Lessons learnt as a cycling coach from my first Haute Route

I recently rode the first Haute Route event of this year in the Pyrenees and had a truly awesome time. Whilst I have coached many riders to ride the Haute Route and similar events over the last few years, first-hand experience is second to none. Even though I have looked over many files, talked to numerous athletes about these events, I still learnt a lot as a coach from riding my first event in person.

Joe Staunton is a cycling coach and performance nutritionist at Ceyreste Performance.

Below are a few tips that you may find useful if you are riding the Haute Route for the first time or want to up your performance for your next attempt.

The more preparation the better

Preparation is key to successful and fun experiences. The multi-day, tough and to some extent unknown factors of these events makes it even more important to spend as much time before the event planning as you can. I underestimated my wifi quality, the effects of altitude and how much time I would have in a day. So, try to leave as little to do whilst you are there as possible as making or changing plans whilst you are there may be harder than anticipated.

Here are some areas I will spend more time looking at before I ride the Haute Route Alps in August:

Route study

Before the Pyrenees I spent a fair bit of time studying the GPX files that were sent out in advance. I used Strava and Veloviewer to give me more insight into the stages ahead of time. But next time I will be doing a lot more before I leave home! After the fatigue of a couple of hard days in the mountain’s hits, trying to work out the finer details of stages from your hotel room with temperamentalWiFi can become quite tricky…

Some of the main things I wanted to figure out before each stage were:

How long are the major climbs, and how much time will they roughly take me?
What do the profiles of the climbs look like? Are they harder at the bottom or the top?
- You can work these things out using tools such as Strava and using comparable VAMs (vertical ascension meters/hour), or your power and weight to calculate estimated times.

What else on the stage is worth noting?

The course profiles can skew your perception of the parcours. Huge mountains make smaller hills look flat, but they are certainly not! In one stage of the Pyrenees on an appearingly “flat” 70km section of the route, we gained almost 1500m through multiple shorter, sharper hills that got lost on solely looking at the course profile by eye. These can actually be more demanding than some of the longer hills as they are often ridden harder by groups.

Kit – plan for the worst

You can have the best will in the world to wash your kit in-between stages, but similarly to above, the logistics and timings may just not work out. If you can, bring more kit than you can possibly need and worry about washing when you get home.

You can rely on the support

I have been lucky to compete in quite a wide variety of events and can honestly say the Haute Route is one of the friendliest and supportive environments I have competed in. There is a wide range of abilities, but everyone is trying to bring their best performance to the event.

The nature of the riding means you quickly find out who you are going to be riding and jostling for positions with for the week. You usually end up spending a fair bit of time riding with the same people during the event, so don’t jostle too hard! It is always useful to have friends on the road, so make an effort to find some like-minded people to have lunch and dinner with as it helps both your post-stage relaxation and enjoyment of the event as a whole. Don’t be shy!

Make the most of the feed stops

Not only is the food at the feed stations really, really good (much of it locally sourced). It is also incredibly beneficial for your recovery. If you are not being fed by a supporter or tour company, it is difficult for you to bring all that you will require for the stage whilst riding to perform at your best.

My tip would be to really make a concerted effort to maximize the benefit of the feed stations especially at the finish line. There can be quite rides (up to an hour) to the race village.Once you have factored in the time at the finish for a few photos and debrief with those you have ridden with, the roll back to the hotel and showered, it can easily be two hours from when you stopped your stage effort before you are ready to sit down for a meal. Within the first hour of finishing your effort you can make greater gains on your glycogen replenishment (energy stored in the muscles) if you consume high glycemic index carbohydrates immediately.

So when you finish, take your photos, have a chat and make sure you eat and drink as much carbohydrate and fluid as you can. Grab a handful of jelly babies, a cup of cold sugary drink and a slice of pizza, even if you don’t feel hungry at the time. This is essential to recovering properly for the next day.

Enjoyed these tips? Follow @ceyresteperformance for more training tips and tricks or get in touch with Joe@ceyresteperformance.com for training help.