by Craig Upton
So I managed to get a few words from Bernard and his winter program. New Yorkers may remember him from a fantastic performance at the Fall Bear Mountain race, which he won after single handedly riding back a 7 minute breakaway.
@##=#<1,r>@##=#How is the off season going?
I’d have to say the off season is going wonderfully. Better than that, I’m really happy with the way training is currently going, I so very happy about the fact that I didn’t have to worry about a contract for 2007. Last of all I did have a minor injury in the early off season, but that seems to have healed well so I’m definitely relieved with that one.
What is your winter training like?
Winter training is HARD! Well it’s harder than I’ve ever trained at this time of the year before. Sometimes I don’t think I can ride at such a high level of intensity for as many hours as I’m supposed to, but my coach says I can based on the tests we’ve done. I had some serious questions about training this hard when I first started working with him at the start of 2006. However, I’ve got to give him credit because his training plan worked better than I could have imagined. Testing is really a huge part of this success I think. Being able to really figure out exactly where your limiting points are and then specifically working on those points is more important than I could have imagined. I know it sounds simple, ‘train your weakness’ as the saying goes, but really figuring it out is not nearly as simple as one might imagine. I was able to learn so much about myself because of the routine testing that I was able to reach a fitness level far beyond my expectations for this point in my career.
Where are you living at the moment? Is the training good in the area?
Currently I’m living just south of San Francisco on the San Mateo peninsula. I couldn’t ask for better training grounds. I know I’d like it to be 85 degrees and sunny year round but in all honesty I know that wouldn’t help with the races we do in Europe in the early spring where it’s absolutely FREEZING. Here on the peninsula I can go for a six hour bike ride and only hit one stoplight for the entire day. There is absolutely no pancake flat terrain around here, it’s mainly lots of slightly rolling terrain and then climbs up and over to the coast. These climbs are generally 25 to 35 minutes long. Just today I was heading north on highway 1 and here I’m riding on the coast, starring at the storm swells coming in. It’s a partially cloudy sky but some of the sun’s rays are still poking their way through the clouds. There’s a lighthouse on a point that’s creating the conditions for these great waves and all this together makes for an amazing landscape. I’m just riding by just grinning like an idiot and in total awe and then I wonder what everyone else is doing with their afternoon. Did I mention I like the riding here?
Read the rest of this interview here