LEVELLING UP

What if you trained as hard as you possibly could not just for weeks but a full year and beyond? Would you eventually reach elite level performance? Simon Fellows embarks on a quest to find out

- Simon

In December 2022, while training in Majorca, Tom Pidcock set a new Sa Calobra KOM of just 22:46. Ten months later, I took on the same challenge with a raggedy bunch of pals on our own less elite kind of training camp. Backs to a sparkling Med, we set off strongly, before very quickly realising we’d need to settle into a steady rhythm just to make it up the nine kilometres of 6.5% average gradient.

Our time, I’m embarrassed to admit, was more than double Pidcock’s effort.

On the plus side, the long effort gave me a remarkable amount of time to ponder whether pro riders are on another level genetically or whether any rider, given the right blend of consistent, quality training over a long enough period, could significantly narrow the gap. What really sets me and my mates apart from the likes of Tom Pidcock?

My sobering experience in Majorca reminded me of a research paper that CW’s fitness editor David Bradford had recently forwarded to me. In the study, an unnamed cyclist was put through 58 weeks of intensive, periodised training. The outcome? His VO2 max increased by an incredible 20% to a skyhigh 87ml/kg/min, giving him a whopping maximum aerobic power of 7.4W/kg – the kind of numbers that could challenge Pidcock up Sa Calobra. We all know that training works, but this was an enormous improvement over the course of just one year. What would happen to my own fitness, I wondered, if I managed to train like a demon for a solid 12 months?