The Innsbruck Course
There is no better way to put it—this year’s course looks absolutely brutal. At 265 kilometers and close to 5,000 meters of climbing that alone tells that it’ll be an extremely demanding day and then there are the added challenges of technical roads and a circuit. The final climb that we only do once will demand some special gearing. Tentatively, I am planning to ride a 36 – 30 gear setup.
A race like Liege-Bastogne-Liege is another super long one-day with lots of climbing, but it is on open, point-to-point roads, which gives it an entirely different feel. A circuit often feels like a steel cage match, bouncing from barrier to barrier (and never being able to find a quiet place to pee!) There’s no denying this race will be a huge battle of attrition and take around 7 hours for the finishers.
Just finishing will be a considerable feat and those that are playing for a result on the final lap will undoubtedly be the strongest and also luckiest to be “on” this particular day.
Heading into Sunday
I arrived in Austria on Wednesday and met up with the USA guys. We did our final bigger training ride and saw some of the course yesterday.
I have no experience on these roads, so recon came down to this ride. Traditionally at Worlds, there are multiple times when the circuit is closed to traffic and open specifically for training, but not this year. The USA hotel is about 80 km outside of Innsbruck, so we got 1-2 laps on the circuit and a portion of the run-in.
The next few days are now all about resting up mixed with a few openers to stay sharp. Fueling also starts to become a more significant factor. You want to carb load, but when you aren’t riding as much, you don’t want to overeat and blimp out with all that climbing….
I felt very similar when I went into the Rio Games in 2016. It was about two weeks after the Tour and felt pretty similar. I showed up very strong on race day, so I am hoping for the same on Sunday!