I don’t really understand the schedule that Bradley Wiggins is doing this season. Last year he won virtually every time he clipped in and this year he has decided to change his training and hole up in Tenerife and “practice” climbing. He says – “We’re working more on the explosivity in the climbs. I don’t like it. It’s the worst part of training. We do a lot of that at altitude; we’ve been two weeks at altitude doing that,” he said. “Sometimes the stuff you don’t enjoy doing, it’s the stuff that works. If you only do what you like doing, you have the Bradley Wiggins of 2010.” But, later on he goes and states – “This year, I am training more than racing. I almost prefer the training camps to the racing,” Wiggins said. “You learn from the previous year. This year has been harder because the stuff we did last year, it’s a continual thing. The training we do now, I never imagined we’d do three years ago.” As normal, Bradley contradicts himself and he can’t decide if he likes training or not.
Forget the Bradley Wiggins of 2010, he should want to be the Bradley Wiggins of 2011. It seems like many other guys are having their issues this year and he would be fine if he could just beat his team mates, Richie Porte and Chris Froome.
It seems like doubling up the Giro and the Tour is in style this season. Cadel announced that he is doing it also. But, Cadel has been racing this year, not just training. Cadel is a little more old school than Bradley, it seems, and likes to race his bike.
I really don’t get the not racing deal. It seems to me, that bike racers race bikes. And they train to get fit enough to race and then they race. It would be like being a basketball player and you prefer to go to the park and shoot free throws than play an actual game. It doesn’t make any sense to me.
My friend, Rod Lake, had an extra power meter sitting around and he sent it to me and I installed it on my bike yesterday and rode. First time in my life I’ve ridden with a power meter. I hove no idea how this is going to change anything I do riding. Hopefully it will give me some important information that I can use to race faster, but I don’t know what that information will be as of yet. But, I guarantee that I’ll never be a Wiggins type that prefers training to racing. I can and never will be a fan of guys like that.
Beggars can’t be choosers.
We all needed a little more of this yesterday after watching KU melt the last 3 minutes of the game yesterday.
A bunch of people came over for the game last night and I made pizza.
I think I made 7 or 8 pizzas. It was the first time that I’ve ever had left overs.
Here is Dennis cooling down his dog Hawkeye on the picnic table. It’s been pretty nice the last couple days, in the 60’s and Hawk is used to cold Wisconsin temperatures.
“We don’t like guys who train all the time and don’t race, either.”
Signed,
USADA anti-doping testers
It would help all the armchair cycling coaches if you would go do a threshold test. Do 20 min all out (yeah, that’s gonna suck). Now would be a good time so we can see what your ftp is now untrained vs trained in a few months. Also everyone will want to know your exact weight.
Why didn’t KU foul when they were up by 3 with 10 seconds left!!! ARGH!!!
BTW love the PZT-2!!
While I think it’s a **great** idea for us armchair coaches, IMHO it needs to happen a bit later as I don’t think I’m the only one that tries to “cheat” some more power by trying to use the upper body to squeeze a watt or two out of my body.
Spain’s law enforcement recently leaked an investigation into PED trafficing (SP????) including destinations Tenerife and Girona. It appears Spain has a nationalized athlete doping. One wonders if anything will change.
Got to get those blood bags drawn and some more weight lost to shatter the Watts/Kilo ratio limits in time for Grand Tours.
Why the constant hate on Wiggins? Not everyone trains like Eddy anymore.
” I got a phone call said that Bradley just “PBed” on a climb in Girona, when the truth of the matter is he couldnt pull the foreskin off a rice puddin”…………Shane Sutton SKY
You would train in Tenerife rather than race to get better weather than on the continent, to sleep at altitude and train at sea level, to have good climbs, to reduce the likelihood of an out of competition test and the fact that if you are doing transfusions you can’t race the full season. The rider who is doing transfusions can only race when his transfusion schedule permits. Don’t for a second think that these folks have stopped doping.
What happened to guys that did the classics and raced the tours ?
Tour only guys bore me wiggdouche most of all.
As many racers now know, racing is NOT always the best training. Especially for Grand tour specific endurance and recovery.
One problem with a program of heavy racing is that the athlete’s physiological workload is at the mercy of race conditions and the Peloton. In training, an athlete can apply just the right workload to slowly but surely build form.
Look at how Cadel Evans and Evan Basso did when they were trained by Sassi a few years ago. Both raced less in the Spring and brought their form around slowly in training. Basso (past doping suspension) had is best grand tour results and Evans won the TDF.
I guess team Sky can afford to allow Wiggins to do his slow build up because they have so much other talent that they need to allow to shine in leadership roles. My opinion is, give Wiggins a break and see how his 2013 goes. I do agree with you Steve that it certainly may not make logical sense to change-up his training from 2012 with all of the success that Wiggins had.
Steve take that thing off your bike immediately, it will only depress and discourage you… trust me man you don’t want to know what that readout is going to tell you.