I was pedalling at a consistently higher tempo on the stationary trainer but my heart rate was not increasing at the same rate as three weeks before. Tired from one of the toughest races I have ridden, my heart no longer responded quickly to stimulus. Three weeks of weather extremes, challenging and varied courses, intense racing and nonstop travel were draining. Electronic music, blasting through my headphones and blocking out the noise of the whirling trainer, got my mind racing but failed to stimulate my legs. They ached as the pressure increased. My warm-up complete, I stepped off the trainer knowing the final time trial of the Giro d’Italia wouldn’t be an easy one.

Grand Tours are unique in every sense. No other sporting event is as taxing physically and mentally. During the three weeks we rarely relax as the pace of our lives is relentless. We seem to be in constant movement as we are never in one place long enough to fully unpack a suitcase or feel remotely settled.

The team lives in a bubble blown around the race environment. Stage numbers replace days of the week. Results pages replace newspapers. The race moves around the countryside as one. We escape the bubble momentarily when we walk outside the hotels in the evenings, step in a store, or turn on the television at night to catch a few minutes of the news. But, our thoughts never really leave the race. There’s always an imminent goal.

Then the tour ends and our bodies shut down. Accustomed to the rhythm and tempo of the race we learn to persist, and cope, mentally and physically within the race structure. Once that pressure is released an tiredness takes over. The week after the finish, I feel an overwhelming lethargy. Each step I take through town, or up a flight of stairs, seems laborious in comparison to the thousands of kilometres ridden in Italy.

To recover and rebound to a higher level, I let my body rest and eat well. I ride intermittently during the week following the race, to keep from completely shutting down. The rides are at a tourist’s speed and just as short. Afternoons become nap time.

A coach once suggested that I base my training on the mathematical sequence by the Italian mathematician Fibonacci (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci). If applied to training two days of hard training would require one day of recovery. Following the sequence, 21 days of stimulus requires thirteen days of recovery. From experience, I know it requires at least ten days for the body to regain its normal rhythm and for the desire to ride to return.

A Grand Tour etches the body. Friends who I haven’t seen in a month comment on my weight loss and the dark brown tan line. Like a tattooed punk, a fit professional cyclist looks out of place in a crowd of townspeople.

Racing reaches levels unobtainable in training. If a cyclist recovers carefully from a grand tour, he will be rewarded his finest form. The extremes of the race mentally and physically, make cyclists comfortable with the abnormal.

The rest worked. Nearly two weeks after the race, I can feel the power I’ve gained in my pedal stroke. The return of the sensation of flight is the moment to resume training with consistency and intensity.

The effects of a Grand Tour are sweeping. Efforts can be sustained for longer periods, climbs seem shorter and shallower and the bike moves in harmony with the body. With so many hours spent in the saddle in a period of a few weeks, it is on the bike that a fit cyclist feels most comfortable. In any other realm, we again feel displaced.

And, it is during the rebound in fitness that I will specify my training again to ensure it is pointed towards the next objectives. For a week, I will train in the Alps and then Pyrenees with two teammates to ride the key Tour de France stages. It will be a week, where we will rediscover the routine and almost singular focus of the cyclist’s life.

In preparation for the Giro d’Italia Team Time Trial we were training as a team outside to find our fluidity as a team. After a few efforts we were moving well. The key to a TTT is that the speed is consistent without any hard surges as they will split the team. The strong riders need to pull longer and progressively bring the speed up while the weaker riders must do shorter turns on the front and get off before their speed drops. It was clear Brad is flying as his turns were long and quick. As the french would say, he has a ’sacré coup de pédale’ at the moment. He looks good in pink, as well.

The footage captures the flat fields, the windmills, and the tulips. But, it doesn’t capture the howling wind we were battling.

The Team Sky Giro roster is: Bradley Wiggins, Steve Cummings, Chris Froome, Greg Henderson, CJ Sutton, Michael Barry, Dario Cioni, Mathew Hayman and Morris Possoni. Two cameras caught the footage–a GoPro on the hood of the team car which followed us, and a Flip camera which I taped to my handlebars. Notice the impatient driver who throws a water bottle at us. He hit Wiggo with the bottle. The rest of the drivers encouraged us and even stopped to take photos.

Here are some pictures from this weeks training leading up to Paris-Roubaix. I’ve also included a few pictures of Flecha’s Roubaix specific bike, notice the seatstays.

The Tour of Flanders course is extremely technical and for riders who don’t live near the course and know the roads well, a reconnaissance ride prior to the race is vital . The fight for position before the cobbled sections is as crucial as a rider’s skills on the cobbles, as the peloton splits on the small roads due to bottlenecks and crashes. Most teams ride the final 100 km of the course prior to the race to preview the stones and find the smoothest and quickest line. We rode the course the day after Dwaars door Vlaanderen–a midweek semi-Classic.

Most of the boys were tired from a hard and well fought race while Edvald Boasson Hagen and I had fresh legs from a few days of rest post Milan Sanremo. The weather was abnormally warm for Belgium which made the countryside all the more beautiful. This weekend will be big: E3 Prijs-Vlaanderen-Harelbeke and Gent Wevelgem. The team is prepared for a tough battle–rain is in the forecast and the temperatures will drop.

Professional teams organize training camps not only to increase the level of fitness but also to build the bond between teammates. Daily we spend hours together on our bike. On the road we chat while we cruise along, we tempt each other into races on the climbs, sprint for signs, ride in tight pacelines, practice our team trial training and, most of all, spend a lot of time getting to know each other as cyclists, as workmates, and as friends.

Almost each waking hour of the day is spent in the company of a team member. We share hotel rooms so even when we are asleep there is a teammate about two feet away in an identical single bed snoring away. It is at the camps we learn to live with each other, trust each other, and respect each other. And, where we learn to deal with each other’s quirks. There are few other working environments where people are together constantly for weeks—at all meals, during almost the entire day, and then in shared rooms.

A friend of mine who is a fireman told me the firefighters spend hours together, even when off duty, because when they’re deep in a fire they need to know they can trust and rely on their workmates to save their life. Although, we are only riding bikes, knowing a teammate, being confident that he is committed to the goal of the team and will sacrifice, makes the difference between winning and losing. And, it will also make the ride, the race, and the journey that much better. Which is why we are here, riding together as a team in Valencia.

Oddly, it is on the coldest days in the harsh weather that the bond grows strongest. When faced with adversity we push each other to get through it together, and in the end, that is what it is all about. Early in the week we were faced with lousy weather. We set out under cloudy skies, which soon opened up and became rain and then snow. Frozen we persisted. We stopped occasionally to fill our bottles with hot tea and our pockets with bars and cakes. A coach once told me, “You might as well get out in the bad weather and ride—you’ll have to race in it.” Our bodies adapt to the conditions—the hardest part is getting out the door and into the rain. As the hours wore on, we hammered away to keep warm and as we reached the fourth hour the skies cleared and we rode home on dry roads. When we completed the work, there was a sense of accomplishment within the group when we returned to the hotel.

The camp is not only intended for training and bonding but also gives us time to test new equipment, adjust our positions, and have the physios and doctors take care of any physical problems.  While we rode, the coaches and technicians analyzed our performance, gave us the results, and provided advice on how we could improve. Team Sky has specialists in each specific aspect of cycling and if a question can’t be answered they’ll seek out advice from professionals beyond cycling. Nobody pretends they know every answer. The openness to new ideas not only allows the riders to improve but will also push the sport of cycling in a new, more progressive direction.

By this coming weekend, the team will be racing incessantly for the next eight months. Clearly, we will continue to build during throughout the year but it is now we must lay the foundation.

As we spend more time on our bikes than on our feet, professional cyclists can feel a millimetre of difference between bikes, shoes or cleat position. The team mechanics have some beautifully made custom jigs to align everything so our bikes or our shoes (each rider has a spare pair of race shoes in the team car) are identical.

Being a professional team mechanic is a trade in Europe. Mechanics start working with teams as apprentices when they are in their late teens and work until they retire. Most mechanics have a profound understanding and passion for the job which makes them meticulous. When we win they also feel a sense of accomplishment and share the victory with the team of riders. A champion will keep the same staff with him through his entire career. Few of Johan Bruyneel’s soigneurs or mechanics have shuffled around between teams as Johan tries to hold on to the staff he has confidence in and can trust. Geoff Brown, the Canadian mechanic who works for Radio Shack, began with Motorola before moving to USPS, Discovery and Astana worked on my bike for many years. Never once did I step on my bike and have a problem or worry that it would fail. Julien deVriese, Radio Shack’s head mechanic, has worked with everybody from Merckx to Maertens to Lemond to Armstrong.  During Johan’s decade of dominance at the Tour de France they had few mechanical problems. DeVriese aged Lance’s Tour de France tubulars in a cellar for five years so the rubber was resistant to puncture while ours were aged for a few years.  While at the races, they were checked daily for cuts and changed often. The team rode a whole Tour of Spain with only one flat tire. The details make the difference.

I will follow up with some more photos and videos of the mechanics and soigneurs at work from our camp this week.

As we spend more time on our bikes than on our feet, professional cyclists can feel a millimetre of difference between bikes, shoes or cleat position. The team mechanics have some beautifully made custom jigs to align everything so our bikes or our shoes (each rider has a spare pair of race shoes in the team car) are identical.
> Being a professional team mechanic is a trade in Europe. Mechanics start working with teams as apprentices when they are in their late teens and work until they retire. Most mechanics have a profound understanding and passion for the job which makes them meticulous. When we win they also feel a sense of accomplishment and share the victory with the team of riders. A champion will keep the same staff with him through his entire career. Few of Johan Bruyneel's soigneurs or mechanics have shuffled around between teams as Johan tries to hold on to the staff he has confidence in and can trust. Geoff Brown, the Canadian mechanic who works for Radio Shack, began with Motorola before moving to USPS, Discovery and Astana worked on my bike for many years. Never once did I step on my bike and have a problem or worry that it would fail. Julien deVriese, Radio Shack's head mechanic, has worked with everybody from Merckx to Maertens to Lemond to Armstrong.  During Johan's decade of dominance at the Tour de France they had few mechanical problems. DeVriese aged Lance's Tour de France tubulars in a cellar for five years so the rubber was resistant to puncture while ours were aged for a few years.  While at the races, they were checked daily for cuts and changed often. The team rode a whole Tour of Spain with only one flat tire. The details make the difference.
> I will follow up with some more photos and videos of the mechanics and soigneurs at work from our camp this week.

While growing up in Toronto, I would bundle up in the warmest winter cycling clothing I could find in my closet and venture out into the snow and ice on my bike. Despite the thermal clothing my extremities would become icy cold as the blowing brisk wind slowly froze my skin. Despite the weather, I was completely focused on racing, riding, and winning even though the first races were still months away. I would pedal out a steady rhythm in the falling snow as plumes of powder sprayed from wheels, imagining I was on the cobbles in France.

On those rides, I built my base for the future – mentally and physically – as my fitness grew along with my motivation. The off-season is our time to rest and rebuild.

Fifteen years later, I tap out the same rhythm through the winter, alone or with friends, as we prepare for the coming season. However, I no longer slip and slide through the deep snow, but pedal up the foothills of the Pyrenees under the warm Catalan sun. To pursue my career I moved from North America to Girona, Spain as the weather was better, the roads quieter and the countryside ideal for cycling.

At the end of the season in late October, I hang my bike up in the garage and try not to think about it. The two to three weeks it hangs motionless is the longest stretch it will be still during the year. Only when I feel the desire to ride again will I unhook it and climb on. Within a few weeks of being off the bike, I am eager to ride again, with friends or with my wife. We will socialize and simply enjoy being outdoors.

Fit and lean my body changes as soon as I stop riding, start eating more and change my focus. The transition is quick. Finding fine fitness seems to take months of hard work while it is lost in just a few shorts weeks. With nearly three months between races, I have time to rebuild so with patience I work prudently and persistently.

Despite being out of shape when I get back on my bike I feel rested. My mindset has changed. At the end of the long nine-month season, my body and mind are worn from racing, traveling and training. In the final month of the racing season, I begin to seek, and even need, balance – moments with my family and friends doing everything I don’t have time to do during the busy racing season.

This off-season I have been writing a new book, which will be published in the spring. The book is to convey what a cyclist’s life is truly like beyond the colors of the peloton and glitter of the podium through photos, taken by Camille McMillan, and my words.

Since the first Team Sky meeting in Manchester in late November, my training has become pointed. The coach has sent me a workout schedule, my race goals have been established and I set off each morning with clear objectives. I still derive enjoyment from each session on the bike but elements of work slowly creep into each ride as the season approaches.

Climbing back on the bike again to rebuild my race fitness I feel sluggish. My pedal stroke has lost its potency, my cadence lags and my agility feels diminished. With eagerness I work to rediscover the sensations of fitness left behind at the end of the racing season. Out on the road, I breathe deeply over the climbs and push against the wind to progress. With each effort and each day of training I feel a little smoother. The wear from the training leaves me with an emotional high at the end of the day – one which I have missed during my time off, and one that I discovered decades ago as a child in Toronto.

Through November and December the workload slowly increased and will now intensify as we reach our first training camp in January where we will log many miles rides together in tight groups. On top of the structured framework the coaches will provide for the daily workouts, we’ll sprint each other for town signs and race each other for hilltops for fun. It is on these rides where the team will bond and where we’ll learn more about each other than in a hotel room or during any team building exercise.

Our bodies are evolving into those of elite athletes again. Our minds become solely focused on the goal: The races ahead.