by David Millar
The break after Roubaix had done me good. I was fully motivated for what was potentially the last big training block of my cycling career. I’d planned since the winter months to go on an altitude training camp the first three weeks of May, to set me up for the summer’s racing. My planning involved asking the team a few times if they could organise something, which, as usual in the off-season, had seemed like a fairly simple thing to do and one which everybody backed as a good idea. At that point there was even talk of us having apartments permanently rented in Tenerife to allow riders to come and go as they pleased.
But, as often happens, this didn’t come to pass. What had seemed like a fairly simple logistical plan became a total cluster-fuck. There was no accommodation available in Tenerife, and no support staff who could have come even if there had been availability. With this plan A down the pan I didn’t exactly try hard to find a plan B. I’d only been on a handful of altitude training camps in my whole career, none of which had done me any particular good, so after reminding myself of this fact I decided I could train sufficiently at home. This, on the other hand, had been something I had done the majority of my career.
The thing is, for the majority of my career I hadn’t been the father of two small children, and neither had I been in my final year of racing. For some, those elements alone would have been motivation enough; for me, I felt more relaxed than ever. I trained well the next three weeks, but never really found myself in that totally committed state of mind where every part of my life revolved around training, eating and sleeping. I enjoyed being at home and being able to contribute to Nicole’s household and life. Well, I say ‘contribute’. I was probably still a massive burden, but I liked to think I was helping.
My training workload was huge, but what I was missing was the ability to hurt myself. I’d spoken to a few of the other older guys in the peloton, and it seems this is the first thing we all lose. I’d felt the same in the recent winter, but I’d always been like that in the off-season, so hadn’t overanalysed it. Now was the time of the year when I needed to be outside my comfort zone, pushing myself to levels that were more akin to racing than training.
I simply lacked the necessary willpower. I was enjoying riding around Catalunya far too much. For the first time in my life I was paying more attention to the countryside than my power output. I’d become a cyclo-tourist, which is a wonderful thing. Unless you’re paid to race a bicycle, that is. I’d embraced this attitude so much I even entered myself into a local cyclo-sportif with Nicole and my teammate and training buddy Lachlan Morton. I reckoned it was easier than having to actually think about where I was going or how hard I had to go. Nicole did the short version while Lachy and I did the long version, which was surprisingly hard – unlike everybody else at the front, Lachy and I were stopping at every feed station and having a drink and grabbing a bite to eat then catching them back up. This was probably massively annoying to everybody else, but it made for a good day out training for the two of us. We made sure we didn’t win – that wouldn’t have been cool.
* * *
May 11 Got a text saying ‘just cruising’ and ‘we’re stopping at all the feed zones!’ Cheeky buggers got 4th and 5th!
* * *
I didn’t fight it. I figured as long as I got the kilometres in and kept my weight down then I could use my next two stage races as fine-tuning events that would get me up to speed for the Tour de France. I’d done this many times in the past. It wasn’t as if it was a new method for me.
Bavaria
The first of these stage races was Bayern Rundfahrt (aka Tour of Bavaria). Andreas Klier speaks of this race in the same way others would of Shangri-La. Something happens to Andreas when he arrives in Bavaria, or even talks about Bayern Rundfahrt. He lights up like the Munich Christmas Market. He’s done it eighteen times and never won a stage. He is terribly proud of this fact – it probably has something to do with him having been on holiday since the Classics and the fact that it’s considered a legal requirement to drink Weissbier in Bavaria (he would always be reminding us that workers were permitted to drink a litre of Weissbier at work. I don’t know if this was true or not, but we were easily convinced). Andreas would vehemently deny that Weissbier ever compromised his performance – he has always been the most professional of bike riders when it comes to doing what’s expected of him in a race, but he does have some bloody good stories of nocturnal escapades from his youth.
It is often the way with these smaller stage races: many of us have done them for years, so we keep returning because we’ve grown attached to them. The familiarity is a comfort. We know the roads, and often stay in the same hotels. There are stories and shared memories. They’re like a home away from home, but not many of us can claim to have done the same race eighteen times.
It was because of this love affair that I was even going there. I’d promised Andreas that in my last year I would come and compete in his ‘home’ race. This meant more to him than anything else, and he’d convinced himself I was going to win the overall and we were going to rule like Bavarian kings of old. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I would be using it as a training exercise. I think he knew, but even he didn’t let himself acknowledge it.
I’d convinced myself we’d be enjoying a Sound of Music-like experience, only instead of singing and evading Nazis there’d be bike racing and Weissbier. We’d have relaxed racing on beautiful German roads, hillside chalet hotels with beer gardens staffed with pretty German barmaids in traditional dresses, and men with big moustaches in lederhosen, slapping each other. Every day would be framed by a crisp blue sky, and we’d constantly be surrounded by rolling meadows speckled with blossoming flowers.
So I was a little disappointed when I got off the bus after the long drive from the airport to find myself in the pissing rain, standing in a miserable car park next to a supermarket, above which was our hotel. Julie Andrews would not have been impressed.
I eventually found my room. Our base for the night resembled an office tower block that had been converted into a hotel, only without imagination or money. My room just about accommodated my suitcase and me. I collapsed on my bed and rued the day I’d agreed to this.
A couple of hours later Andreas came knocking at the door having returned from the pre-race directeurs’ meeting, where he’d been given the race numbers and race books. He entered quietly and sat at the end of my bed and put his head carefully in one hand, the other holding all the documentation that he was going from room to room handing out. He embodied the Klier version of The Thinker. ‘I am sorry, David. We are in fucking East Germany.’ He lifted his head and looked at me, eye to eye, serious, ‘Really, we are. This is not Bavaria. There is no bar, not even a restaurant in this stupid hotel! I’m ashamed.’
He stood up and squeezed by my suitcase and my bed to get to the window, where he looked out through the rain-splashed glass at the grey town ahead and the supermarket car park below. ‘I can’t even see Bavaria through this shit.’
This is classic Andreas – he heads off my complaint by essentially pre-empting everything I want to say. So instead of me ranting about what a shithole we’re in, I find myself consoling him. ‘Ah, it’s OK, Andreas, this is probably the worst of it. We must be in better hotels in the next few days?’ I back that up with a pleading, ‘Right?’
He sits back down. ‘Yes, you’re right. In fact in three days we have a very good hotel. This I am sure of. Tomorrow we ride south-west all day, then it will be better.’
The only good thing I could find to think about the race was the fact that they’d given us permission to film, just as we’d done at Tirreno, so I was back carrying cameras and a microphone, with Martin and Patrice as my guardian angel motorbike. Finlay was praying I’d do something so that he could catch an exploit on film. I just couldn’t do it, though. I couldn’t bring myself to hurt myself getting in a break. I no longer had the crazy switch that allowed me to go and rip a race to pieces for the sake of it. My motivation
levels weren’t helped by the fact that it rained relentlessly the first three days. I was decidedly stuck in a training mentality, not wanting to do more than I had to, my grand plan being to get through Bayern with minimal damage and then train immediately off the back of it leading into the next race, Critérium du Dauphiné, effectively giving myself a three-week block, almost like a Grand Tour simulation. I could then rest properly after Dauphiné and be able to do the fine-tuning intensive work needed in the build-up to the National Championships, my final race before the Tour de France. It was a way of preparing I’d used many times before in my career.
The bad weather left its mark and the final day I didn’t feel 100 per cent so I pulled out on the finishing circuit so as to minimise the risk of falling properly ill, which at this point in the year I couldn’t afford, especially with my plan to give myself limited recovery time in the days following. I would have loved to have won something for Andreas, to have been able to celebrate with him. I wasn’t able, though. I knew Andreas was fine with that, he understood; we’d become friends more than colleagues, we had many years in the future to visit Bavaria, and on our own terms. I returned home mentally ready for a good week of training pre-Dauphiné.
Early Summer in Catalunya
I woke up at home, the morning after Bavaria, with not even the slightest hint of the cold I’d felt coming on the day before. I felt incredible, which didn’t make much sense, but I wasn’t going to argue with it. After a couple of days’ recovery I went full-beast-mode training with Lachy.
Lachy’s one of those rare genetic freaks. He’s a natural climber, a thoroughbred who already has massive endurance capabilities at a very young age. His freakishness doesn’t stop there: he’s about as nonconformist as anybody I know, more akin to an out-there artist than an elite athlete.
His training helmet is covered in dinosaur stickers and sharpie graffiti, his hair is from the Bob Dylan school of stylin’, and he has a moustache like a Mexican drug dealer, while his tattoos look like dares. I enjoy hanging out with him; we train hard, and laugh a lot.
We decide it’s time for us to be proper science monkeys, and plan out our week and make up what we think are Team Sky interval sessions. We really do just make them up (well, with my eighteen years of training experience) and tell ourselves that, for sure, this is what they do. We even name the ride on our training programmes ‘Sky Shit’. This involves lots of intervals on climbs. We are both on our hands and knees by the end of each session. We are effectively racing each other, and using the intervals as an excuse to do so.
I’m not sure why we get on so well. An equal amount of disdain for normality, I’m guessing, and a shared love of disruption. I keep this bent under wraps most of the time; Lachy might just as well walk around wearing a sandwich board saying ‘YOLO’. We make a fairly incongruous double act.
During this week Nicole has been planning her Big Camper Adventure. She’d always said that before I retired she wanted to hire a camper and take the boys to follow me at a race. Up until the previous year I’d been convinced I’d keep racing until I was thirty-nine or forty, so it had always been something for the future – a lovely idea with time to plan. My decision to stop racing this year means it is now or never. A lesser woman would have let it go – after all, Archibald is two and a half and Harvey has only just turned one. The two of them together are like a chaos machine. Then there is the small detail of Nicole never having been in a camper van, let alone driven one. Of course, she treats this as just that: a small detail. My mum, Avril, decided this was a great idea and joined in on the craziness. The race chosen was the Dauphiné, as it was the one that I thought would be most accommodating of such an adventure.
* * *
Well that is pretty cool and rather cute!
* * *
How to Race a Prologue
In June there are two stage races that are treated as the final Tour preparation races: the Tour de Suisse and Dauphiné. The majority of aspiring Tour de France winners will do one or the other. Tour de Suisse starts a few days later than its French counterpart. The fundamental difference between the two is their nationality. Both have very similar profiles, only one is clockwork, the other a little romantic. The Critérium du Daupiné is like a mini Tour de France. It has all the ingredients – a prologue, bunch sprints, big mountains, a time trial, it’s in France – only instead of three weeks it’s eight days. Often the Dauphiné will even replicate one of the big Alpine mountain stages that will take place in the Tour de France a few weeks later, and race along some of the same roads. For this reason it’s considered one of the most important preparation races for la Grande Boucle. The Dauphiné is one of the first races of the year where the weather is almost guaranteed to be hot and sunny, although that doesn’t mean I haven’t experienced rain – and even snow during certain editions; even in June the Alps can’t be trusted completely to behave when it comes to the weather.
This year the heat is a bit much, rarely dropping below thirty degrees. The prologue is the first day, except this is a ten-kilometre time trial – a prologue is essentially a time trial below eight kilometres in length, another quirky cycling nuance that few grasp. I used to find them so easy, placing outside the podium was a disappointment when I was younger; these days I dream of finishing inside the top ten. Now that I’m an old pro I appreciate prologues are generally a young man’s game – they’re the shortest races we do, and for that reason the most intense. And there’s a certain art to racing them, because although they’re short they’re still an aerobic effort. Many make the mistake of thinking that because they’re a few minutes long they can sprint them. In theory you only make that mistake once or twice, yet some choose to make a career out of going too hard from the start.
Unlike time trials, which can be anywhere from a ten- to a ninety-minute effort, a prologue rarely lasts longer than nine minutes. Starting fast in a prologue is imperative – there’s no riding into it and finding your rhythm, as is more the norm in a time trial; the old adage of start fast, accelerate in the middle and sprint to the finish is actually appropriate in a prologue. Technical mistakes can’t be made because the results at the finish are usually decided by the tiniest of margins. Detailed pre-race recon can often make the difference between winning and losing. I’ve won prologues in the past by less than one second, and I could have told you immediately after the finish where I gained that second because I will have practised one corner a dozen times in training beforehand knowing that was where it could be won.
I still carry my old habits of detailed recon, and I try to do the same protocol for every prologue or time-trial day:
07:30 Wake up
08:00 Light breakfast: fruit, yoghurt, croissant and coffee
09:00 Course recon if possible, or forty-five minutes on the home trainer, at 300–350 watts. Drink at least two bottles if on the home trainer, up to three or four if it’s over thirty degrees
11:00 Lie in bed, listen to music, read the map and visualise the course – make notes in accordance with recon knowledge from previous day or the morning
12:30 Lunch: pasta, omelette and bread and Nutella as a little treat. I always amaze myself with how much I can eat at this meal, and I always make sure I eat exactly three hours before my start, no matter whether it is a four-kilometre prologue or a sixty-kilometre time trial
13:00 Leave for the race in team car. Listen to music, study my annotated course map
13:30 Arrive at start, drop bag off at team bus, get a ride in the following car of the next rider from the team to start. Each prologue or time trial will set riders off at one- to two-minute intervals, meaning there are hours between the first and last starters. I spent much of my career being in the final wave, where the favourites are all placed to start. Following in a team car allows me to see the course now that it’s closed and fully cordoned off. This can often change things compared to when it was still an open road, as seen during the recon
14:00 Return to bus and c
hill out, listen to music, watch the race on TV, get feedback from teammates as they each finish in turn and return to the bus. The wind would be the only thing I needed to know, there’s not much else they can tell me as I tended to already have my pacing strategy in place
14:30 An hour before my start I begin the ritual of getting kitted up and having my number pinned on. I always liked giving myself ten to fifteen minutes for this
14:45 Leave the bus and begin warm-up on my spare road bike which waits outside on the home trainer. I always warm up on my road bike rather than my time-trial bike, simply because my position is so extreme on the time-trial bike that I can’t hold it unless I’m riding at full time-trial pace, which tenses my body enough to distribute my weight across all my contact points. I do the first five minutes easy, then fifteen minutes at 300–350 watts, then a four-minute-threshold effort, which is between 400–450 watts. One minute’s recovery, then two ten-second sprints. I do the last five minutes just spinning my legs at 250–300 watts. That totals about thirty-five minutes. It’s only in the last five years that I’ve done such a regimented warm-up; when I was younger I would hop on the home trainer, and if I felt amazing I’d do five minutes then get off and wait in the bus till I had to leave for the start, no warm-up required. It used to blow people’s minds. It blows my mind now, looking back
15:20 Ten minutes before the start I get off the static trainer, step inside the bus, mop myself down with a towel, take a caffeinated energy gel, have a piss, do a final radio check, put my helmet on and leave for the start
I can vividly remember what it used to feel like when I was at my best. Everything felt controlled. I would spend much of the first half of a prologue trying to hold myself back, spinning a high cadence, awaiting the inevitable accumulation of workload that I knew would come. That’s essentially the rule of riding a good prologue: never chase it, let it come to you. When we roll off the start ramp our muscles are fresh and fully loaded and we’re pumped with adrenalin. That can only get us so far, so we have to anticipate that our initial sensations bear no resemblance to the reality. Even the most experienced elite athletes can fall into this trap. The perception of their effort is totally wrong due to their level of excitement and feeling of strength.