Nicolas Roche has said his race schedule leading up to the Tour de France was not yet set but he believed many in the pro peloton would only ride one stage race before the Tour starts.
Because a new racing calendar was set to be published by
the UCI next week, Roche’s Team Sunweb has decided to wait until that fixture
list is published before drawing up definite plans for its riders.
Roche (35) will ride the Tour de France and the only real
question for him is what races he can squeeze in before the Tour starts at the
end of August.
“In terms of racing before the Tour; there won’t be many,
I don’t think there’ll be too many choices,” he said.
“For now we don’t know what’s on and what isn’t on and at
the moment it’s still very vague for everyone. I will do a preparation race
before the Tour, but to be honest I don’t need to do that many.
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“I think sometimes the riders and the media, everyone, is
more worried than the reality,” he said of the Tour de France and the hype and
coverage in the build-up.
“Now everyone is in the same situation, it’s not just a
few riders going to do limited preparation racing. How well you prepare you
still at home is going to be the different,” he said of pro riders emerging
from lock-down.
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“At the end of the day, we’re only going to have a
difference of between doing five race days rather than seven race days before
the Tour, or something like that.”
Roche added for those riders preparing for the Tour, the
options were choosing to ride Criterium du Dauphine, the Tour de Pologne or Tour
de l’Ain.
“Teams need to be able to have most of their riders
racing, it’s not just about having the guys preparing for the Tour,” he said. “There’s
so few races at this point it will be quite interesting to see how teams
choose.”
For now Monaco-based Roche said he had looked after
himself during lock-down and since being able to ride properly on the roads
again in France in recent weeks he had been making the most of it.
“I’ve been back for the last two weeks now so it’s been
good,” he said. “I did the first two weeks with a lot more volume just to get
some hours again.
“And last week I did a bit… not really high intensity but
just under threshold. There’s no point in doing too much high intensity yet
because the racing is not for another two or three months.
“It’s about getting the base back up again and I did
enough high intensity efforts with those races on Zwift. So it’s been more
about getting the long hours again and some medium (intensity) effort.
“And I do a few sprints here and there; just short, maybe
five, 10, 15 second sprints, because that’s what you don’t do on the home
trainer. You do those now just to reactive those fast twitch muscles.”
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