Cyclist
Cycling books: Riding with the Rocketmen by James Witts
The book is an ‘Everyman meets Supermen and Superwomen’ tale of woe, blood, sweat, tears, disappointment and the odd laugh.
This isn’t my first book but it’s the first where I’ve shone a light on myself. It’s about me as a 40-something-year-old taking on a major challenge, the Étape du Tour, a mass participation ride that mirrors one of the big mountain stages of the Tour de France.
To prepare myself, I tapped into my contacts from many years working in the cycling industry to try to learn the tricks of the pros and assimilate them in a very diluted way that would work for me – someone with a day job and a couple of kids. It’s about that one big challenge and the joys of learning things along the way, plus a few anecdotes.
The premise was I’d look at the training, gear, nutrition, technology and tactics used by pro riders and apply that to myself.
It all started with a professional bike fit from Phil Burt in Manchester. He used to work at Team Sky, then went freelance a few years ago. He measured me, assessed my pedalling style and made all the necessary tweaks until my Giant road bike was perfectly set up for my needs. Then it got stolen.
One night I got a message on my local community WhatsApp group saying one of the members had seen two lads cycling off with four bikes. I looked out of the window and saw my garage door had been peeled open like a tuna tin. It wasn’t the greatest start to proceedings.
The Étape became the goal, but I also built in some other events along the way, so it ended up being a sort of pseudo WorldTour calendar.
Once I’d sourced a new bike, my first stop was a cyclocross race in January. I’d never done cyclocross before so did a practice session and really enjoyed it, plus I got some useful pointers from former National Champion Nick Craig. This was followed later by the Tour of Flanders sportive in April, where I put into practice lessons from three-time winner Johan Museeuw (‘be hard’). I even raced in a time-trial in Dursley, just down the road from Bristol, using advice imparted by US National Time-Trial Champion Lawson Craddock.
Mostly, however, it was training rides and time on the Wattbike, where a power-based plan from Training Peaks coach Phil Mosley really helped: three weeks of progress, one week easing off, repeat for six months. Consistency is key, so in many ways the hardest part was maintaining motivation.
Having the Étape as a goal to focus on really helped. That and having signed a contract with a publisher. If I didn’t do it, I’d have to pay back the advance, and it turns out impending bankruptcy is quite the motivator.
When it comes to nutrition I’ve always eaten quite healthily, but the problem is I think I’m a glutton.
Especially if I’m cooking for the family at home, I can’t help grazing so by the time I’ve served up dinner I’ve already had a meal. For my new training regime I took to measuring my portion sizes – I didn’t go full-on pro and start weighing my food on scales, but I did follow on-bike eating rules laid down by sports nutritionist Asker Jeukendrup of Visma-Lease a Bike.
He got me onto 60g of carbs per hour while riding, which is about two gels – more than I was used to, but about half what the pros take. They have to train their bodies to process that many carbs.
I also became a slave to beetroot shots. I’ve done a lot of research into them for articles, and the studies show they can help recreational riders even more than elites because we have a greater bandwidth to tap into, whereas elite riders already fine-tune everything. It’s to do with the nitrates and increasing blood flow to get more oxygen to the cells. Of course, without a lab I couldn’t really prove if they worked, but even if it was a placebo I believe there was a benefit.
Least useful to me was probably the altitude training I did with Ineos Grenadiers.
It was fascinating to join them at an altitude camp in Andorra and learn the science, but for an amateur rider with a job and family, it’s just too hard to implement. I did the occasional session at the Altitude Centre in London, and tried altitude masks at home, but it felt like wasted time.
Far more useful was the psychological training I did with Dr Noel Brick of Ulster University. He gave me the confidence to trust in my training, and methods for turning my worries into something more positive, as well as practical tips on how to approach training mentally, such as chunking the race into smaller segments. As a motivator I had the words ‘One pedal at a time, Jimbo’ written on my water bottle.
For anyone taking on a major life challenge, getting help with the psychological side is, in my opinion, just as important as the physical training.
After all that, it all almost fell apart on the big day.
If only I’d heeded the words of American former pro Andy Hampsten, who offered me advice on how to tackle the Galibier, Croix de Fer and Alpe d’Huez – the three major climbs at the Étape du Tour on the year I did it.
Hampsten famously won a stage of the Tour de France in 1992 that took in those very climbs, but he was also part of the 7-Eleven team that had a nightmare on a similar stage to Alpe d’Huez in 1989. The night before the stage the team went out to eat at a sandwich bar that simply wasn’t set up for serving 20 people on the team plus media, and everyone got ill. ‘It was a disaster,’ said Hampsten.
Sure enough, the night before my big ride, I opted for an excessively cheesy pizza and ended up having terrible stomach issues during the night. I was emotionally and physically empty before the start. In all honesty, if I hadn’t trained for six months with a book deal resting on it, I probably wouldn’t have started.
Did I overcome my mental and gastrointestinal demons to make it heroically to the finish line after 170km and 5,000m of climbing? Copies of Riding With The Rocketmen, published by Bloomsbury, are still available in good bookshops…
• This article originally appeared in issue 150 of Cyclist magazine. Click here to subscribe
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