People in cycling say you shouldn’t be doing interval training in December, you’ll be blown out by July. Why? It’s just tradition.
The attitude I took to my training had changed significantly as well. I specifically said to Shane and Tim at the end of 2011, ‘I don’t care what you ask me to do, I have a lot of faith in you because we’ve come on a lot this year, I just want to win the Tour de France.’ I told them that I didn’t know how long I would be able to go on training for the Tour and living the life it demands. It’s too intense and it takes too big a toll on your life and on everyone else around you. I felt I was willing to give it a shot in 2012 because I had a decent chance to win the Tour and I might never win it again. This might be my one opportunity.
I’d always led my programmes in the past; I had always said I want to win this, I want to win that, win this prologue time trial here because it gives me a bit of security if the main event goes wrong. For 2012 I told them, sod it, I want to win the Tour, I’m the gerbil on the wheel. I want to be uncompromising, so you guys write down what you think. You work out the training programme; you know I trust you, just do it.
Using TrainingPeaks, Tim would work out my training for the day – times, power outputs, cadences – he would upload it , and I would get a notification telling me to go and read it in an email. It’s a far cry from the mileage chart that they used to print on the
Cycling Weekly
centre-spread at Christmas every year, which I coloured in religiously until I was about sixteen.
So the schedules came in, week by week. I just did exactly what I was asked, then each day I downloaded the SRM file from the box on the handlebars – the little computer that records power output from our cranks, pulse rate, cadence and so on – and put it into TrainingPeaks for Tim to look at. For once I wasn’t interested in the details. I had 100 per cent faith in what Tim and Shane put down on paper. I gave them total responsibility. That in turn made them think about it, and that is where a lot of my faith in them came from. I knew that they had put a lot of brainpower into it; they hadn’t just written it up sitting on the toilet.
In the midst of all that we came up with a race programme as well. I remember sitting in the office in Manchester with Tim next to me, saying, ‘You know, I think I can train harder than I race sometimes.’ It was something that we’d realised the previous August when I rode well in the Vuelta after six weeks with no racing. That’s why I decided to race less in 2012. We decided to include two Tenerife training blocks because training there had worked so well in 2011; that took up four weeks, because they have to be at the right times and there are only so many times in a year you can go there. We worked back from the Tour. We considered doing the Tour of Switzerland but I wanted to go back to the Dauphiné. That’s a race I really like; after it there is a nice gap up to the Tour, so you can tweak things if you need to. Before the Dauphiné there was Tenerife; before that camp I liked the idea of going to the Tour of Romandie. I hadn’t been to Romandie for a few years; it normally comes down to the time trials. I could probably win those so would have a good chance. Before that we had originally put in the Tour of the Basque Country, but I said I would rather go and do another training camp in Tenerife, so we did that before Romandie; before that was the Tour of Catalonia, Paris–Nice and the Tour of Algarve.
So then they said, what are your goals in those races? Working from the start, at Algarve the aim was to play a team role but try and win the time trial; as for Paris–Nice I said, ‘Well, I was 3rd last year. I’d really like to have a crack at that and go for the overall classification because the last few days finish with a time trial so I’ve got a good chance of placing well or maybe winning
The attitude I took to my training had changed significantly as well. I specifically said to Shane and Tim at the end of 2011, ‘I don’t care what you ask me to do, I have a lot of faith in you because we’ve come on a lot this year, I just want to win the Tour de France.’ I told them that I didn’t know how long I would be able to go on training for the Tour and living the life it demands. It’s too intense and it takes too big a toll on your life and on everyone else around you. I felt I was willing to give it a shot in 2012 because I had a decent chance to win the Tour and I might never win it again. This might be my one opportunity.
I’d always led my programmes in the past; I had always said I want to win this, I want to win that, win this prologue time trial here because it gives me a bit of security if the main event goes wrong. For 2012 I told them, sod it, I want to win the Tour, I’m the gerbil on the wheel. I want to be uncompromising, so you guys write down what you think. You work out the training programme; you know I trust you, just do it.
Using TrainingPeaks, Tim would work out my training for the day – times, power outputs, cadences – he would upload it , and I would get a notification telling me to go and read it in an email. It’s a far cry from the mileage chart that they used to print on the
Cycling Weekly
centre-spread at Christmas every year, which I coloured in religiously until I was about sixteen.
So the schedules came in, week by week. I just did exactly what I was asked, then each day I downloaded the SRM file from the box on the handlebars – the little computer that records power output from our cranks, pulse rate, cadence and so on – and put it into TrainingPeaks for Tim to look at. For once I wasn’t interested in the details. I had 100 per cent faith in what Tim and Shane put down on paper. I gave them total responsibility. That in turn made them think about it, and that is where a lot of my faith in them came from. I knew that they had put a lot of brainpower into it; they hadn’t just written it up sitting on the toilet.
In the midst of all that we came up with a race programme as well. I remember sitting in the office in Manchester with Tim next to me, saying, ‘You know, I think I can train harder than I race sometimes.’ It was something that we’d realised the previous August when I rode well in the Vuelta after six weeks with no racing. That’s why I decided to race less in 2012. We decided to include two Tenerife training blocks because training there had worked so well in 2011; that took up four weeks, because they have to be at the right times and there are only so many times in a year you can go there. We worked back from the Tour. We considered doing the Tour of Switzerland but I wanted to go back to the Dauphiné. That’s a race I really like; after it there is a nice gap up to the Tour, so you can tweak things if you need to. Before the Dauphiné there was Tenerife; before that camp I liked the idea of going to the Tour of Romandie. I hadn’t been to Romandie for a few years; it normally comes down to the time trials. I could probably win those so would have a good chance. Before that we had originally put in the Tour of the Basque Country, but I said I would rather go and do another training camp in Tenerife, so we did that before Romandie; before that was the Tour of Catalonia, Paris–Nice and the Tour of Algarve.
So then they said, what are your goals in those races? Working from the start, at Algarve the aim was to play a team role but try and win the time trial; as for Paris–Nice I said, ‘Well, I was 3rd last year. I’d really like to have a crack at that and go for the overall classification because the last few days finish with a time trial so I’ve got a good chance of placing well or maybe winning
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