by Jens Voigt
There had already been a lot of talk on the team about the hour record, because Fabian Cancellara was studying the possibility of making a run at it. He wasn’t sure, though, if and when he would have the time to do it. But I saw that the rules had changed, allowing for a proper time trial track bike to be used.
Previously, the UCI’s hour record rules had dictated the use of a standard frame with dropped handlebars and no disc wheels. When I read the rule changes, I thought to myself, “Hey, with these rules, I can do that!” The record at the time, held by Czech Ondrej Sosenka, was 49.7 kilometers (30.1 miles). I knew that, with the rule changes, I could beat that distance! I knew I could do something special. So I came up with this great idea, one that would make people say, “Look at the old Jensie! He’s always good for a surprise! Who would have seen that coming?”
First I went to Tim Vanderjeugd, the team press officer, who is a good friend of mine. He liked the idea. Then I went to Jordan Roessingh, our tech specialist at Trek. I said, “Hey, Jordan, I have this idea to go for the hour record. What do you think? How far is Fabian along on his own attempt? Does he still want to do this? Is he committed? If he’s not, then I’d like to step in.” Jordan said that we could do some testing, and immediately I knew that it was the right thing to do. What a great way to finish out my career on a high note!
But just as suddenly, I thought, “Wait a minute. If I have this idea, there must be a thousand others who are thinking the same thing!” And there’s so much work involved in such a project: finalizing the equipment, finding the best velodrome, and so on. The world hour record is a lot more than a simple 60-minute ride around a track. It’s a huge undertaking! But still I was afraid that others would have the same idea, so we needed to move fast.
At first, I was thinking that I wouldn’t be on the Tour de France team that year. That really wasn’t my plan in 2014. Instead I thought that I might do a race like the Tour of Austria, which is a good week of hard racing, and then go straight onto the track for a month of intense track racing before attempting the hour record the first weekend after the Tour de France.
Before the Dauphiné Critérium in June, I flew to Brussels, and we drove to the Roubaix velodrome in France to do some testing. I was using my road time trial bike, but it was just for preliminary testing. We tested different helmets, skin suits, and wheel setups, and we started measuring how many watts I could do at different speeds. At the end of the day, things looked really good. The numbers led us to believe that I was in good enough condition to break the hour record, and from that point on, I had the green light.
Luca Guercilena, my team manager at Trek Factory Racing, got behind the project from the very beginning. Before taking over management of the team, he had been a performance trainer. He understood immediately that the hour record was a huge thing and that it could provide great visibility for the team. He understood the potential impact for both me and the team and wanted to help turn my attempt into a real event. And I’m thankful for that, because when I first came up with the idea, I just imagined I’d do it on some track with just a couple of people watching. I thought there would just be my dad helping me out with the day-to-day things—pumping up the tires and such—as he often did in the old days. Perhaps there would also be a couple of people from the team and, for verification, a UCI official. That’s it. I honestly saw myself going for the hour record in an empty velodrome! But Luca knew better.
I was so excited by the idea that I really didn’t care if I rode the Tour de France that year or not. Tying the record for the most Tour de France participations would have been nice, but it wasn’t really much of a draw for me compared to the hour record.
I was fortunate enough to be in attendance when my old teammate and friend Chris Boardman broke the hour record at the end of his career. I’d always thought to myself, “Boy, what a great way to finish your career!” And now, suddenly, with the new rules, it was a real possibility for me, as well. Seeing Chris set the hour record was so exciting. I’ll never forget it. It was up in Manchester at the velodrome, and the crowd was totally into it. They were just captivated by him and the event. Everybody was on their feet, giving him a standing ovation for the last 20 minutes. They could sense that it was going to be close for him to get the record, and they were totally going wild in support.
In addition, the hour record is such a beautiful event! The beauty of it lies in its simplicity. It’s one bike, one rider, one gear. There are no tactics, no teammates, no bonus seconds at the finish. The hour record is just about how much pain you can handle! It’s the hour of truth.
I’ll never forget having breakfast with Chris the morning after he broke the record. He couldn’t even walk! He was just in a world of pain! But it was hugely satisfying for him. It was a great way to finish a wonderful career!
But there was still so much to figure out. Where were we going to do it? How were we going to do it? We looked at a couple of velodromes. There was the track in Berlin and the one in Roubaix, but we finally settled on the Velodrome Suisse in Grenchen, Switzerland. It was new and fast. Plus, the people there wanted to work with us and gave us a lot of time on the track in preparation. Fabian lives about 30 kilometers from Grenchen and had already done some testing there. He knew the people that worked at the velodrome, and they were happy to have the exposure that an attempt on the record would provide.
You have to have a bit of luck to have a successful career for 18 years, and the timing of the UCI’s rule changes was certainly fortuitous. I mean, if the UCI had changed the rules the year before or the year after my last year, the hour record would never have been a possibility for me. But suddenly it was, and it gave me the perfect objective to achieve and finish out my career in style. It gave me real focus to keep training and racing hard all the way up to the end. Suddenly, all the races had a new purpose, because in one way or another, they contributed to my hour record preparation. And after the beating I took in the Tour of California, it was nothing short of a dream come true! In the end, I did do the Tour de France, and it gave me a great base. Then I did the Tours of Utah and Colorado, which provided me with good altitude training before going to Grenchen for a month of intense training on the track.
I set up shop in Grenchen, a small town in western Switzerland, almost immediately upon returning to Europe from the States. There wasn’t much going on in the town itself, but the velodrome was equipped with its own rooms and a small restaurant. So, from Monday to Friday each week, the Velodrome Suisse became my home away from home.
Training consisted of two 2-hour workouts each day. Luc Meersman, the father of Belgian pro Gianni Meersman, worked on our team and was there to help out with the day-to-day activities, as was my friend Stéphane Gicquel, who was the physical therapist I had worked with the most on the team. Then there was Jordan Roessingh, the technical director with our equipment sponsor Trek and Bontrager.
We also started working with Daniel Gisiger, a onetime amateur hour record holder. He works with the Swiss Cycling Federation at the Velodrome Suisse. Quickly, he became vital to our mission, as he is a real track specialist. Everyone else involved had a lot of road racing knowledge, but we lacked the in-depth track knowledge that Daniel possessed.
And then my team manager, Luca Guercilena, came up a lot. He was really curious to study all the preparation required for an hour record attempt. He was really involved. He wrote my training plan and oversaw some of my workouts. He gave me my time splits, analyzed my pedal stroke and my position, and did lactic acid tests. All are critical to succeeding in a 60-minute all-out effort.
You have to understand that getting ready for the hour record was nothing like getting ready for the Tour de France. The workouts were much shorter and more intense. Actually, what I was doing to prepare for the hour record was closer to what a prologue specialist might do when preparing for the short time trial that often marks the beginning of the big national tours. In the morning, we did an hour-and-a-half maximum on the track, bu
t it was very, very intense. All the training was focused on maintaining an average speed of 50.5 kilometers an hour (31.4 mph), a time and pace that would allow me to beat the record, even allowing for a bike change, if I encountered a flat.
The hardest day of training was when I did eight 6-minute intervals from a standing start. I actually did that at 5 percent above the average speed, so I was hitting an average speed of about 51 kilometers an hour (31.7 mph). In addition, I barely had any recovery. I couldn’t stop afterward. I had to maintain an active recovery, which meant that I would just get off my track bike, have a drink of water, and then put my road bike on rollers and spin my legs for a couple of minutes. The staff would also do a lactic acid test, which is important in an effort like the hour record, since you have to ride just under your lactic acid level. I had to change bikes for the recovery, because the gearing of my time trial bike was just too big. Rolling around easily just wasn’t an option!
And, of course, just when I started to catch my breath, I would get the call to get ready to do another interval. After the fourth interval, I was just “buckled”! And on the fifth and sixth intervals, I really struggled to match my target time. But on the final two intervals, I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. I was pushing good watts, between 475 and 480, which was quite strong. During my hour record, I would have to average 412 watts, pedaling at 102 rpm. So knowing that, I was able to push on through with the final two intervals.
One thing we really had to focus on during training was the choice of gearing. We knew that at the end of 60 minutes, I was going to get tired, and it would be harder to push the same gear. Bogging down in the last 15 to 20 minutes was a real concern. I’m not Fabian Cancellara. He is amazing the way he can just spin a really big gear. I can’t do that. He can keep pedaling at 110 rpm for an entire hour. I can’t. So we had to find a happy medium, and for me that was pedaling right around 100 rpm.
In the beginning, I was working with a 53 x 14 chain ring on the bike. But almost immediately, we realized that I needed to go up to a bigger gear, so we put on a 54 chain ring. After working with that for a while, Daniel Gisiger looked at me and said, “You know what? You still don’t look like you’re as efficient as you could be. We should try a 55-tooth chain ring.” And that turned out to be the gear I used. In addition, I used longer, 177.5-millimeter cranks. They’re harder to spin, but they provide better leverage for pushing big gears.
Daniel made a couple of other adjustments, too. He lowered my saddle just a little bit. He also suggested that I warm up with slightly smaller gears so I could spin more. In addition, he made me train with the black foam pads around the inside of the track that prevent you from slipping down. Those are in place during the official hour record, so he insisted that I start riding with them in place. He wanted me to get used to riding as close to them as possible without touching them, obviously.
He also insisted that, at the start, I stay out of my saddle for the entire first half of a lap, until I hit the second turn. That way, I got up to speed the fastest. But doing that is really hard, because it means that you’re out of the saddle sprinting in the first turn. When you’re starting at a standstill, you hit the first turn after only 25 to 30 meters, so you’re nowhere near top speed yet. And it’s really hard to maintain your balance on the steep turns when you’re not up to speed. Heck, it took me three or four days of training before I actually managed to do a proper standing start! For the first few days, I’d get about two or three pedal strokes into the turn and then PANIC! I’d just sit down. Daniel was like, “Ah! Why did you do that?” But I just didn’t have the courage. Somebody like Bradley Wiggins—someone with real track experience—would have laughed his head off at my pathetic attempt to become a track rider. Fortunately for me, I rode on the track a lot as a young amateur. That was always an important part of the East German sports school, so I wasn’t a total novice. But it had been at least 15 years since I had been on a track, and track racing is a very different beast from road racing. To be honest, the last time I remember being on the track was in January 1998, just after signing my first contract with the GAN team. So there was a big learning curve for me to overcome.
The team really put a lot of science behind the effort. Trek dispatched a tech team to measure a lot of details. We had an apparatus on the track that would be triggered each lap when I crossed by. It measured the time and speed of the lap, and it would take a picture of me so I could study my position. It was very helpful. The hour record is all about consistency, but you’d be surprised by how much the data can vary from lap to lap. You think you’re going the same speed; at least, that’s the objective. But often there is quite a bit of variation. The guys from Trek really helped me even out my pacing to provide the most consistent performance.
In preparation for the attempt, I also had to live like a monk for an entire month. I had to be very careful about what I ate so that I didn’t gain weight, because, while the training was intense, I was riding a lot less than when I was training on the road. That was tough, because after a season of road racing, I still had the appetite of a road racer. But I had to be careful not to gain weight. My afternoon workouts were mostly recovery. Most afternoons, I rode behind a scooter so I could spin my legs and recover from the intense morning workout. I was only riding about three hours per day, a lot less than I did on the road. In my downtime, I was just trying to recover so I would hang out relaxing in my room. About the only excitement I had that month was going out to get my hair cut or geocaching.
In the last week of training, some very special equipment arrived to give me that last little aerodynamic edge. Everything, of course, had to be approved by the UCI, but still my sponsors did everything they could to provide me with the most aerodynamic equipment that would be authorized. I had a special skin suit that zipped up the back. It took two people to get me into it. I had special gloves, special socks, you name it. You know, you can’t just say, “Hey, I’m in good shape. I think I’ll go for the hour record this week!” It just doesn’t work that way. Massive organization is involved. It’s a serious enterprise. My Trek team was behind me 100 percent. We left no stone unturned. And, soon enough, I was ready for the big day!
THE HOUR RECORD
“Everything I could physically feel was in pain.”
My big day, my final day as a professional, had arrived. I couldn’t have been more excited. Everything was set. We had figured that we needed to average of 18 seconds per lap. We had even trained for a bike change in case of a puncture, which took a total of 45 seconds, a little more than the time it would take to do two laps. We calculated what time we would let the public in, because a full house increases the temperature of the velodrome and also absorbs oxygen, which I needed a lot of that night.
Finally, we set everything around doing a 50.3-kilometer (31.25-mile) performance. I figured I could do that comfortably. And, mentally, the way my brain functions, it’s better for me to know that I’m ahead of schedule rather that struggling just to stay on schedule. Some people function better with the added stress, but not me. I feed off positive motivation. And knowing that I was succeeding during the hour would be the best way to push me further.
In the morning, I did a short ride and a stretching session. Then in the afternoon, I just relaxed. Early in the evening, I went on the track and did a good warm-up ride. We let the crowd in at about 7:00 p.m., and I hit the track with Daniel Gisiger, riding behind his derny scooter. We did two 30-minute sessions. It was very relaxed, no stress. And then on the second one, we slowly built up the speed before I finally did the last two laps all-out by myself, just to prepare the body for what was coming up.
Then it was back to the locker room to towel off and get into the special skin suit and all the other special equipment.
I think it’s safe to say that I was nervous. I was really excited, but yes, also nervous. I knew that after all my specific training and testing, I should have been able to break the record, but there’s alw
ays that little bit of anxiety. After all, I knew that I wasn’t as strong as I had been five or eight years before. Plus, things can always go wrong. You can have a puncture. You can start out too fast. You can just have a bad day. Hey, you can even have two punctures. If I’d learned one thing over the years, it was that nothing was a given in bicycle racing. And let’s not forget that I was racing in front of a full house of fans. The Velodrome Suisse can seat 1,800 spectators. My parents were there. Bobby Julich was there. Jens Wichmann, one of the best men at my wedding, was there. Eurosport was broadcasting it in 75 countries to four to five million people, and more were following the stream online. So there was no place to hide. Of course, I was nervous. I felt the pressure, and I felt responsibility.
In the minutes before I started, I just tried to focus. I closed my eyes and focused on all the details that I had practiced the entire month before—my position, my breathing, staying on the black line. And while doing this, I was blocking out the crowd, the broadcast, everything. I couldn’t let anything distract me. It was only when Daniel said, “Okay, Jens, one minute,” that I opened my eyes again, took a deep breath, and stepped out onto the track and onto my bike.
As soon as the gun went off, I tried to focus my effort on getting up my cruising speed without building up too much lactic acid. Knowing how emotional I can be, I had to be careful not to go out too fast and end up in the red zone. That, too, was something we had practiced many times, and it was one of the points where I was probably most vulnerable. But after five or six minutes, I got a sense that I was on or possibly even ahead of schedule.
According to the UCI rules, I was not allowed to have a computer or any electronic apparatus that would allow me to see my progress. The only person allowed on the track was Daniel Gisiger. He had a whistle that he would blow on each lap when I should be crossing the start line. That worked out well, because despite all the people and all the cheering, I could always hear Daniel’s whistle. I needed a point of reference, but it was important for me to keep it as low-tech as possible because I didn’t have much time for analytical thought while I was out there! Mostly I just had to follow my body and monitor my breathing and pedal cadence to make sure I was in control of my effort. After a month of training, I had a pretty good idea of how my body felt at race effort.