Ralf Grabsch: training in the winter time

During the winter time cyclists prepare for the next season after a break to recover from a long and hard season.The form is made durint the winter. Diversification is especially important in the winter months. When the weather is cold and dim it often makes sense to switch to alternative exercises. And this can be real fun. Ralf Grabsch explained on the team Milram website how this might look like.

Grabsch said: "First of all you put away your bike for three to four weeks and try not to touch it. You don’t even think of it. In these three, four weeks I go swimming, running or climbing in an indoor climbing hall. And I enjoy the time without the bike,“ the 33 year-old Milram rider explains his way of relaxing from the exhausting races. But he starts training soon again. "In this case, I prefer the hard method to get used to everything again soon. I ride 100/110/120 kilometers in three days, after that I soon know again what awaits me. A break of one day, then training continues,“ „Grabschi“ describes his start. Grabsch also likes to ride on his mountainbike during the winter time: "That brings diversification and a lot of fun!“

The Milram rider has developed his own rhythm: "In the first two weeks I exercise three to four times on the bike, each time about two to four hours a day. On the other days I go swimming, rollerblading or I work out at the gym. Then, the pensum is tightened. For the next two weeks I sit on the bike four to five times a week for two and a half to five hours. The other days I spend with alternative trainings like swimming, rollerblading, walking. Gymnastics are very important as well. I often combine the fitness workouts with going to the sauna.“

About the first training camp during the winter Grabsch said: "In the two weeks at the training camp in Mallorca we train for three, four days, about four to six hours each. Then there is a break of one day, which we use for sauna and gymnastics. This rhythm is repeated again twice, so that our legs get the feeling for the hard stresses and strains.“

The week after the training camp is a bit more easy: "Body and soul have to relax from the first hard training unit. And it is Christmas time then, when everything is a bit more comfortabe,“ Ralf Grabsch said.

Grabsch will intesify his training between christmas and new years eve, this is the time were his body has to get used to long distances: "I do this for a week, mostly in some southern country." Grabsch concluded with: "Then, my body is fully adapted to the long, hard exercise.“

Lots of climbing at the 2008 Olympic road race

The UCI technical expert, former professional rider Charly Mottet told Belgian daily newspaper La Derniere Heure that the course of the 2008 Olympic road race has a climb of 11 kilometers, which the riders have to climb seven times. The race will finish on a climb of 7% at 700 meters. It is definitely not a course for sprinters.

Mottet said: "Tom Boonen can stay home, but so can plenty of others, because this is a true course for climbers." The former French professional rider, who wear the yellow jersey for seven days in the 187 edition of the Tour de France continued by saying: "It will leave the centre of Beijing, in the vicinity of the Forbidden City, pass through Tiananmen Square and then leave Beijing, probably via the expressway, towards the Great Wall of China. That is 80 km, all of it flat. But then, when they reach the Wall, a circuit of 24 km to be covered six or seven times awaits the competitors." The 11 kilometer climb will bring the riders from 80 meters to 600 meters above sealevel:  "The total altitude difference is therefore the same as a hard mountain stage if this is the equivalent of a third category col," Mottet said. The climb is split into "three sections, with a short descent between each, of an average gradient of five percent with sections of seven, eight or even ten percent. As it is long, you would climb it with a 41x17, 19, 21."

The Olympic Road Race is scheduled for Saturday, August 9, 2008 and apart from the climbing, the riders will also have to deal with very warm weather conditions and a high atmospheric humidity. The last Olympic road race was won by Paolo Bettini in Athens, Greece. The 2008 Olympic games will be held in Beijing, China.