It’s that time of the year again - Le Tour de France starts tonight!
Rather than my usual winter of sitting on the couch watching the race and getting fat, this year I’ve done all the fat building in advance and will instead do what I first thought of last year - ride my own Third de France, so called because I’ll aim to ride a third of what the pros do.
Very simplified, if you are trying to win Le Tour, it’s essentially a very long ride punctuated with some hard efforts up the mountains and in time trials. Outside of those efforts the aim is to do as little work as possible, so that’s the aim of my stages as well.
The goal each day will be to ride around in Zone 1 (polarised model - mentioned earlier) and to do some harder, sub-threshold efforts when the riders hit the mountains.
The mountains are classified from the easiest 4, to the hardest, HC (Hors Categorie = Beyond Category) and, since a big HC climb could take up to an hour for the pros, I’ll do a 20min SST effort for a HC climb and knock off five minutes for each level below. I’ll ignore Cat 4 climbs as they’re just pimples. I’ll also do all the SST intervals back-to-back, taking five minutes active rest between each, rather than spacing them out as the mountains are. Once all the intervals are done, I’ll continue riding Z1 until I rack up the required distance for the day.
For the team time-trial stage I’ll do OverUnders, and for the individual time-trial stage I’ll do an FTP effort.
I’ll also ride my stage the day after the pros do, giving me the option to watch the stage if I choose to ride on the indoor trainer, so technically I start tomorrow.
Bearing that in mind, how does my Tour look like?
Here’s a quick summary of the plan:
| Pro KMs | My KMs | Mountains | My Efforts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stage 1 | 194.5 | 65 | 3,4 | 5m SST |
| Stage 2 | 27.6 | 9 | OverUnders | |
| Stage 3 | 215 | 72 | 4,3,3,3 | 5m/5m/5m SST |
| Stage 4 | 213.5 | 71 | 4,4 | |
| Stage 5 | 175.5 | 59 | 3,2,2,3 | 5m/10m/10m/5m SST |
| Stage 6 | 160.5 | 54 | 1,3,2,1,3,2,1 | 15m/5m/10m/15m/5m/10m/15m SST |
| Stage 7 | 230 | 77 | 4,3,4 | 5m SST |
| Stage 8 | 200 | 67 | 2,2,2,3,2,2,3 | 10m/10m/10m/5m/10m/10m/5m SST |
| Stage 9 | 170.5 | 57 | 1,3,3 | 15m/5m/5m SST |
| Stage 10 | 218 | 73 | 4,3,3,3 | 5m/5m/5m SST |
| Rest Day | ||||
| Stage 11 | 167 | 56 | 3,4 | 5m SST |
| Stage 12 | 209.5 | 70 | 4,1,1 | 15m/15m SST |
| Stage 13 | 27.2 | 9 | FTP | |
| Stage 14 | 117.5 | 39 | 4,1,HC | 15m/20m SST |
| Stage 15 | 185 | 62 | 2,1,1,1 | 10m/15m/15m/15m SST |
| Rest Day | ||||
| Stage 16 | 177 | 59 | 4 | |
| Stage 17 | 200 | 67 | 4,3 | 5m SST |
| Stage 18 | 208 | 69 | 3,1,HC,HC | 5m/15m/20m/20m SST |
| Stage 19 | 126.5 | 42 | 3,2,3,HC,1 | 5m/10m/5m/20m/15m SST |
| Stage 20 | 130 | 43 | 1,2,HC | 15m/10m/20m SST |
| Stage 21 | 127 | 42 | 4,4 | |
| Totals | 3479.8 | 1160 |
Stages 6 & 8 stand out in the first week, with 18, 19 and 20 going to be a hard finish. Stages 14 & 15 will be problematic for me as I’ll be away that weekend, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.
Based on my metabolic test learnings, Zone 1 means ‘keep heart rate below 140’. Approximate FTP is 265W at the moment (indoor) so that will suffice for this exercise and I’ll aim for 240W on SST intervals. I haven’t decided yet whether to do them on the trainer or outdoors.
After two weeks’ holidays I’m well rested and well overweight, so I’m under no illusions that this will hurt.
Current fitness: CTL = 29, TSB = 19
Current weight: 92.4kg
Time to shift some lard. Bonne chance!