Today another groupsession for our athletes was planned, the  last one before the first races, training camps or stage races! Traditionally we choose the last weekend of January with a steady groupride and evaluate how aerobic fitness is at this moment. Well, I can tell at least we have some nice surprises coming up…let’s see and evaluate within 11months.

Belgium had terrible weather for athletes past 9 days…till wednesday snow and ice was on the roads. Fortunately, like most things…if you are patient, all works out well.

Today passionate athletes from all different angles of the country were present, but also France and the Netherlands were ready for some ‘Flandrien-weather. Á lack of motivation was no option. On the menu, an  aerobic progressive bike ride on hilly roads. In total 1250D+ for 115K in hilly Flanders was what we were going to do.

We  choose for the hilly and clean roads between Leuven and Brussels

For sure, rain always has an influence on flat tyres, some of our athletes could exercise their mechanic-skills, one of them could do this 3x!

When we say hilly, we say hilly…there was only 4x a 400m flat road. Enoug to drink and eat something.

Our athletes  had a mission during the ride, which was explained before the ride. If you look at the profile you can see 4 bigger  climbs. On these climbs there was a fixed wattage for each climb. Even with a finishline on top, athletes rode smart (to perform better).

The meaning of this training for sure was aerobic, no red zone to enter. Some athletes for sure let go the group to reintegrate the group later. For some athletes (cyclist  starting their season in feb and athletes racing next weekends) very short moments could be entered into the red. NP for our athletes today was all between 210 and 240, depending how long they rode in front or in the peloton. Remarkable is how close the NP of the head of the bunch and the tail of the bunch is. Learning how to ride a peloton,sure is a skill to exercise.

Going through our athletes files, we see perfection for this athlete. Never passing anaerobic threshold, average  128BPM. On a track like the one we did, that is not easy but a work of consistency. Train Smart, race hard!

Despite some rain and  some flats we rode back to our cars the way we started, as a group…a group of athletes with a smile!

A special thumb up for Toon having 3 flats and not give up, untill running out of tyres, for Jan having a flat and troubles reparing him for 25minutes but still riding the whole loop and one for Wim choosing the difficult way and doing the 115K loop at solo to not overpush.

How much nicer can a day be for a coach, ending the session by a full messagebox on the cellphone and seeing the first triathlon of the year was won by one of our athletes in Avion (France), and Gwen winning her first crosscountry of the season!

Train smart, perform better!

Jesse