Tour de France training takeaways, from the coaches of Vingegaard, Pogačar

Some big lessons for rowers from the world’s top cyclists and cycling teams. Why is this important for us I hear you ask? Because like cycling, rowing is an endurance sport, and although we rowers have a big dependence on power, and our races are shorter in duration, fundamental endurance training principles cannot be ignored.

Original article by Jim Cotton, Velo News 22 July 2023.

Coaches of Tour’s ‘big two’ lift the lid on how fundamental training principles still rule in the biggest race in the world. Turns out the training principles you were taught as a junior still apply if you want to win the Tour de France.

The head coaches of Jumbo-Visma and UAE Emirates separately lifted the lid this week on the fundamental strengths and weaknesses of Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogačar‘s pre-Tour training plans.

And the takeaways were as obvious as they were old school. Consistency, base miles, and accumulated load are the foundation of any aspiring maillot jaune.

Consistency is key to GC success

Vingegaard reaped the rewards of consistent ‘availability’ to train. Jumbo-Visma performance director Mathieu Heijboer told Velo that the consistent layering of load was the bedrock of Vingegaard’s 2023 training program.

“One of the key things we worked on with Jonas this year was ‘availability.’ We wanted to make sure he was always healthy and fit,” Heijboer said on a call this week. “We were so focused on it that we even cut some races from the calendar.

“What we call ‘availability’ of a rider is them being prepared every day to train, making sure they’re not losing days because of injury or sickness. In my opinion, the biggest difference from last year is there was a lot more consistency in Jonas’ training.”

One of the most taut GC battles in recent memory came to a likely end at the start of the Tour’s third week.

Pogačar flamed fast in a double-stage slam that saw Vingegaard squeeze both shoulders square into the leader’s yellow jersey. Pogačar’s trainer Iñigo San Millán conceded the obvious this week.

The weeks the Slovenian lost in training after his Liège-Bastogne-Liège crash were the first nails in his 2023 Tour de France coffin.

When Vingegaard was “available” and training on Sierra Nevada through early summer, Pogačar was cross-training or stuck on the turbo.

“I don’t know yet if [the crash] is the only reason, but it’s the main reason, that’s for sure,” San Millán told l’Equipe of Pogačar’s week-three implosion.

“Pogi” was losing endurance horsepower with every day he was on the home trainer.

“Tadej always does two big training blocks before the Tour: one at the start of the season, one in the spring,” San Millán said. “This year, his fall at Liège prevented him from doing this second block.”

Last year, Pogačar prepared to defend his second Tour title with a three-week boot camp in the thin air of the Italian Alps before he raced to victory at the Tour of Slovenia. This year, he managed just a percentage of that while he nursed a still-healing scaphoid fracture through a sticking-plaster training schedule.

“The home trainer is good, but it’s not enough,” San Millán said.

“He lost three weeks of training in May. And he was only able to do three good weeks of work in June. If we take into account the rest days, Tadej only trained properly for a fortnight before this summer.”

Base miles bake in the foundations of big wins

Pogačar’s 2022 and 2023 collapses highlight how base training and proper fuelling can’t be ignored. Even a fifth-year WorldTour pro like Pogačar can’t cut corners in training.

Slow burn “base training” builds the day-by-day, week-by-week endurance and recoverability that’s crucial to a grand tour rider. No-frills zone two miles can’t be neglected, even for racers who have been at the top of their sport for a half-decade.

UAE Emirates performance co-ordinator Jerome Swart told Velo before the grand départ that the ideal final block of Tour training would be as much focussed on hours of aerobic tapping as it was lung-burning intervals.

Pogačar just needed more miles before this Tour de France.

“I was talking about a very difficult mission before the Tour, but in truth, I don’t think any rider has ever won the Tour with less than a month of training in their legs,” Swart’s colleague San Millán said.

Vingegaard’s final weeks of Tour de France training couldn’t look any more different from those of his maillot foe.

Strava spying suggests Vingegaard and his Tour de France teammates accumulated around 80 hours and 2,400km of base-focussed training on the Sierra Nevada through May before a week of intensity at the Critérium du Dauphiné.

Heijboer said a consistent, uninterrupted layering of milage has been the cornerstone of Vingegaard’s rise.

The Dane broke out when he blasted to second in the 2021 grand boucle and charted an uninterrupted training curve ever since.

“Jonas used to have problems with his tendons and was missing training, and in 2021, he suffered badly with COVID and lost a lot of time,” Heijboer told Velo.

“We wanted to rule out all those factors so he could be totally consistent this year, and we managed that very well. We paid a lot of attention to his physical preparedness so that he was always doing his exercises, his recovery, his nutrition, all of it 100 percent right.”

Overtraining, undertraining, and getting the loading right

San Millan asserts that Pogačar didn’t do too much in spring. (Photo: Gruber Images / Velo)

Vingegaard and Pogačar’s early season in some ways reflect their personalities and racing style.

Vingegaard saw few race days in favor of structured training.

Meanwhile, his Slovenian nemesis threw it down to Wout van Aert and Mathieu van der Poel in the classics, and harvested victories at the Tour of Flanders, Amstel Gold, and La Flèche Wallonne along the way.

UAE trainer San Millán pushed back at suggestions that Pogačar tries to take on too much.

“We understood how Tadej’s body works and how it responds to different types of efforts. It is not because he reached his peak at the Tour of Flanders in April that he mortgaged his chances of winning the Tour in July,” he said.

Even a small dip into “overtraining” can ripple hard through the rest of the season.

Whether a junior racer or a WorldTour pro, doing “more” isn’t always “more.” Physiological load only beds-in with time off and adaption.

San Millán explained that he monitored Pogačar’s training load through controlled testing and a long understanding of his athlete’s data.

“After the Flandrien classics, he produced the best figures of his life,” Millan said. “Frankly, I had a hard time believing it. I even thought he had slipped into a form of overtraining.

“I spent a week with him to take lactate tests, which confirmed his progress and erased my fears. He didn’t train too much, he had simply taken an extra step, which he proved during the Ardennes.”

Simply put, an increase in training load needs careful planning and regulation.

The takeaway? Do the basics, and do them well

It doesn’t take a pro physiologist to point to Pogačar’s crash at Liège as the moment his Tour de France hopes cracked.

But insights from San Millán and Heijboer do illustrate that even the best bike racers in the world can’t avoid the sometimes boring principles of consistency, base miles, and steady progress.