The Climb: The Autobiography

by Chris Froome

  For these reasons, from then on I would be riding more on my own. It wasn’t a hardship but I did miss the company of Matt, and the fun that I used to have back in the highlands above Mai-a-Ihii with Kinjah and the crew. Robbie and I developed a training system that began to make me feel stronger and lighter. I yearned to get better on the terms of a different continent; I wanted to be a rider of long epic races, not the flat short stories that we were enjoying in South Africa. I needed to be good after 200 kilometres; not explosive after that distance like a sprinter, but strong and powerful enough to finish in the main group. I needed bike habits like they had in Europe.

  It became an obsession to me. I began doing these crazy rides. I would push the bike out the door, ride hard and try to maintain the same power output until I got back six hours later.

  That was the sort of perversion that limited my choice of training partners, even if I’d wanted one. I wasn’t able to train in a group any more, doing their five- or six-hour base training rides, coasting down hills and resting for enjoyable, but leisurely, coffee stops. I still had to ride the same kind of distances but at a pace that was consistent (and also progressively more uncomfortable) from start to finish. It obsessed me to the extent that I wouldn’t even stop for water, thinking that if I stopped to fill up my bottles at a petrol station it would give my body time to recover. I wanted to train my body to recover and survive without breaking pace.

  I attached a time-trial bottle cage underneath my saddle so that I could have two extra bottles stashed there. I had a small cooler bag attached to the front of my bike and I carried bottles in there too. I needed to have at least one bottle an hour, so I would carry up to six bottles on the bike at once. I would also take food with me and eat regularly while I was riding – but I would avoid having breakfast.

  I managed to get a second-hand power meter, which became a really useful tool to train with. Robbie had done extensive reading about training according to power and power-to-weight ratios. I fed him my stats and we worked out what kind of numbers I should be aiming to maintain right through the five- or six-hour rides. We aimed for a power output of about 240 watts. For a teenager that’s a bit grippy. Even years later at Team Sky that would be an effort. I would undertake those sessions three times a week and then on other rides in between I would take it easier or do shorter, sharper and more intense sessions. Some days I would do more climbing. Hills were no hardship. With the long sessions I would try to map out mostly flat courses for myself because it was easier to keep the power sustained. On a very lumpy course I would be pedalling like mad downhill to try to keep the power up, and then really relaxing on the uphill because the climb was hard already.

  There I would be, somewhere outside the turmoil of Johannesburg, like a character from a comic strip streaking around the Gauteng province, with my legs in hell and my head in the clouds. The first ninety minutes would be quite bearable. After that the pain would start gnawing. My legs would put forward their case for a little freewheeling time on any slight downhill, just a small window to allow them to get a bit more sugar in the system. The brain had to win those arguments and keep the show rolling. Pushing and pushing.

  By the end of the six hours the pain was a screaming presence. The last thirty minutes were the worst temptation but the best triumph. I had been doing this for five and a half hours. Maybe I could cruise home? Just take it down a notch? I had done the work and could feel the pain. Surely I had earned my parole? But my brain had to keep my body honest. The compartment that felt pleasure from suffering had to be the casting influence. Just do the last half-hour. Don’t surrender having done so much. Then, miraculously, when I was so near the end, my body tripped the adrenaline switch and I had the strength for one last effort. Faster, faster, and no pain any more.

  I look back at it now and I can see the madness, but I like that. It was necessary. It was purging and transformative. And in terms of my fundamental attitude to training, not much has changed.

  For most of those rides I would head out from Midrand where I was staying with Noz and Jen. I had matriculated from St John’s by this time, taking a sabbatical before university, and real life. I would hit the tarmac heading east. I would flash past stop signs where I should have been braking, or at least taking the precaution of glancing at the traffic. But I would go straight through, feeling bulletproof. The need to keep the power going would override all other considerations. I pored over maps like an ancient cartographer, devising routes full of left turns. Faced with an unhelpful red light, I could turn left without having to cross traffic. There was a triangular course that I devised which was perfect. All left turns and then straight back; east and west were the two ways that I would go. Left. Left. Left. Simple navigation.

  They were big loads at that age but endurance is the winning hand. Robbie and I spoke about the science, and how we could help the circulation needed for the removal of toxins from my legs. Our theory was that the body had to develop an oxygen delivery system which would be more dynamic and fluid.

  If we had only known it, this was precisely the work I would be doing at Team Sky years later. Tim Kerrison, the future Team Sky Head of Performance, and resident science boffin, would give a name to these rides: SAP rides, or SAP intervals. Sustained Aerobic Power. They are basically low-carb rides where we hit the road without having eaten breakfast but then start feeding within the first hour. We would be teaching the body to burn more fat as fuel, and we would email Tim with our power stats when we were done.

  I look back in wonder now. The rides I was doing with Robbie were exactly the same. We didn’t have a name for them, and we didn’t even fully realize why we were doing it, but we knew it worked because I had responded well to it. We knew it was good before we knew what exactly it was.

  Kinjah was an independent spirit. He taught me many things but there was one trait above all that he always shared, one standpoint. It was to never put up your hands and surrender to the real world. You might be outgunned and outnumbered but you never give up. Fight for the dream.

  When I finished at St John’s I knew that if surrender had to happen, it could wait. I would have to run out of road and have my back to a wall somewhere. University agreed to hang on for a year, but no more than that. I enrolled to study Economics at the University of Johannesburg. A couple of years on the lower slopes of academic life wouldn’t kill me. I planned to spend as much time as possible tutoring myself (or torturing myself) in the saddle. With some balance, an academic degree could be earned without extinguishing the dream of becoming a professional cyclist.

  To minimize the risk of abduction by an accountancy firm, I let my hair grow long and lank, wore bangles, dressed in hemp and kikoys and drove around in a rickety white VW Golf car with tinted silver windows. It was the sort of car that only a cyclist could love.

  I was a student of cycling in one very specific and focused sense: I studied my own cycling and the ways to get better and stronger. With Robbie and with Kinjah I underwent the forensic analysis of every statistic and every ride. That was all. I wanted to be a professional rider in Europe, but I knew virtually nothing about what went on there, or how riders filled the eleven months when they weren’t riding up and down France in the Tour.

  I had started to enter more local races in Kenya and was granted a racing licence from the Kenyan Cycling Federation, whom Kinjah had introduced me to at the time. He was still on talking terms with the Federation back then, but I knew enough already from him about the antic failings of the organization, and how there would be no rope ladder thrown down to me by the men in blazers. The powers that be seemed very resistant to the notion that they should nurture the dreams of the country’s best cyclists with funds and facilities.

  I was also racing in South Africa. In the year I turned twenty I did twenty races for our Hi-Q Supercycling Academy, starting with the Berge en Dale Classic in Roodepoort, Johannesburg, in January 2005. From the start my cycling was decent but not awe-inspiring. I finished
in the top half of the field after 105 kilometres of the Berge en Dale Classic. The pattern was set. In these races, where the distances were modest and the roads were flat, nobody was hurting. My party trick was my ability to suffer the longest when the going got tough, and these races weren’t made for that.

  Still, that year brought my first taste of the big time. In late August we travelled to Mauritius to compete in the Tour de Maurice. In the scheme of the cycling universe this wasn’t a particularly important race. Nobody would gasp if they saw it on your list of achievements. But for me it was a milestone, my first time cycling overseas.

  The Tour had a few modest riders who entered and a few small hills. On day two we raced to Curepipe. Not an especially long day but the road rose maybe 2,000 feet towards the extinct volcano of Trou aux Cerfs. It was enough for me, and I broke away from the main pack on the climb.

  I won the stage.

  That small glory was the stuff of short paragraphs on back pages, a minor entry in the record books. It was no game-changer but it encouraged me to believe that I could get into the game. Whatever I was doing, it was working.

  When 2005 flipped over into 2006 the teenage years were gone and I had a modest achievement under my belt. I didn’t know where the door to European racing was, but I was determined to continue fumbling about for it. Maybe 2006 would be even bigger.

  It turned out to be a year in three acts.

  All comedies.

  7

  2006 Act I: The Tour of Egypt

  WHY DO YOU HATE US MR JULIUS MWANGI?

  Despite the very publicized win at the selections to the 9th All African Games, the Mr Julius Mwangi alias ‘Kamaliza’ denied the Simbaz yet another chance to represent the country. David Kinjah, Davidson Kamau and Anthony Mutie who finished 1, 2, 3, respectively were termed as ‘banned’. Kamaliza, as he is well known, said that he has banned them for misconduct, upon further investigations and meetings with the Kenya National Sports Council, he cannot give satisfactory evidence and reasons for this …

  Kenyan cycling blog

  Nairobi

  At one time or another, each of us Safari Simbaz had fallen asleep in Kinjah’s hut with the embers of conversation illuminating a common dream. It was a dream of riding our bikes in a tour in a foreign place, the world opening up to us in the way Kinjah had described when he had told us of his Italian days racing in Europe. In early February 2006, the dream began to take shape, or so we thought.

  A gang of seven Safari Simbaz, including myself and Kinjah, cycled into Nairobi to the Egyptian embassy on Kingara Road. Standing outside in our cycling gear, we looked like athletic harlequins among the sensible diplomatic suits filing past. We were waiting on Julius Mwangi of the Kenyan Cycling Federation to honour us with his presence, and to sign the forms which would allow us to represent Kenya at the forthcoming Tour of Egypt. It was my first time representing the country as a professional rider, but it was an adventure for all of us and the first time we had been on tour together as the Safari Simbaz.

  Earlier that day, we had briefly been allowed inside the embassy, only to be sent back outside again to have our visa photos taken elsewhere. This happened a number of times – back in, and then out again. Soon the whole day had passed sitting on the pavement, a day which we could have spent riding. This was far from ideal training preparation for the biggest race of our lives.

  Most federations would take responsibility for the visa requirements of their national cycling team as a matter of course. The Kenyan Cycling Federation was different though. Mwangi, the chief poobah, was known everywhere as Kamaliza, which means finisher or someone who ends things. He ran a security firm of the same name, so I assumed the name didn’t offend him. Nor did it entirely misrepresent his contribution.

  From South Africa I had been sending my race results to his offices for some time. If Kamaliza or his cronies were impressed with me they had done a very fine job of disguising it. I wasn’t sure that they knew I existed until Kinjah twisted their arms and got me included on the team for this trip to Egypt.

  That is, if we ever got to Egypt. The embassy was closing in an hour and there was still no sign of our man. If we missed the day’s deadline, we certainly wouldn’t be racing past any pyramids. Finally, cool as a breeze, Mr Mwangi turned up at the last possible moment. He signed the forms. He had to really. He had put himself in charge of the entire trip. No team. No trip. He signed for all seven of us. Good of him to give us some of his time.

  Cairo

  A few days later we stepped out of Cairo airport. We decided that we needed a team photo to mark the momentous occasion. Gathering outside the terminal in a line, with our trollies and bikes held proudly in front of us, Julius Mwangi and the seven-man cycling team of Kenya. Happy as clams. I stood out, of course, like a sore, white thumb. We were all grinning and thrilled. It had been chaos getting here. It would most likely be chaos staying here. But for that moment, all was good with the world. Cheese.

  All seven of us were Kinjah men from Mai-a-Ihii. Kamau was here. At that time he was working in a slaughterhouse in Kiserian. He got into cycling having ridden a boda boda, a bicycle taxi, in Nairobi for a while. He had great promise. Mischievous Njana was here too, and Michael.

  I had transported my bike in a black, purpose-made bike case, which I had borrowed from a friend in South Africa. My fellow Safari Simbaz were fascinated by this padded container and had never seen one before. Rather than feeling proud of my expensive piece of kit, I suddenly felt like the white swell out among the people. ‘What a mzungu! A case for his bike.’ I knew this would take a while for me to live down and that I would be mercilessly teased; everyone else had covered their bikes in clear plastic wrapping and hoped for the best.

  The good news was that we had arrived in one piece, which logistically was no small triumph. Nobody had missed the flight, our visas were stamped, and miraculously all of our bikes had arrived with us (we had all had visions of them ending up in Frankfurt or some other place halfway around the world). On the other side of the balance sheet, there were some less comforting things to consider. Julius Mwangi was our team manager, accompanied by a trinity of know-nothing bluffers from the Federation who would make up the rest of our support unit: a soigneur, a mechanic and a man with no designated task but whose presumed ‘versatility’ meant that he could fill in for any of the other know-nothings, without us riders noticing. Between the four of them they would need a long semester of tutoring just to learn how to change a back wheel. Not that they would be interested in that type of educational opportunity.

  We suspected we knew the real reason why the Tour of Egypt had been graced with our presence. Coincidence or not, the peloton was mainly formed of African teams, representing the various nations or constituencies who would be present in the next elections for the African Cycling Federation. An invite here, we thought, assumed a vote in return for the Egyptian Federation. Elsewhere, there were two or three lower-echelon European teams in the race, including the Poles and the Slovenians, as well as a few other countries who were not known for their cycling prowess. The South African national team were the favourites by far.

  Still, when we arrived at the accommodation the night before the race, we were smiling like lottery winners, raring to go for the biggest ride of our lives. The Tour of Egypt seemed to be reasonably well organized and there were elements that we associated with premier bike racing. There was a race book. There were clearly planned stages with a start and finish banner. A convoy of cars would follow the race. Somewhere in that convoy would be our support car containing our top-level support team. How excited we were just to be there.

  We were given the Kenya national team kit: one pair of shorts and one shirt. One set of kit for the entire tour meant washing our own kit every evening. Washing it in the sink or shower in the undrinkable water, wrapping it up in towels and jumping on it, trying to force the moisture out, then hanging it up to dry for the next day. Despite these relative shortcomings, it sti
ll felt like we had arrived.

  The Race

  The first stage took us out and around the majestic deserts of Cairo. It was a short prologue, an individual time trial of 8 kilometres, to determine who would wear the leader’s jersey. We had no issues. I was the only rider in the team with a time-trial bike and I managed a respectable 5th on the day.

  For the next three stages over consecutive days the winds were a nuisance, blowing fiercely across the desert. The stages were mostly flat, which was disappointing for me, but at various points the crosswinds buffeted us, which made the racing tougher. Kamau had a bad crash when he was blown off course on to the side of the road on one of the few uphills. The bike canted him straight into a gutter. He lost minutes of time to the peloton, which meant there was no way back for him in his aim to finish highly in the final standings. In terms of competitiveness and the Safari Simbaz, it was just Kinjah and I who were left to compete for the General Classification for the second half of the tour. The rest of the guys were hanging in there, but looking up to us to produce the sort of result that we could brag about back in Kenya on our return. Kinjah and I were teasing each other in a master vs pupil sort of way.

  The fourth day was a very long flat stage from one Egyptian town to another with mainly desert in between. Maybe 230 kilometres, the most exciting thing we would see all day were sand dunes. Otherwise it was just plain sand without the dunes.

  Less than halfway through we were all barely surviving and trying to make the most of it. But it was harder than it needed to be. Unlike other teams, we spent much of our time, and precious energy, filling up our own water bottles. We each had two bottles for the race, and when we emptied them we had to drop back to the team car and pass them through the window to be replenished. Riders from other countries, meanwhile, equipped with an unlimited supply in the team’s travelling cool box, would cavalierly throw away their bottles as soon as they had finished them.