Riding With The Rocketmen: One Man's Journey on the Shoulders of Cycling Giants

To my wife, Tara. You are obviously a pain but forever ‘Rings of Saturn’.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1: The Eye-opener

Chapter 2: Stolen Dreams

Chapter 3: Crossover to Road

Chapter 4: The Bloody Secret to Speed

Chapter 5: The Lion Meets the Pussy Cat

Chapter 6: The Race of Truth

Chapter 7: Go and Go Again…

Chapter 8: Fuelling Dreams

Chapter 9: Suffocating Stamina

Chapter 10: Preparing to Peak (or Pass Out)

Chapter 11: Exorcism at the Étape

Chapter 12: The Debrief

References

Acknowledgements

Appendix 1: Training Notes

Appendix 2: Pro rider’s race calendar

Prologue

My name is James Robert Witts. I’m 45 years old and I write about cycling, for magazines, online and the occasional book. I follow the professionals, many of whom are 25 years my junior. That makes me feel old. As do two children who are no longer children. It was only yesterday that I was stick thin and muscles were if not clearly defined, at least perceptible from close range. Now, time and calories have begun to take their toll. I wasn’t obese but I have been heading in the wrong direction in recent years. At the end of 2021, I realised that I needed a challenge. ‘What about completing a stage of the Tour de France?’ no one said to me. ‘And what about combining it with your day job by uncovering the secrets of the professionals and then applying similar or watered-down techniques – I’m thinking altitude training, aerodynamic advice, weight-cutting nutrition, rest days… – to my ageing body?’ as, again, no one said to me. ‘And what about if, in an equally diluted fashion, you complete similar events to the pros along the way?’ again, said no one but me. ‘You’re on,’ I said to myself.

And so, in January 2022, began my no-pro journey. The goal event? L’Étape du Tour de France on Saturday 10 July 2022, the Tour de France stage that about 16,000 recreational cyclists have the opportunity to race every year several days before the pros fly past. Confession: it had been sold out for months but one of my freelance roles involves editing the official Tour de France Guide every year, so I took advantage of my privileged position and bagged a media place. Ahead would be 167km of cycling, of which 4700m was climbing, including three of the most famous, and infamous, climbs in Tour de France history: Col du Galibier, Croix de Fer and Alpe d’Huez. I cycle, but not long distances. I’ve done endurance events in the past – triathlons up to Olympic-distance (1.5km swim, 40km bike, 10km run), a couple of marathons, a few sportives, half-marathons – but few in my 40s and nothing of the magnitude of a long, hot, mountainous day in France. So, there are clearly some obstacles ahead.

In fact, six months of them, to be precise. To mimic the pros would require a level of detail I’d never before applied to my own training. My current fitness levels would need to be assessed, bike position analysed, diet laughed at, training plan set up, build-up events pencilled in, flights planned, accommodation booked … even on paper, it looks tiring. In practice, well, the mind boggles. Then again, my role as a sports hack means I have enviable access to the support teams behind the likes of two-time Tour de France winner Tadej Pogačar, and arguably the finest all-rounder of current times, Wout van Aert. Surely, their learnings will inspire me to my own Tour greatness. I mean, how hard could climbing the equivalent of halfway up Mount Everest in one day really be…?

1

The Eye-opener

T-minus seven months until race day

I ride. A reasonable amount. But beyond the occasional mountain-bike session, it’s more about commutes that are less than four miles and rack up a single-digit hit in altitude. They’re fine for clearing the head and blowing away those sleepy cobwebs; they are not the grounding for the 30th edition of L’Étape du Tour that forums are discussing – and rejoicing over (hardcore cyclists are sadists and take great pleasure in suffering) – as the hardest ever.

On signing up to L’Étape du Tour, I do three things: clean my bike, weigh myself and ride. Or the good, the bad and the ugly. My grime-filled bike is the cleanest it’s been for years; I’m 92kg, the highest I’ve ever been; and my ride out and back from Bristol to the Somerset coastal town of Portishead is cold, wet and windy. It’s a 30-mile round trip and I feel more fatigued than I should, especially considering I refuelled on turnaround at one of the many cafes that line Portishead’s sparkling new marina.

Still, great oaks from little acorns grow and all that. And with six months ahead to forge myself into a cyclist that’ll surely have Sir Dave Brailsford knocking at my door, I have time on my side. And I’ll have the knowledge, too. I’ve spent my career interviewing the world’s finest cycling cyclists, from Peter Sagan in Gran Canaria, to Tao Geoghegan Hart in Mallorca and Sir Bradley Wiggins in … Portsmouth. My contacts book of recent times is far more detailed and denser than my training diary. I might lament the long hours, but sports writing has afforded me the fortunate position of holding a direct line to the world’s best riders and, arguably more important for my own travails, the world’s best cycling coaches, exercise physiologists and sports nutritionists.

That’s why there’s a template that I’ll follow (hopefully) all the way to that finish line at the peak of Alpe d’Huez on Saturday 10 July 2022, in both my training journey and this book. In each chapter, the first half will explore what makes the pro cycling peloton tick, uncovering the extraordinary leaps in science that have made it all (legally) possible. I’ll then take these learnings, apply the ones that are realistic for someone with a full-time job and a mid-40s body, and seek further specific one-on-one advice from experts who spend more time with recreational folk like me than the world’s svelte and speedy elite. The latter makes up the second half of each chapter; in other words, it’s the ideal married to realism.

To that end, we start with the world’s finest, followed by me, myself and I. Whatever happens, it’s going to be one hell of a journey…

December into the start of January is professional road cycling’s off-season, a time for reflection, resolutions and riding. This is when the world’s finest cyclists shift into gear for the upcoming race season, seeking warmth, mountainous terrain and smooth roads. Cycling teams such as Ineos Grenadiers head to Mallorca, Trek–Segafredo to Sierra Nevada, and Bora–Hansgrohe to Grenada for camps that are essentially an all-over audit. Here, sports scientists fitness test the riders, coaches prescribe training plans based on a catalogue of physiological data and nutritionists check riders’ body fat, even though to the naked eye levels are so low that you can see every vein, artery and sinew under the skin.

It’s all in the name of marrying nature with nurture, of ensuring a happy and long-lasting unity before the seasonal passage of time depletes power output, lung capacity and endurance. And what better place to lay the foundations for any marriage than that bastion of monogamy, Benidorm. It’s an incongruous backdrop to the world’s most monastic sports stars, but within its hedonistic shadows nestles Dénia, where UAE Team Emirates and their talisman Tadej Pogačar are hosting their January training camp

I’m meant to be there to watch and learn, to see just how the Slovenian and his teammates recalibrate and reset for another brutal season, where July’s Tour de France is the goal event. Sadly, however, the winter of 2021/2022 was blasted by the tail end of the Covid tornado. Twenty-four hours after booking my flight to Alicante, the team’s press officer pulled down the shutters on media attendance. ‘Under orders from the team doctors, the media-day interviews will now be moved to a virtual event,’ the team’s public face, Luke Maguire, informed me. ‘Contact won’t be allowed, unfortunately.’

And so began a mid-winter cha-cha-cha of acceptance, booking and cancellation followed by Zoom meetings. The (metaphorical) dance of disappointment reprised memories of a brief (and literal) stint salsa dancing with my wife. My wife has rhythm and is never happier than strutting her stuff to disco; rhythm and I have never been formally introduced and I’m at my most unsettled when within dragging distance of a dance floor. I’ve forever protested that males over 1.8m should be banned from dancing, unless you’re Massive Attack’s Daddy G, who possesses astonishing dexterity for someone of 1.96m. Mind you, salsa briefly coaxed out some unique moves and I began to enjoy tapping my feet to the timing of the beat during classes, until I fell off my bike and broke my ankle, which brought my dancing days to an abrupt halt. Even though I recovered, I saw it as a sign that cycling didn’t want me to be the next Revel Horwood and I never side-stepped again.

I don’t know whether George Bennett is a great dancer but I suspect not as he’s 1.8m tall on the dot. I do, however, know that he’s one of the finest cyclists to come out of New Zealand and was one of the biggest transfers of the off-season at the end of 2021, moving from Primož Roglič’s Jumbo–Visma to fierce rivals UAE Team Emirates.

The Kiwi spent seven seasons with the Dutch team before swapping canary yellow for the red, white and black livery of UAE Team Emirates. Bennett won the 2017 Tour of California but is now regarded as a super-domestique (the ultimate hod-carrier) and was one of eight riders brought in by the Emirates outfit alongside the likes of Movistar’s Marc Soler and Quick-Step’s João Almeida. Their strength in-depth is staggering. As is their budget – a reported €35 million in 2021. Only Ineos Grenadiers, at an annual €50 million, have such deep rear pockets.

Shortly before I interviewed Bennett at the start of January, I’d spent the Christmas period on the Isle of Wight. The occasional run and Boxing Day swim acted as informal training for L’Étape du Tour before I’d seek a structured, cycling-specific plan to follow from January to July. It offered brief respite from The Spyglass Inn, one of my favourite pubs, which sits at the western end of Ventnor Esplanade. The views of the English Channel are immense, as are the choice of real ales, nightly live music and seafood curry. It’s conducive to fun, not fitness, and I returned to the mainland with a few more fatty deposits rolling over my belt. I wondered if Bennett, whose racing weight hovers around 58kg – or the weight of nine-year-old me – piled on similar festive surplus.

‘Not necessarily at Christmas but my weight can fluctuate massively and when I jumped back on my bike after around a month off from early October, I was 5kg heavier,’ he says. ‘Much of that was down to drinking beer and bad food. My muscles ached a lot, too, from playing cricket and football. The key is to strip it down slowly; you don’t want to crash diet and put yourself in a hole. That’s where a lot of guys make mistakes – they don’t eat enough.’

Not this writer.

Still, it’s refreshing that elite cyclists aren’t always the (extremely skinny) robots they’re often portrayed as. Whether I can jettison the excess like Bennett remains to be seen, of course, especially as Bennett has the team’s nutritionist, Gorka Prieto-Bellver, to call upon. ‘He helps match the food and recipes to the training demands,’ Bennett explains. ‘And those demands have changed since I’ve moved teams. It turns out there are many ways to skin a cat when it comes to being a good cyclist. Jumbo had a blanket approach to training, really. It worked for Primož, it worked for Wout [van Aert], so they applied it to all.

‘Here, UAE’s really looked into the numbers, of the individualisation of training, and they noted that once I’d burnt through a certain amount of kilojoules, my performance dropped off. They really looked under the hood and, at the moment, I’m doing far fewer hours on the bike but much harder efforts. This time last year I was riding 30-hour weeks; last week I did 17 hours.’ You remember I mentioned the ideal versus reality? I will in no way be cycling 30 hours a week. Or 17 hours. Maybe 10 max. Down the line. When I’m a shrinking, swifter version of myself. Again, hopefully, we will see…

Bennett’s overhaul included strength work. In the past, he concedes that despite a growing body of evidence suggesting gym sessions should be an integral part of a cyclist’s programme to bulletproof the body from injury and bolster power output, squats and lunges remained off-limits. ‘Now, I’m in there two or three times a week. In fact, earlier in the off-season I was in there every day. It’s very much specific to performance, so I’m doing lots of leg presses; I’m trying to rip up my muscles and grow them…’ He looks down at his limbs and chuckles. ‘But they haven’t changed much. I guess I’m not that way [bulky] inclined. Still, it’s a balancing act as I’m looking to build muscle but also to strip fat that I gained in the off-season.’

Clearly, there were lessons here for me. Potentially train at higher intensity, for fewer hours, and incorporate strength work and time in the gym. Got it.

Bennett didn’t actually make it to the training camp in Alicante, instead remaining at home in New Zealand, the southern-hemisphere sun perfect for off-season miles. He lives in Nelson, a city on the eastern shores of Tasman Bay. There’s a good 30-minute climb nearby that’s his bread-and-butter, though his European base of Andorra is a world away, with mountainous adventures around every corner. He’ll head there when the worst of the winter’s over. It’ll be warmer, meaning he’ll avoid the modern cyclist’s – certainly the modern recreational cyclist’s – best friend: the indoor trainer. ‘I used it during lockdown but after that I was ready to throw the damn thing out the window and never look at it again,’ Bennett protests. ‘I just find it dull.’

Bennett is seemingly in the minority. Lockdown made indoor trainers rarer than hen’s teeth and saw online virtual software Zwift double its user base to over three million. Despite restrictions being lifted, it remains popular. I can see the merits of indoor cycling through the winter, so it’s on my training radar. It’s not now on Bennett’s. The only time he spends indoor cycling is on an ergometer for fitness testing. He’d recently undertaken an hour test in a sports science laboratory in Girona, where he recorded an incredible VO2 max score in the ’90s. The average for someone of Bennett’s age is about half that. VO2 max is a measure of an individual’s maximum lung capacity, reflecting their cardiovascular fitness, and is measured in millilitres of oxygen used by a kilogram of bodyweight every minute.

‘It’s an overrated gauge of performance, I feel,’ says Bennett. ‘No matter what your VO2 is, it’s how you arrive at the last climb. It’s all about repeatability and efficiency. And it’s about finding key positions and still being in good shape. Racing has changed. It’s harder. Nowadays, riders are attacking with 60km to go and everyone’s on their knees at the finish. Before, you’d let the break go, control things and race the last 5km. Of course, that still happens but there’s been a definite shift from big hours to high-power stuff.’

And with that, Bennett looks at the time, interrupts himself and waves goodbye as he has to chow down on an energy bar and head out for a three-hour ride on his Colnago. Perhaps I should follow his example and dust off my saddle… There’s little respite for the pros even with the Tour a mere hillock on the horizon, but Bennett’s brief physiological overview whetted my appetite to know more about what it takes to race at the upper echelons. We sit on our sofas and watch as Ned Boulting and his team guide us vicariously around France in July but if you’re anything like me, you’ll want to know what has gone on behind the scenes. How many racing and training miles have the riders ticked off to make the team? How many calories have they burned through? How much chamois cream have they layered on? I need to answer these questions because, albeit in my own small way, I need to be ready for my own mini Tour de France.

Somebody who is well placed to answer some of these questions is Dr Daniel Green, performance consultant at Chris Froome’s team, Israel–Premier Tech. Dr Green is a cycling whack-a-mole, popping up at one outfit before disappearing and popping up at another. As a cycling journalist, I’ve come across Green at the now disbanded BMC Racing and Team Qhubeka, Trek–Segafredo and now Israel. Every time I’ve spoken to him, I’ve understood why the modern cycling outfits battle for his services. He consumes data for breakfast and is a man who thrives on pacing strategies, aerodynamics and training loads. He’s worked with the world’s best and knows what it takes to elicit world-class performance.

During his time at BMC Racing, for example, Green undertook a project to understand exactly what it takes to make, survive and hopefully thrive in the WorldTour. ‘At that time [2016–2018] we used SRM Power Meters,’ Green explained when I interviewed him for this book. SRM is credited with creating the first cycling power meter – a device to measure power output of the rider – in 1986 to prescribe training sessions more accurately. Greg LeMond and Lance Armstrong became high-profile proponents and SRM continues to measure the world’s finest. ‘Taking data from there and using my own software, I analysed data files from all the riders from 1 November 2016 to September 2017. That was 327 days, comprising 8600 files and over 24,000 hours of data to pore over.

‘What did I discover? Well, on average a WorldTour rider cycles for 876 hours a year. That equates to 27,500km, of which 326km is climbing. They expend 660,000kJ, broken down roughly as 14 per cent from anaerobic sources [hard], 49 per cent from aerobic sources [moderate] and 37 per cent from endurance load [easy]. Racing accounted for around 43 per cent of total load with training at 57 per cent. Of those 67 days’ racing, intensity is generally higher than in training. Illness and injury came in at an average 14 days across the team.’

And so Green continued. But he needn’t have. I got the hint. A snapshot was enough to offer a glimpse of how these bellows on saddles can cycle over 3200km around France every July, taming the biggest mountains of the Pyrenees and Alps, and still have enough energy to sprint down the Champs-Élysées on the final day of 21.

‘The Tour wasn’t actually the hardest race that year,’ Green went on. ‘That was the Vuelta a España. That adds up with the anecdotal [evidence] as the riders fed back that the heat made it particularly brutal. Relatively, the Giro d’Italia had the lowest workload of the three Grand Tours.’

‘What about one-day races?’ I asked, knowing that my own journey might feature a spring sportive in northern Europe. My challenge isn’t solely about the end point (i.e. L’Étape du Tour) – in my watered-down way, I’m looking to mimic the professional calendar with two or three build-up events. ‘A few stood out, notably Amstel Gold and Liège–Bastogne–Liège. They were the two biggest races of the year from a load point of view, which is surprising when you think of races like Paris–Roubaix and Tour of Flanders.’

(Mental note: do not sign up for sportives at either Amstel or Liège.)

The rise of the power meter provides fertile territory for the likes of Green to dig deep into the physiology of these superhumans. Or try to. The problem is that those 27,500km planted on a perch leave very little time for anything else, so the last thing most professional cyclists want to do is head over to a university and become a lab rat in their spare time.

Doing exactly that was clearly rather more in vogue in the 1990s, thanks to the infamous exploits of renowned drug cheats Dr Michele Ferrari, Festina, Armstrong and others involved in the infamous doping scandals of the time. As an aside, in researching this book I came across website 53x12.com, run by Dr Ferrari. In it, the disgraced Italian doctor provides tips on everything from supplements to enhance diet – ‘Linseed oil is an alternative to fish oils’ – to recovery – ‘Try to do relaxing activities before you go to bed, such as taking a hot shower or listening to soothing music.’ I couldn’t find anywhere nefarious advice on injecting testosterone for muscle repair, and how best to avoid clotting from blood bags by awakening in the middle of the night to increase heart rate with a gentle walk around the hotel’s corridors. As recently as 2019, he was linked to professional cyclists, with an undercover investigation by Cycling Anti-Doping Foundation (CADF) linking Ferrari and Astana’s Alexey Lutsenko. Active riders found consulting with Ferrari could mean that they would face up to two-year bans, according to anti-doping rules.

But I digress. Professional cyclists’ unsurprising reluctance to spend limited free time having muscle fibres extracted from their thighs means university students are the usual subjects used in sports science experiments all around the world. It’s why a paper released in 2022, ‘How do world-class top-five Giro d’Italia finishers train’¹, attracted so much attention in elite cycling circles. This kind of data is rare.

The team, led by Luca Filipas of the University of Milan, ostensibly followed a similar analytical template to Green’s, unlocking the secrets of huge swathes of data emanating from power meters. The numbers were collected between 2015 and 2018, during which period each rider enjoyed at least one top-five Giro finish. It’s a physiologist’s nirvana, with standouts including: the riders’ VO2 max scores were 81, 82 and 80ml/min/kg, respectively; maximum 20-minute power output came in at 6.6, 6.6 and 6.4 watts per kg; and, surprisingly perhaps, training came in at ‘just’ 19.7, 16.2 and 14.7 hours on the bike each week, albeit much of this was during the race-preparation period when volume is generally lower. The paper also echoed Green’s conclusions that the majority of training was low to medium intensity but when intensity was high, it was high. In other words, temple-pulsating, lung-squeezing high.

As were those VO2 max scores. In Bennett’s world, VO2 max is no limiter because it’s taken as read that to have reached WorldTour level, you’re an oxygen-burning machine. For the rest of us, it’s a clear proxy of fitness, a fitness badge of honour, or dishonour, depending on your score. You’re probably wondering what my own VO2 max score is? Hold fire on that one. My train of thought was still focused on the elite nirvana. More specifically, how high can VO2 max reach before a ceiling’s arrived at? I know there’s a genetic ceiling but what’s the highest that ceiling has ever reached?

It didn’t take long – one Google search – to discover that Norwegian cyclist Oskar Svendsen recorded the highest-ever recorded VO2 max score of 96.7ml/min/kg in 2012. Svendsen was only 18 years old at the time and this was more than double the average score of other male cyclists his age.

Impressive. But clearly no guarantee of success and fame as who the hell is Oskar Svendsen? Bennett’s not-the-be-all-and-end-all of endurance performance maxim had substance: a search on ProCyclingStats – the stats site for cycling aficionados all around the world – revealed that Svendsen’s last race was the Tour de l’Avenir in 2014, where he finished 71st overall. The Tour de l’Avenir is a micro-Tour de France for riders aged under 23 and is where agents and managers from around the globe gather to identify future stars. Past winners include Grand Tour winners Egan Bernal, Nairo Quintana, Miguel Induráin, Greg LeMond and Felice Gimondi. Svendsen, not looking overly happy in his bio pic, the name Joker stamped across his chest – he raced for Team Joker in Norway, which folded in 2020 due to financial pressures of Covid – never raced again, retiring at the tender age of 20.

So, just two years after that record-breaking VO2 max score, his cycling career was done. Finito. No more. I couldn’t let it lie. Why had someone with such potential, a machine whose lungs and heart are closer to those of a horse than a human, reached that performance ceiling so soon? I needed to know more, and soon found it via LinkedIn.

I messaged, we connected and Svendsen agreed to tell his story. ‘Throughout that year, I’d undertaken several laboratory tests. Each time my VO2 max scores were increasing. The first one was around 72, then 78, 80, 82, 87 and then 92…’ Tour winners Bernal and Pogačar reportedly have scores around 89ml/kg/min. ‘I then hit the labs in Lillehammer and undertook another test, reaching 96.7ml/kg/min…’ That beat the world record set by cross-country star Bjorn Daehlie in the 1990s. ‘It was a very strange atmosphere. The team around me had been screaming, but then it went quiet. I was thinking, OK, what’s happening now? There was this awkward silence. They were then like, Shit, there must be something wrong with the equipment. That’s why they had it checked over by the distributors the following day, but it was calibrated correctly – the scores were correct.’

In physiological terms, Svendsen had broken cycling’s hour record. Three weeks later, he won the men’s junior time trial at the UCI Road World Championships, beating Slovenia’s Matej Mohorič into second. Germany’s Maximilian Schachmann took bronze.

Svendsen became hot property, appearing on Norwegian talk shows and becoming a regular on the radio. He was talked about as the new Thor Hushovd, who won the Worlds in 2010. But while Mohorič and Schachmann would both go on to secure lucrative WorldTour contracts, Svendsen would return to his studies before taking up a role at a Norwegian start-up that makes automated systems for herbs and vegetables.

‘It was a crazy time. I’d only been cycling for three years [Svendsen was an alpine skier before then] and things felt out of my control. A lot of professional teams were watching me and I ended up signing for Continental side Team Joker. But I had a real comedown and lost motivation.’ The media spotlight frazzled and the idea of further adulation was blinding. He chose to end his career before it had really begun.

Svendsen still rides for leisure and can revel in the fact that he’s the fittest grocer who’s ever lived (albeit Gregg Wallace might contest otherwise, as the TV presenter now has a six-pack and runs a fitness site called Showme.fit, on which Gregg offers his pearls of wisdom for £7 a month).

So, fitness matters, but you’re an empty shell if the elite mindset is cracked or you simply don’t like or want the attention. This is where your environment matters. It needs to be conducive to world-class performance but not so stressful that you can’t escape the world’s gaze. Which brings us back to Alicante, off-season road-cycling training, and my mission.

Until the 2020 pandemic, the Costa Blanca had become an annual pilgrimage, a place where I researched, conducted interviews and wrote features about cycling for various publications especially Cyclist magazine. I recall strolling around a hotel on the edge of Calpe in search of Belgian team Quick-Step’s press officer Alessandro Tegner. Alessandro is all tan, slicked-back black hair and unflappable confidence. There are no specifics with Alessandro but, he assured me, the day I’d requested to observe the world’s most successful cycling team was sorted. ‘It’s always sorted,’ he’d deliver with easy charm. Sadly, we had form. Bad form. Of photo shoots and interviews lined up, only for our media arrival to coincide with said rider departure. ‘Next time,’ Alessandro would repeat casually. ‘It’ll all be good next time.’ The editor, staring at eight blank pages and the imminent iceberg that is a print deadline, lacked Alessandro’s leisurely spirit.

To be fair to Alessandro, managing the media commitments of naturally introverted riders as they compete all over the world is no easy task. Thankfully, their sometime ambivalence towards the press is matched by a laser focus that ignores the tacky temptations abundant in this part of Spain. Calpe and Dénia are next to