L'Etape du Tour Part Three - Training for L’Etape du Tour

By Doug Hurst
douglasmhurst@aol.com

ALERT! Please note that the date for the 2003 L’Etape du Tour has changed from July 20, 2003 to July 16, 2003. If you’ve already booked your vacation, you may need to change plans a bit. If you’re using the same touring company I used and described in Part II of this series (Graham Baxter Sporting Tours), check in at their web site and get the latest information.

I received an e-mail from a reader who did the Etape in 2002 who passed along a big piece of advice. If you’re going to try to do the Etape on your own, that is, without a touring company, try to get accommodations as close to the start as you possibly can. For this year’s Etape, I would still recommend Lourdes. It is an absolute mecca for the Pyrenees and it’s not all that far from Pau.

Yes! Jenny Longo, many times women’s Tour de France and Olympic champion, rode it last year and had the best time in the women’s category. I’m only guessing, but I’d say a 100 or so of the 7,000+ were women. Many wives go on the tour with their husbands… with and without bikes. If they don’t ride the Etape, they often ride on the other days of the trip. From Lourdes, the trips up to Tarbes and down to Luz St Sauveur are relatively flat. At least you can say you rode "among" the Pyrenees as they swell up all around you when you ride the valleys.

So, it’s time to do this year’s (2002) Etape. I leave my hotel and walk to the tour departure point at the Apollo Theatre in central London. I thought I might be the first one there, but lo and behold, there’s this other American sitting on the steps with a bunch of gear and what looked to be a bike bag. Looking at him it was a bit hard for me to believe he was going on the tour. I introduced myself. I don’t want to use his name or say exactly where he was from, but it was the second largest state in the U.S. and a certain four time Tour de France champion hails from there.

He confirmed that yes he was there to pick up the Graham Baxter tour bus and I thought Uh! Oh! Actually, he was built a lot like Lance. I mean he had arms, legs… basically all the same body parts. He had the twang in his voice and the swagger in his mien. The big problem, which was immediately and visually evident, was that he’d had way too many Shiner Bock beers as part of his training regimen. Very likeable though.

So we leave London and arrive at our main destination in France. The first morning we’re getting ready for the training/registration ride from Motiers to Aime and this guy shows up in his USPS team kit, beautiful TREK 5900 and his beer gut. The bike is full Dura Ace with perfectly stock minimum gearing of 39/23.

Of course, the Brits were all too polite to say a thing and I have sort of an inward personality until I really get to know someone so I didn’t say anything. He admits to all that he hasn’t climbed a hill more than about half a mile long back there in the second largest state in the U.S. but he’s just sure he can gut it out.

So, comes the day of the Etape, and he makes it to the black dot about halfway up the first col before abandoning. What a waste I think!

And so I thought, if he’d had someone to tell him exactly what he was getting himself in for, he probably would have done what was necessary to have completed the ride.

In preparing to do the Etape, you can only start where you are. On July 21, 2000, I was sitting in my cubicle at America Online, Inc (AOL) listening over the internet as premiere sports announcers Phil Leggitt and Paul Sherwen called the last individual time-trail of the 2000 Tour de France (Tour). Lance Armstrong won the stage from Fribourg-en-Brisgau to Mulhouse that day on his way to winning the Tour overall that year. At that time, I had heard about Lance's bout with testicular cancer, but had no idea until I did a good bit of research just how dramatic his battle for life had been. I didn’t have anything as dramatic as cancer, but I was a physical wreck. I weighed 225 pounds and hadn't been on my own bike since late 1984. Lance's story became an inspiration to me. I had no idea what L’Etape du Tour was at that point either.

I went home that day and pulled my beautiful old, circa 1983, Campy equipped Colnago Super down from its hooks in the ceiling of the garage. A quick inspection indicated all it needed was a good dusting and it would be ready to ride. Unfortunately it audibly groaned when I put my full weight on the Brooks Professional Team saddle. Time to diet.

Fortunately for me, my wife had been on the Atkins diet for a couple of months and was looking really trim. Two months later, without riding the bike, I was down to a svelte 195 myself. Not only that, I went in for a physical prior to setting out on my cycling comeback and found that my cholesterol was lower than it had been in the last 10 years. I was cleared to ride and took the bike out the very next day.

First day, ten miles. Five out and five back on the Washington & Old Dominion trail and I was toast. My pulse was pounding and my skin was beet red. I felt great, but I realized it was going to be some time before I could call myself a "roadie" again.

I bought Joel Friel’s Training Bible. I tore out and reproduced that page in the back where you can record your weekly training history. I followed it religiously for about a month… then threw it away. Look, it’s a great book but it seems to me that Joel forgot that most people have real jobs and families to work in there also.

The miles started piling up though. I was able to ride almost every day over my lunch period. I had enough years at AOL that I could go out for an hour and a half or two hours as long as I got my work done. And the weight kept coming off. I was at 185 in about another month. As a reward for the weight loss, I promised myself a new Colnago Master if I made 180. That happened in November and I got the new Colnago in December. It was also in December that I came across an advertisement in the back of Bicycling Magazine for Graham Baxter Sporting Tours.

Important Point #1: You need to be as light as possible and still be healthy about it.

The Graham Baxter Sporting Tours ad was talking about an event associated with the Tour called L'Etape du Tour (Etape). It was a very provocative ad. You start in England, travel to France and you actually get to ride a stage of the Tour. Not only that, it's a mountain stage and it traverses some of the most storied mountain passes in Tour history. I immediately went to their web site, www.sportingtours.co.uk

Most of what I read on the Graham Baxter web site I’ve already passed on to you in the previous article in this series. Obviously, I was hooked on doing the Etape. I talked to my wife about it. She was... uh... tepid at best but at least she didn't cry or go into a rage. So, I took that for agreement and started my quest.

First thing I did was print out and cut the profile for the stage and hang it in my cube at work. This way I could see it everyday and keep the challenge fresh in my mind. It was formidable. The stage, stage 14, was 141 km in length with two category 4 climbs, one category 3 climb, one category 1 climb and two hors (harder than category 1) category climbs. The most famous climb was to be the granddaddy of them all, the Col du Tourmalet at 17 km, an average gradient of 7.4% and an altitude of 2115 meters (6,938 feet). For the sake of the uneducated, or those not good with numbers, this is a very difficult climb. Also, the average gradient of 7.4% is deceiving. The first 6 km average only 4.5%. The last 11 km average over 9%. This last fact would cause me great alarm because I didn't learn about the gradient being uneven until about a week before I was to leave. And so how was I to train for this climbing?

Northern Virginia has a lot of rolling hills. It also has some very steep gradients on some of the back roads, but nothing that is consistently uphill for 17km. The answer for me turned out to be Skyline Drive in the Shenandoah National Park. Up to this point, I guess we're at about April now, I had not allowed my training to affect my family life much. I trained on my lunch hour and did my long rides very early on Saturday mornings on the Marine base down at Quantico. My family sleeps late on Saturdays and by starting while it was still dark, I was usually back just as they were getting up. As the weather got warmer, I was also riding to work at AOL near Dulles Airport that is about a 56 mile round-trip from my home in Springfield. But I still needed the time doing long climbs so I went to my boss. We worked out a deal where I would work 10 hours a day and take Fridays off to go out to ride Skyline Drive.

The ritual became, drive to the Dickey Ridge Visitors Center five miles into the Shenandoah National Park from the Front Royal, Virginia, entrance station. This was my base of operation. The first couple of trips, I just rode back down to the entrance and climbed the first six miles back to Dickey Ridge and a bit beyond. This was all climbing and although I never measured it, I estimated it to be at gradients between 5% and 7%. In later trips I went on from Dickey Ridge to mile marker 30 or so and back. I was really feeling confident now that I could do this, but again, I had no idea how much difference there would be between the 5-7% grades I was doing in Virginia versus the up to 10% grades I'd have to do in France. July was fast approaching. I had a 39/26 as the lowest gear on my bike, and I was normally using the 39/23 when climbing on Skyline Drive. I figured the 39/26 would get me through the rest.

As a final tune-up, I did the 6 miles from the entrance station to the 6-mile marker 6 times. I was relatively strong at the end so I felt I was ready.

You just have to start where you are, there’s no getting around it. I’m sure there are many readers out there who are far superior to me in all respects. Maybe this article isn’t really for you. If you’re like I was, seriously out of shape, you need to start on a disciplined program now. I would say you still have time to get in shape to do this year’s Etape. If you’re already in shape, been racing or riding seriously for years, then you’ll mainly need to do the mountain training. If you’re only riding about 100 miles a week or so, and only racing criteriums on relatively flat terrain, I would say you’re going to have to do a good bit of work also… even if you’re winning those criteriums. If you’re a century rider already and do rolling hills or mountains, you’re well on your way. You probably could gut out a stage.

Important Point #2: Base miles are terribly important. Ride as much as you can.

It’s hard to know which to recommend. A couple stand out:

The Complete Book of Long-Distance Cycling: Build the Strength, Skills, and Confidence to Ride As Far As You Want by Ed Burke, Ed Pavelka, Edmund R., Ph.D. Burke (ISBN: 1579541992)

Cycling Past 50 (Ageless Athlete Series) by Joe Friel (ISBN: 0880117370)

I don’t own either one of these books, but I’ve scanned them thoroughly over several cups of coffee at Borders bookstore. Yes, you may call me cheap. I never have much cash on me and my wife watches over the credit card bills pretty closely.

I’m not sure how I would have felt heading to Europe without having been able to have a place to do long steep (fairly) ascents. I think I would have been filled with trepidation even if I had been riding a century a week on flat terrain. The angst might even have a further detrimental effect on your physical performance.

I was fortunate to have Shenendoah National Park and Skyline Drive within an hour of my home. Not only is the scenery beautiful, but there are several long ascents. The longest stretch of unbroken ascent is the 6 miles of continuous climbing when you enter the Park at Front Royal, Virginia. These long ascents are tremendously important and I know they’re not available to everyone.

If you can’t get to steep, long ascents, I recommend a variable resistance fluid trainer for winter training. If you don’t have one… get one! In the spring and summer hopefully you can find a fairly long climb to use to train on and measure your progress. You’ll just have to ride it over and over.

Here’s how you can simulate long climbs on your fluid trainer. Raise the front wheel where the front axle is about 4 inches higher than the rear axle and put the lever over to full resistance. Then just get on and go. Why 4 inches? Most bicycles have a wheel base of 40 inches more or less. If you raise the front wheel 4 inches above the back, it places your bike at about the same attitude as a 10% gradient. But why bother you say. That 4-inch lift changes the whole dynamic of the bike. You’ll notice it over several miles I promise. Your lower back will feel stretched beyond belief. You need to get used to it.

For the spring and summer, you’ll want to find as long a stretch as possible and a gradient of at least 6% and better yet something like 7.5%. How can you measure the gradient? Here’s how I do it.

I have a carpenter’s level that is exactly 30 inches long (the longer the better). I go out where I’m going to climb and at various points on the climb I do the following:

A 125 mile mountain stage of the Tour de France is not going to be easy. Of course I’m speaking as a 55 year-old man, but it would have been tough even when I was in my 30s I think.

When I needed to know if I was going to be able to make the Etape ride this year I had to try to set up an emulation of the actual ride as best I could. I knew I needed 36 miles of climbing and about 72 miles of actual riding. Now the stage was to be 88 miles, so why did I only feel I needed to ride 72? Good question. The last 25km (16 miles) or so were downhill. Again, I turned to my 6 mile route on Skyline Drive I simply rode it 6 times in succession for 72 total miles, half of which was climbing. Yes, it got very old by about the third time up and that last time up was torturous. When I was done though, I knew I could complete the Etape… maybe. I know the elevation at the entrance station and at the 6-mile point. Even with the 6 times up and down, It was only about 8,000 feet of climbing, 3,000+ short of what I had computed for the Etape stage. Obviously this meant I would encounter steeper gradients in France than on my training fields in the U.S. but I figure, correctly as it turned out, that I could just gut it out. So can you, even if you can’t completely emulate the Etape ride here in America.

All I’m really qualified to tell you is how I did it. This is not from ego, but from the fact that I’m not a professional trainer and I’m therefore not qualified to speak from any theoretical authority.

There are a lot of good books out there. If you’ve got self-discipline, get one you like and follow it, but I would also say be prepared to get a feel for and adapt to your own individual needs and for the needs of the Etape. Trust your instincts a bit.

If you don’t have a lot of self-discipline and can afford it, I think I would recommend some kind professional trainer or training program. Sometimes a good health club will have people who may be qualified. You local bike club may have someone of stature you can trust and who will help you. Chris Carmichael has CTS. I’ve included a link.

Finally - Just do it!

www.sportingtours.co.uk

http://www.trainright.com

www.letapedutour.com

www.letour.com

[Editor's Note: Many thanks to Doug for his thoughtful hard work on this great series!]