Nicolas Roche has said while he “panicked” when lockdown conditions were imposed in France after his first race of the season, he has now settled into a routine at home and believes pro racing will take place in August.
The Team Sunweb rider rode the three-day Tour des Alpes Maritimes et du Var
(2.1) in France in late February; climbing well and taking 7th
overall in an event won by Nairo Quintana.
“I was quite happy with my shape there and I felt I was
on a good build-up process for the next few races, for a really good month of
March,” he said.
While he had aimed to ride the Vuelta a Catalunya, he
said some of the climbs there may have been too long for him so early in the
season but he felt the races beyond that would have really suited him.
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“I feel I would have been in really good shape for Pais
Basque and the classics. But it’s a whole new story now and there’s no point in
looking back and saying ‘if’.”
Of course that whole new story is Covid19; races
cancelled, group rides out and Roche, like most of the pro peloton, unable to
train on the open roads.
However, now aged 35 years and in his 16th season as a pro, Roche has enjoyed many highs and endured some lows.
He is now drawing on all that experience to get himself
through the current lockdown and suspension of racing, not to mention not
knowing when precisely he will be back in the peloton again.
While he looks back on recent weeks he says he was in “full-on
panic mode” when France began to shut down and the realization of what was
happening began to set in.
But he quickly overcame that, within days, and says he is
taking a more measured and calmer approach than he would have done when he was a
younger rider.
Roche told stickybottle when he was speaking with one of
the directeurs from Team Sunweb about the lockdown, they agreed the important
message to send to the younger riders in the team was not to panic.
“It’s not like we’ve had a big injury and we’re falling behind
everyone else. This is the new normality,” e said.
“There’s 500 professionals today who are on a home trainer. That’s the only way you can look at it.”
He added while some pros in countries where training on
the roads was still possible, such as Belgium, may have an advantage, most of the
peloton was living, and trying to keep training, in lockdown conditions. Roche
said it was vital to keep that situation in perspective.
“When you’re
injured; you have the injury and the rest of the sport continues and leaves you
behind, lying in bed with you leg up,” he said.
“But with (Covid19), we are all facing the same thing.
You have to keep your morale up but you have to tell yourself that this is all
new for everyone.
“It’s about pressing re-set and starting a new rhythm. I
didn’t want to back off at all. Some riders have backed off; Thibaut Pinot for
example said he did a full week off the bike and he was going to rebuild
towards the second part of the season.
“I couldn’t have done that. For a start I would have been
bored sitting in my apartment doing nothing. So for the first week I did less
hours on the home trainer and then went out for an hour run in the afternoon,
to keep the fitness like I would do in the winter.
“And now I’m just doing a bit more hours again on the
trainer for the last few weeks and I’ve cut down on the running,” adding he was
clocking about 20 hours on his turbo trainer.
“I think I’ve done more on the home trainer in the last 3½ weeks than during my whole career,” he laughed, adding it took him a few days to source a connected home trainer, with Zwift in the UK coming up trumps.
He explained that he usually trained indoors so seldom at
his home in Monaco that he only had an old standard trainer there when the
lockdown began. His two connected trainers were in Ireland and at a hotel in
Livigno, Italy, where he often does training camps.
“For the first few days I was on the old standard trainer
and I’d train watching a movie. I trained for more or less the length of the
movie,” he laughed, adding the noise of his old trainer “would wake up the
whole neighbourhood”.
However, now that he was fully connected and able to use
Zwift and various technologies to hook up for training with his brother,
Alexis, and friends and team mates, it was much easier to train for longer
“I’m discovering all of these apps, like Zoom, for the
first time. But they’re so fun and helpful I’ve been saying to myself ‘how did
I not know about these things before now’.”
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Roche added he would connect on Zoom with Alexis, team
mate Michael Matthews and others; chatting for an hour while training before
coming off the app to focus on more intense efforts, with many of his rides
between two and three hours.
“Legally in Monaco, you are allowed to go on a bike. But
I’d rather be on Zwift than doing laps of Monaco. To be honest, the first few
days I was in full panic mode, like everybody else. It was something completely
new and I also live alone so I was saying to myself ‘bloody hell’….
“And straight away I knew it would not be two weeks, I
knew it would be minimum a month and then there were rumours it would be 45
days. So I was asking myself ‘how am I going to survive maybe 45 days locked up
in my apartment without going out, without seeing anybody?’
“I considered going back to Ireland but I had a long chat
with people back in Ireland and it looked like things were going to go on
lockdown, just a week later. So I thought I’d stay in the apartment I rent here
in Monaco.
“And the truth is that, although I’m physically alone, I’m
not alone and I’ve never been lonely. I’ve had so many friends from bunch and
friends from outside cycling and family; everybody is encouraging each other.
“It creates a good vibe and really now I don’t think
about it. It’s a lot to do with not thinking how things were before. That took
me three days; for those days I was in full panic mode.
“Now, I get up and do my emails. I put my coffee machine
on and have one or two coffees, prepare breakfast. Then it takes me a few
minutes to get the computer out and plug it onto the bike and set it all up.
And then I’m off…
“We have automatic meeting points (on Zwift) every day
and 10.30 is our start time. There’s days we some of us do less (hours) and
others do more.”
Roche said that even having a WhatsApp group with the
riders he trains with on Zwift, and fixing a set start time among themselves
was a great way to start the day and by the time his training is done it’s
1.30pm.
There follows a shower and some stretching before he
starts preparing lunch, after which he sometimes has a brief recovery nap.
“Three hours on the home trainer takes a lot out of you,”
he said. “And then the only time I have to manage is from 3 o’clock to 6 o’clock.
Some days I’d go for a walk for an hour alone and stay within a 1km range. It
can even be less than an hour, maybe 35 to 40 minutes, but it gets me out of
the apartment.
“And then when I get home again I try and keep busy with
doing some social media and after 6 o’clock over the last while there has been
a lot of interest from media (for interviews).
“I’ve also done some lives from my Instagram page; the
kind of things you don’t normally get time to do. I’ve been able to reply to a
lot of messages I get and reply with proper answers, rather than just saying to
people ‘OK, thanks’.
“So I’ve been trying to have that bit more interaction on
social media. It’s keeping me busy, it keeps me in touch with people and it
also keeps me away from the fridge and the press.
“By 7 o’clock or 8 o’clock I’ll cook myself something and
then chill with a movie or something and then it’s bed time. I have to say, the
first few days of transition I did find some moments where I was really
struggling.
“I’m someone who is very sociable and outgoing, always
seeing a mate or doing something like that. So it was hard to sit at home. But
now I have my full routine and I stick to it and it’s been fine. Some days I’ve
even decided to do something the next day and I don’t get the time to do it, so
I’m quite happy with that.”
Asked when he thought pro racing would resume again in
Europe, Roche was blunt: “I don’t think anyone in the universe can answer that,
nobody knows; not even the UCI or ASO, we have no idea.
“This is so new to everyone that nobody has a clue how
long it’s going to last, how it’s all going to evolve. As an athlete I think it’s
always important to have a focus, so in the back of my mind I have a plan to
keep training and keep fit and keep the weight down. It keeps me busy, I like
being on the bike and I have new habits now so I’m going to stick with them.
“What I keep in the back of my mind is that, whatever
happens, I need to be in shape for August because August is the month we will
be racing.”
Roche also believed because he was older and more
experienced, that would stand to him at this time.
“I’ve lived through injury and I’ve come back a few times
and I’ve lived through bad crashes so you know that, substantially, form comes
back a lot quicker than you ever expect. Obviously if you let yourself go and
go to McDonalds every night, thought it’s closed now anyway; but if you let
yourself go and you put on 10kg, then you’re dead.
“But it’s important to keep a base line of fitness and a
healthy lifestyle; and that can also mean a giving yourself a few treats. I
like a glass or wine or a glass of whiskey and in the morning when I go on the
home trainer I keep that in mind. It’s not all about having a monk’s life because
if you do that you can’t sustain it.
“It’s about having some pleasures. So I’ll have a glass
of wine in the evenings some times. I won’t go through a bottle in one night,
of course; it can take me a few nights to go through the bottle. But that’s my
reward, or it can be chocolate or a drop of whiskey.
“But because I’ve lived these things… in 2010 I tore a muscle
and I was four weeks where I couldn’t move and I came back and I finished 6th
in the Vuelta three months later so I know it’s doable.
“Last year I broke my kneecap, I came back in February
and I was in one of the best conditions I’ve been in for the last four or five
years so early in the season. So I’ve lived these things.
“But years ago I would have panicked, and this is a
mistake I would have made in the winter; but I would have panicked if it had
rained three days in a row and it interfered with training.
“Last year I did 33,000 to 34,000 kilometres so I’m part
of that group of guys that does a lot of hours on the bike. So for me, doing 20
hours a week or the home trainer is only a little.
“But it’s all I have at the moment; it’s a new standard
and the key is the whole sport is in the same boat, it’s not me, or any one
rider, against the world. You’re not losing something on the others; we’re all
in the same boat.”
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