Mount Teide has, in recent years, become cycling's most exclusive shared workspace. In mid-February, for instance, those hotdesking in the Parador Hotel – altitude 2,000 metres – included Vincenzo Nibali, Steven Kruijswijk, Ilnur Zakarin and Tom Dumoulin. Riders came and went all through the month, but few, if any, took up residence quite as long as Michael Matthews, who would spend the bones of three weeks training on the volcano.
While so many of his Classics competitors opted to start their seasons in the southern hemisphere in January, Matthews has stuck to a familiar routine for 2019, his third season at the colours of Sunweb. For the fifth successive year, he has eschewed the Tour Down Under and February stage races, preferring instead to steel himself in relative solitude with a lengthy altitude training camp in Tenerife.
Matthews will make his seasonal debut at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad on Saturday against men who have already sought – and received – broad assurances about their condition from their results and performances in January and February. The Australian, by contrast, will set out guided by his training data and his own sensations, but it’s an approach that seems to suit. In 2015 and 2016, after all, he hit the ground running by claiming stage victories at Paris-Nice.
"I feel like when you're doing the races at the start of the season you sort of deviate from your clear goal and you start to think 'Oh, I need to win this bunch sprint in Tour Down Under,'" Matthew tells Cyclingnews. "But it's totally different racing. It's really hot in Australia, the stages are short, so to come back here and ride the Classics is like night and day difference."
ADVERTISEMENT
Even so, it still requires a particular brand of discipline to train at a level that will allow him to hit the ground running and compete on more or less equal terms with riders who have already notched up a solid clump of racing miles.
"I just love riding the bike, and I actually really love training, so I love the stepping stones of getting to where I need to be in the season," Matthews says. "If you don't enjoy it, then I don't think you can do the kind of preparation I've done. You have to get up every morning wanting to go and ride your bike and enjoy every second of it. I'm just so thankful that I can ride my bike every single day. It's still surreal for me that I get paid to ride my bike, I'm still a little bit in fantasy land that I have this as a job."
Tom Stamsnijder and Matthews backstage at the Team Sunweb presentation in Berlin (Bettini Photo)
Omloop to BinckBank
Doing it all
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest Interviews and Features http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/matthews-im-excited-to-rub-shoulders-with-those-guys
No comments:
Post a Comment