2012 Tour de France Interactive Training Calendar
Friday, June 29, 2012 at 9:37AM 
If you missed your shot at making the 2012 Tour de France, don't fret, FasCat Coaching and TrainingPeaks has got you covered. Although we all know you would probably be racing head to head for the yellow jersey in the Prologue, and chasing the King of the Mountains jersey up the 17.4 kilometer long, hors categorie Grand Colombier in Stage 10, this year you can do it all from home.
The FasCat Tour de France training calender offers 3 weeks of detailed workouts, each designed to mimic the stage race of the day. For example, during stages like 1, 3, and 8 of the Tour that feature short steep climbs in regions of Belgium and Northern France, your own training will consist of intense VO2 max workouts to simulate the zone 5 & 6 efforts put forth by the tour riders. During the longer mountain stages you will be riding in the medium to hard range, targeting threshold wattages and heart rate zones for the length of the workout. When it comes to stages like 10 through 12 that tackle one categorized climb after the next, your training plan will have you riding below threshhold on the first climbs, then insist you go full throttle on the final climbs to steal the King of the Mountains Jersey.
Don't worry, you will have two rest days on July 10th and 17th. However, if your Tour de France training is competing with family time or work, just pick and choose a few days a week to get after it, or shorten the daily rides into an hour or less. We can't all be on the Tour, but at least we can train like we are.
To learn more, read the full article on Velo News or view FasCat Coaching's FREE 2012 Tour de France training plan.
Reader Comments (6)
Thanks for the post, what is the meaning of FG in the plan?
Thanks
Hi there - glad you like it. FG = Full Gas, meaning go as hard as you can go. Full Gas is a bike racing expression meaning that the rider go as hard as he can over a particular section of the course. Enjoy!
Is this going to erase my other plan that have from my coach?
@Jen - no it won't, you can have multiple plans loaded on your TrainingPeaks account!
I'm not sure if i quite understand the training. For example:
Zone 5: 2 sets of 2 x 3 min On 3 min OFF FG! 6 min in b/w sets; 1.5 hrs total (Short- Power Climbs)
Does it mean do 2 sets of ON: 2min at zone 5, and off for 3 minutes? When do I go into full gas? And what do I do for the remainder of the 1.5 hours?
Another example:
Sprint Work: 3 Small Ring Sprints for 8 sec then 3 Big Ring Sprints also for 8 sec
Does it mean do only 6 sprints totalling 48 sec? how long to break in between? And what do i do for the remainder of the 1.5 hours? I'm new to training this year, but 48 sec total of work doesn't seem that I would be making any gains.
Support, write your article is good!