Tour Climbs: The complete guide to every mountain stage on the Tour de France. Chris Sidwells
Читать онлайн книгу.
start to climb. If you can’t get bottom gear the whole experience might be ruined.
Physical preparation
Climbing some of the easier Tour de France mountains is within the scope of almost any reasonably fit and healthy person, given a bike that is in good condition, is fitted with low enough gears, and provided the rider takes his or her time. However, some of the bigger climbs, the most famous ones in fact, do require some physical training. And in any case, the fitter you are the more enjoyable the whole experience will be.
Without trying to state the obvious, the best way to get fit for cycling is to ride your bike regularly, but that doesn’t mean that other physical exercise is of no use. One of the biggest factors that will impact how quickly you can ride a bike uphill is your body weight, or more particularly your power to weight ratio.
There is no doubt that being active helps to keep your weight down, so any activity is good activity as far as this is concerned. Linked with a varied diet of good wholesome food, and perhaps a little restraint with regard to eating the classic weight-gaining foods like cakes and chocolate, plenty of varied physical activity is a good foundation on which to build some specific cycling fitness.
If possible you should add some form of resistance training to your varied programme, concentrating on your leg muscles. This helps to build up the power side of the power to weight equation. Then if you include three or more bike-riding sessions a week for about two months before tackling the mountain climbs, you should be ready. The bike sessions don’t all have to be on the road, although at least one should be. You can use a gym fitness bike or put your own bike on a turbo trainer and ride indoors.
Once you are riding regularly you should start to seek out some hills in your neighbourhood. The longer these are the more benefit they will have on your ability to master Tour de France mountains. You can also simulate long climbs on indoor bikes by upping the resistance on the machine you are using.
Whatever way you choose to begin your specific mountain climbing preparation, try to ride all the uphill parts on your routes by sitting on your saddle and spinning your legs in a low gear. Concentrate on relaxing your upper body and breathing deeply and rhythmically. Occasionally you should ride a hill in a little higher gear, both in the seated position and out of the saddle, to help build up some functional muscular strength. And there is nothing wrong with riding up a hill, turning around carefully at the top, descending and doing it again.
All the advice in the last paragraph comes from the man who many recognise as the best mountain racer ever, Lucien Van Impe of Belgium. He says; “I spent weeks before every Tour de France learning to spin my legs quickly on the climbs. I would try to match my breathing with the rhythm of my legs. When I was a pro rider I practised in the Pyrenees, but when I was a young amateur I trained near where I live in the north of Belgium. There are no mountains there, so I would ride up and down the same hill maybe ten times.”
Sit up to breathe easy – 2007 King of the Mountains Mauricio Soler shows how © Luc Claessen
Climbing technique
When Lucien Van Impe arrived at the foot of a mountain in the Tour de France he says: “I shifted to a gear that was lower than really necessary for the first part of the climb. I did this so I could concentrate on gaining control of my breathing at the start. If you don’t do that, if you go straight into a higher gear and attack a long climb, you will go into oxygen debt.”
If you can keep one piece of advice in your mind when climbing the Tour de France mountains it should be that piece. It is crucial to control your breathing. You can be the strongest cyclist in the world, but if you don’t get oxygen into your muscles you will have to slow to recover. And if you slow down when going uphill, gravity makes you stop.
Start each climb conservatively. After cycling for only a short time you learn instinctively what gear ratio you need on a particular day for a particular slope and in particular conditions. But at the beginning of a long climb you should use a lower ratio than the one you think you need until you are breathing deeply and rhythmically, and until your legs get used to the effort.
Then you can shift to the gear that you feel you can make comfortable progress in. But still err on the side of caution. Mont Ventoux, for example, takes an averagely fit club cyclist around two hours to climb. The Télégraphe and Galibier combination takes more than three. If you are inexperienced you could be climbing for much longer. It is essential then that you start every climb conservatively.
The more upright you sit on your bike, the easier it is to breathe. Mountain and hybrid bikes are set up to give their rider an upright position, but the dropped handlebars on road bikes are designed with the aerodynamics of speed in mind. Hold dropped handle bars on the flat upper part with your hands close to where the handlebars begin to bend.
Don’t grip the handlebars too tightly, as that wastes energy. Relax your shoulders, try to keep you back as straight as possible, but without straining to do so, and point your elbows out slightly. This all facilitates deep, unrestricted breathing. If you tuck in your elbows, tense your shoulders or arch your back excessively, you will restrict the space in which your lungs can move to inhale and exhale air. The same also goes for crouching too low.
When pedalling comfortably in a low gear you should just be supporting yourself on the handlebars. But for short steep stretches you might have to pull with your arms as you make more powerful pedal strokes. That’s OK, but don’t get bogged down doing this for a long time. Shift to a lower gear on long steep stretches, don’t try to muscle your way over them.
Riding out of the saddle should be kept to a minimum on long climbs, although it’s OK to do it for a few metres to keep your momentum on a steep bit of the climb. Shifting to a slightly higher gear and getting out of the saddle on long stretches of the same gradient brings other muscle into play, preventing them from stiffening up. It also takes some of the strain off the muscles you have been using constantly on the climb. Push down slightly harder as you get out of the saddle to keep your upward progress smooth. And when you do climb out of the saddle still try not to tense your upper body.
Drink plenty while you are climbing, especially in hot weather. Water or well-diluted energy drinks are the best. Dilute them more than the manufacturers instructions recommend in hot weather. When it’s hot Tour de France riders pour water over their heads to cool down, which is OK if you have a plentiful supply. If water is limited it will do more good inside you.
It’s best to carry two specialist cycling drinking bottles on your bike, one with your diluted energy drink in it and the other full of water. There are usually plenty of cafés or shops near to the mountains of the Tour de France to buy more water. Don’t fill bottles from springs or mountain streams. You never know what might be contaminating them further up the mountain, and even the purest streams might have microbes in them that you aren’t used to. For long rides in remote areas, like some parts of the Pyrenees and the Southern Alps, augment your bottles with one of those hydration systems that you carry on your back.
It’s difficult to eat while your are climbing, simply because you are breathing too hard. If you are riding up one climb then eat a solid meal about two hours before you start, so your stomach isn’t overburdened while you are climbing. Make your meal bigger, and maybe leave a little longer to digest it, if you are doing several climbs in one day. Eat solid food like cakes or energy bars on the flat bits between climbs, using carbohydrate gels to top up your fuel requirements on the climbs themselves. And always follow a gel with a drink of water to dilute it.
Use cycling-specific clothing. Cycling shorts have a padded seat that won’t cause chaffing in delicate areas. They also transport sweat away from your body, as do cycling-specific tops. The best tops for mountain climbing are ones with full zips so you can undo them and get some cooling air flowing over your skin. Cycling tops also have pockets