In his book, Racing With The Rocketmen, cycling journalist James Witts taps up his contacts in the pro racing world to get himself in shape for an epic road ride
Me and my book
The book is an ‘Everyman meets Supermen and Superwomen’ tale of woe, blood, sweat, tears, disappointment and the odd laugh.
This isn’t my first book but it’s the first where I’ve shone a light on myself. It’s about me as a 40-something-year-old taking on a major challenge, the Étape du Tour, a mass participation ride that mirrors one of the big mountain stages of the Tour de France.
To prepare myself, I tapped into my contacts from many years working in the cycling industry to try to learn the tricks of the pros and assimilate them in a very diluted way that would work for me – someone with a day job and a couple of kids. It’s about that one big challenge and the joys of learning things along the way, plus a few anecdotes.
The premise was I’d look at the training, gear, nutrition, technology and tactics used by pro riders and apply that to myself.
It all started with a professional bike fit from Phil Burt in Manchester. He used to work at Team Sky, then went freelance a few years ago. He measured me, assessed my pedalling style and made all the necessary tweaks until my Giant road bike was perfectly set up for my needs. Then it got stolen.
One night I got a message on my local community WhatsApp group saying one of the members had seen two lads cycling off with four bikes. I looked out of the window and saw my garage door had been peeled open like a tuna tin. It wasn’t the greatest start to proceedings.
The Étape became the goal, but I also built in some other events along the way, so it ended up being a sort of pseudo WorldTour calendar.
Once I’d sourced a new bike, my first stop was a cyclocross race in January. I’d never done cyclocross before so did a practice session and really enjoyed it, plus I got some useful pointers from former National Champion Nick Craig. This was followed later by the Tour of Flanders sportive in April, where I put into practice lessons from three-time winner Johan Museeuw (‘be hard’). I even raced in a time-trial in Dursley, just down the road from Bristol, using advice imparted by US National Time-Trial Champion Lawson Craddock.
Mostly, however, it was training rides and time on the Wattbike, where a power-based plan from Training Peaks coach Phil Mosley really helped: three weeks of progress, one week easing
