INSIDE JOB

To recap the introduction in our previous issue, thanks to the pandemic, the riders of Team Alpecin – the Europe-wide competition that rewards its winners with gear, coaching and access to the biggest events – faced a very different summer compared to years gone by. Out went the mountain training camps and places on the start line of L’Étape du Tour, and in came an ominous work-from-home diet of turbo training.

However, the three UK riders that we’re following, Steph Clutterbuck, Paul Gillam and Marcus Elliott, have embraced their predicament and are throwing themselves full throttle into improving their – functional threshold power (FTP), or the power they can hold for an hour in relation to their weight (watts/kg) over the course of the summer with the help of remote coaching. Their coach is Patrick Marseille, from