; you start doing longer rides to cafés, sprinting for road signs. In February and March you enter your first races; you know it’s going to be bloody hard to blow out the cobwebs. It’s always been the same. That is the tradition of cycling. Tim came along and asked why we didn’t train at the same high level for twelve months of the year. Swimmers do it and rowers do it.
I didn’t just spend that winter on the bike. I made sure to be in the gym three days a week from 6 a.m., working to a strength programme devised for me by Mark Simpson, British Cycling’s conditioning coach at the time. One of the things that had been flagged up at the Vuelta, specifically at the climb of the Angliru, was that because I’d broken my collarbone, my left arm was very weak. That meant I couldn’t work hard enough when climbing out of the saddle. All-round, I didn’t have enough upper-body strength to deal with the steepest climbs. It’s always been known that steep climbs aren’t for me; I struggle on them.
Tim and Shane’s view was that at some point I was going to have to perform on those climbs if I wanted to win the biggest race. My answer was that I’ve never been great at it; my core strength has never been that fantastic; my upper-body strength has been poor at times and I’ve never worked on it. I had always been known for my good pedalling speed on the track, but to perform on some of these steep climbs, you have to work on your power and your torque, producing that power at a lower cadence. That was why we had started looking into torque sessions for time trialling, and that was why I had to get to the gym. It was not only to get the power back in my left arm but also just to increase my general physical fitness and strength. I had to do it without bulking up, without ending up looking like a panel beater, becoming stronger physically without putting any muscle on. I felt a huge difference straight away.
The gym work was a classic case of the three of us working out where I had a weakness and refusing to be reconciled to it. A lot of athletes will simply accept that they aren’t so good in certain areas rather than trying to do anything about it. You can’t just say for the rest of your career, ‘Well, actually, you know what? I’m not that good at climbing.’ If that’s the case you have to work on climbing. The art is to work on your weak areas without losing what you’re good at, and that’s very much what we achieved in 2012. Personally, I used to really struggle when the climbers started attacking at the foot of a mountain. I lacked the explosive power to deal with it. That and my lack of power on the steep climbs; these are all weaknesses you show in public – ‘Ah Brad, he likes a consistent pace on these climbs, he does struggle when they start attacking.’ They’re things that everyone knows about, so why not deal with them?
This change in attitude came partly from Tim asking all his questions as a non-cyclist coming in from another sport. Cycling is very traditional and set in its ways about how you train. Since I was a kid it had always been the same: cyclists had October and November off, we would start training on 1 December, and that would be runs to café stops – the social side of cycling – using fixed wheel if need be. On 1 January you up the miles and intensity a little; you start doing longer rides to cafés, sprinting for road signs. In February and March you enter your first races; you know it’s going to be bloody hard to blow out the cobwebs. It’s always been the same. That is the tradition of cycling. Tim came along and asked why we didn’t train at the same high level for twelve months of the year. Swimmers do it and rowers do it.
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