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Most riders will never sprint as fast or climb as long as the pros. But by reviewing their Tour de France Strava files, you’ll at least know where to start if you want to train like them—and how much heat you’ll have to bring to keep up.
They really do eat and pee on the fly
During Stage 12 of the Tour de France, Robert Gesink (LottoNL-Jumbo) flatted at the start of Plateau de Beille, had to change bikes—and got the freakin’ KOM on the climb (above). Not impressed yet? He did it on a 129-mile stage with 13,877 feet of climbing, and his Strava file shows less than 2½ minutes of “non-moving” time. Remember that next time you want to keep it moving on a long ride.
They’re incinerating calories
Very active Joe and Jane cyclists need about 2,400 to 3,000 calories a day to function. Guys like Jeremy Roy go through twice that and then some in just 6 ½ hours.
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They meter it out
You might think these guys are gunning it the whole time, but they’d never survive. Even on days that are hard and fast overall, they spend the bulk of the ride with heart rates in Zones 2 and 3: endurance to tempo intensity ranges. Laurens ten Dam, who stayed with the KOM leaders up all the major climbs on Stage 12, still had an average heart rate of just 125 bpm and an overall intensity of 70 percent (solidly moderate) that day.
On rest days, they REST
We average cyclists are really bad about riding easy when we’re supposed to ride easy. Not so with the pros, as Adam Yates’ aptly named Rest day gains ride file shows. On the first rest day of the Tour, Yates rode just 24.2 miles in a very pedestrian 1:23:50, earning a whopping suffer score of 18.
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Their average weighted power tells the story
Many cyclists who train with power meters will look at their average power at the end of a ride to judge how hard it was, but average power doesn’t really tell the story. You could average 150 watts on a fairly easy day and achieve the same average surging far into the red on and off all day. One ride is much harder than the other. Take Koen de Kort’s file from Stage 11, which he describes as “full gas.” His average power was 216, but the highs he hit were high: 1,235 max watts, 65.8 mph downhill, and 137 rpm cadence. His average weighted power, which was 273W, tells the story better. It takes variables like terrain and grade into account, and gives an estimate of what his average power would have been had he ridden the exact same wattage the entire ride.
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They can maintain some mean power
Fit recreational cyclists can hammer out about 250 to 300 watts for a 20 minute power test. The pros average 20-minute power pushes at 400 watts, as shown in this Power Curve chart from Gesink on Stage 12.
They are really just like us
We all have days when we’re fiddling with our food and the gun goes off and we need a few moments to get our head in the game. The titles of many of the pros Strava files, like Paul Martens’ and Georg Preidler’s, show that they forget to start their Garmins, get behind on their drinking and, well, are human, too.
