March 14th, 2010

Intervals and racing to train1
Guy WR posted in Climbing Skills on July 28th, 2009

C’est tout! The Tour is over for another year, with many fine performances and much to write about. While the numbers are being crunched and the VAM rates analyzed, a response to some reader feedback.

A recent commenter asked whether your author had any recommended intervals for climbing faster. Simply put, I would recommend anything by Chris Carmichael or Joe Friel.

As regular readers will know, however, le grimpeur is a fan of what might loosely be called old school training. What this means is that any type of routine that involves, for example, “repeat 6 times”, or “x minutes at x% of threshold” is out. It’s a fair guess that Sean Kelly didn’t know what his ‘threshold’ was, except that it was probably measured in terms of suffering and a good deal higher than yours or mine. (more…)

The Tour is won on the Ventoux3
Guy WR posted in Classic Climbs, Classic Stages on July 15th, 2009

One of last year’s publishing highlights for this avid cycling book reader was The Tour is Won on the Alpe, by renowned French journalist Jean-Paul Vespini and brought to us Anglo readers by VeloPress.

Alpe d’Huez has been the scene of many epic Tour de France battles and this book covers them all. Even the most well-read of cycling readers will find new stories, anecdotes and statistics in its pages. Indeed, it was a primary source for le grimpeur’s analysis of last year’s Tour-winning climb by Carlos Sastre.

Vent 1

For this year, though, the Tour will be won on Mont Ventoux. While the mountain has not featured as often as Alpe d’Huez in the Tour, it still has a mythical status – for a number of reasons. And the sheer toughness of the climb has meant that the GC contenders so far in the race seem to be keeping their powder dry for the difficult final week of the Tour that the Ventoux stage completes. (more…)

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