I finally have a definitive answer to why Bradley Wiggins goes to Tenerife and hangs as often as possible. It is from one of his team directors, Sean Yates, ex (forever) team mate of Lance. Sean says – “The training is harder than the racing,” Yates said. “When push comes to shove in a race, on the top of [Col de] Joux Plane, it’s going to be hard, but 99 percent of time the training is harder than the racing.”
So there we have it, the races in Europe aren’t hard enough for Bradley because he can’t push himself hard enough in them, so he needs to go to a remote Spanish island and train with a few of his team mates (Chris Froome, Richie Porte, Michael Rogers, Kanstantsin Siutsou and Christian Knees). I guess racing isn’t hard enough for any of these guys. They probably need to be one on one with Bradley to be able to really dig deep and get to another level.
It seems so weird because nearly every race I’ve ever done is harder than nearly anything I do training. (And I have been known to train somewhat hard.) I must be doing something backwards here? I guess I must train harder, much, much harder, so the races seem way easier than training. That way I could be paid to race less, not perform in front of my fans, but get to hang with my team mates. According to Sean – “the fact that the hotel is superb, the food is superb, the terrain is the best, the amount of climbing you can do is phenomenal” is the reason behind his success. (I didn’t think Bradley ate much?) But, it does seem like a no brainer. Just hang at the nice hotel and climb as many meters as possible, beating up your team mates. I maybe could have been great with this training method. Shoot. Maybe it’s not too late? I wonder how much a ticket to Tenerife is?
If you want to try to emulate some of their training secrets, the whole article is here at Velonews.
And after Andy’s disappointing day at the Dauphine, here’s maybe what is going on behind the scenes at the RadioShack/Nissan bunker. But, putting aside their little spat, RadioShack-Nissan team manager Johan Bruyneel, gives Andy a get-out-of-jail free card because “he’s had a lack of competition.” It seems, Yates, the student, has made some secret discoveries that his master, Johan, doesn’t know?
A close up of Bradley’s forearm after he lost all that upper body weight the last couple years.
I can see a couple more pounds of muscle here, that he could shed to climb really, really good.
And finally, the quote of the day from Mark Cavendish after finishing the Giro – “Contrary to popular belief, I am one of the only riders who do not take pulls or get pushed,” he said. “The commissaires do everything they can to make things harder for us. They make barrages when it’s not necessary. I am spent, but I have enjoyed it. I love this race, I love this country.”
Those silly officials, frowning upon towing. I was wondering how all those guys got up those steep mountains in Italy? Now Mark has explained it.
