Etape Workshop

I've just got back from the first 'workshop' for the Sky Etape team, where we had talks from the people that run the bike store on the Sky site (about the facilities available to us), the people from Science in Sport (about fuelling strategies), and most notably Dave Brailsford and Shane Sutton - the Performance Director and Head Coach of British Cycling.

As you'd expect, Dave and Shane's thoughts made a whole load of sense, and while they reinforced that the Etape's going to be a huge challenge - mentally as much as physically - they also made it seem manageable if we continue the training in a methodical way.

Amongst the headlines for me was the importance Dave put on slimming down as much as we could while remaining healthy. The way he put it was that you can lose more weight than you can get more fit. My grammar's made that look quite inelegant, but I think it makes sense. Essentially he was saying that it would take longer and require more effort to increase one's fitness to a level that would match the gains that can be achieved from losing excess weight.

I'd been getting slightly concerned that maybe I was over-obsessing about the weight thing - but apparently not. Today's made me refocus my targets slightly though. If I continue losing weight at a pound a week, then I should be able to get my weight down to 10 and a half stone by the time of the Etape. This seems reasonable as it was my 'fighting weight' for a long time.

Shane talked a bit about tips for the day itself -advising us to take it easy on the descents and use them for recovery, rather than using them to try and make up time. Again this made perfect sense as there's clearly plenty of potential for disaster if you fall off at high speed. As Shane put it - the longer you take to get down, the longer you have for recovery - which sounds good to me.

Although I've used SiS's products quite extensively when I've been training, it was useful to hear it 'from the horse's mouth', and I got a few tips for refining my fuelling strategies. I think I've maybe not been making enough use of my gels, so I'm going to try and get more practice at that. They also told us about some their Smart 1 Gels, which I hadn't seen before. They include caffeine to give you that extra boost when you need it most - eg. at the base of Ventoux. I've just noticed that they're pretty expensive...but it might be worth getting one box to get me through the long Sportives that are coming up, and then the Etape itself.

Overall, the fact that all these amazing people had come to speak to us reminded me how much of a privilege it is to be doing the Etape through Sky this year, and definitely made me more determined than ever not to stuff it up!