Michael Hutchinson is a former professional cyclist who has competed in three Commonwealth Games and won multiple national titles in Britain and Ireland. The author of a new book on speed and cycling, here he shares what he’s lento about going as fast as you can on two wheels:
Equipment
Heart monitors are essential if you’re taking it seriously, and power meters are terrific. They give you an exact knowledge of your performance; with cycling it depends so much on the weather or the wind or the day, but with a power meter you can see exactly how hard you are working at a given moment. Then you can download it to a computer file and measure your progress.
When buying a bike the most important thing is that it fits you. You’re buying the chassis for your dream car, but you’re the engine and it all needs to fit together. Anyone can tell the difference between a $1,600 and a $3,200 bike, but when it gets to $8,000 to $10,000 it’s really a matter of degree.
Diet
When you’re doing a long race, you need a steady stream of carbs coming in. You want to be thinking about carb drinks, glucose and energy drinks.
You’ve got to make sure there’s 60 grams of carbs coming in every hour, with 500 to 600 ml of liquid. There’s always someone who eats 120 grams of carbs during a race because they think extra energy will make them go faster, but they’ll end up barfing into a ditch because they can’t absorb it.
Clothes
Build up a base layer with a breathable fabric that keeps the sweat away from you so you stay warm. Then wear a good, snug jersey. The tightness is 90 per cent of the game: If you have a power meter you’ll be able to see the huge difference in the amount of energy you need to put in when you’re wearing a baggy jersey compared to a tight one.
Training
You can train in 1,000 different ways - depending on who you are and what you’re aiming for - but what you should be trying to do is replicate the demands of the race as far as possible. If the race is at high altitude then you have to train at high altitude too.
I find interval training works; it makes someone who’s already quick really quick. You might do a minute on and a minute off, or two minutes on and three off - whatever suits you best and will make you see it to the end of the interval. So people like doing blood-in-the-mouth interval training, going full pelt for seven or eight minutes at a time, but I’ve never really understood that.
Psychology
There are two psychologies to performance cycling. There’s the psychology of training, the discipline, and then there’s the psychology of doing the race. The fact that you have one says nothing about whether you have the other.
Before the race, you need to rehearse everything in your mind calmly so you know what you are going to do and can recreate that calmness on the day. There’s one trainer I know who will take you through all the possibilities months before: what will you do if you’re in the lead at this point? What will you do if you’re second and you’re overtaken? What’s the worst thing that could happen? You have to be quite careful with visualizations though, because if you start visualizing things that might go wrong, they probably will go wrong. It’s a powerful tool.
Genetics
Cyclists really do come in all shapes and sizes. You don’t necessarily need long legs, it’s more the internal mechanics that are important. I’ve always been able to go fast because I have an enormous aerobic system; I can take a lot of oxygen out of the air and burn through it. You can’t do that much about it but you can always optimize what you’ve got. Somebody with poor genetics, who doesn’t have that aerobic capacity, probably won’t ever win the Tour de France - but then that’s not what most people are setting out to do.
Faster: The Obsession, Science and Luck Behind the World’s Fastest Cyclistsby Michael Hutchinson is published by Bloomsbury and available from 27 March, priced at £10.99 in paperback
