How I taught Stage 19

Stage 19 Tour de France 2010 Individual Time Trial

It is very likely that Stage 19 of the 2010 Tour de France will cement the yellow jersey on the back of Alberto Contador. My heart wants Andy Schleck to win, but alas, time trials are not his strongest suit, and they are for Alberto. But going into the Time Trial tomorrow, there is only 8 seconds separating the two. That in itself is completely mind-boggling, considering they’ve been racing for three weeks over 3,200 kilometers!

A time trial, as you probably know,. is an all-out effort for the duration of the race. A shorter race will be held at a higher intensity than a longer race. Tomorrow’s Tour de France time trial is 52km, and according to Chris Carmichael, riders who hope to place well will be riding about 47-48kph (or in the right conditions, as fast as 50kph) for just over an hour at their lactate threshold. That’s a long time. That’s hard!

I taught this stage in my class this morning. It was my final Tour de France profile. My “race” was 32 minutes long. I did a 10-minute mild warm-up, then a 4 minute hard effort to get the legs ready for the upcoming work (I tell them to imagine they are on their trainers prior to their start times), then went easy for another 4 minutes. Then we started the “race”.

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