“outrageous” effort and burnout"
“outrageous” effort and burnout"
Alejandro Valverde has warned against turbo training too much, suggesting he only does a little more than an hour on the home trainer during lock-down in Spain.
The 2009 Vuelta winner and former world champion said some of the training he had seen other riders doing on the turbo was “outrageous”.
He believed the effort required – both mentally and physically – to train hard on a home trainer was being underestimated by cyclists.
Valverde also unsure if any racing would take place this year due to Covid19, despite the UCI saying all three Grand Tours would be held starting with the Tour de France on August 29th.
However, if the races went ahead he believed the results would be very different because the routine of pro riders had been disturbed so much this year.
He also believed the very different temperatures the racing would take place in would make for very unusual conditions for such hard events, which would impact results more than people realised.
Speaking to El Mundo in his native Spain, Valverde said he had focused on keeping a solid routine during the past month of lockdown.
“I try to organise myself. I get up at seven, I do roller for an hour and a quarter, breakfast, then I am with the family, in the afternoon gym and core,” he said.
Asked of the much later start date of the Tour de France – which is set to be two months later than its usual start – would changed the list of favourites and give Chris Froome and Tom Dumoulin more time to recover from their crash injuries, Valverde said:
“It may be, but I think Tour, Giro and Vuelta will be very atypical races, with results very different from those of the usual dates. The body is used to a routine and to specific temperatures.
“In addition, the fact of being (in) a long period at home will influence a lot. The body gets used to everything and thanks to the latest-generation (home trainers) everything is easier; simulating the road runs very well.
“But some (riders) are doing outrageous things with training sessions of five or six hours in a row. This does not make sense because we do not know what the closest objectives will be. The roller burns you physically and mentally.”
He also believed the UCI and the organisers of the Grand Tours could not simply change the dates of the races. Instead, they would also need to examine the route in the context of what will be new weather patterns for the races due to the delay.
“I believe that the route should be changed, just as the dates have changed,” he said of having the Vuelta in November, as a winter event rather than racing in high summer.
“This year, the route goes through the northern zone, the coldest. So it would be necessary to look for warmer regions and (mountains) that can be climbed on those dates. Everything will be very distorted.”
Valverde, who has previously served a doping-related ban from racing and so has experience of returning from a long lay-off, said it was possible the whole season would be lost.
If so, he may delay his retirement by a year and continue racing until the end of 2022, though that was not yet clear.
“At the beginning of the (Covid19) confinement I did not get the idea of losing this year, but seeing how everything is progressing, I am thinking more and more about it,” he said of racing possibly not returning this year.
“You take care of yourself and train with the roller, but you do it with little motivation. You can’t do specific jobs, because you don’t know what your goals will be.”
“outrageous” effort and burnout"
“outrageous” effort and burnout"
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