Here’s my take on how to best prepare for sucess in the Etape du Tour, as a local to Alpe d’Huez and a cycling and triathlon coach. When the Official route of Tour de France 2026 was announced, it was pretty clear that stage 20, Bourg d’Oisans to Alpe d’Huez, was going to be a clear choice and a serious challenge to all but the most experienced cyclists.
The Route
There is no doubt that this is going to be an especially hard day in the saddle, even for an Etape du Tour. The 171km, and way more importantly 5400m of elevation gain will mean it’s the hardest Etape du Tour that I can find details on by a fair margin (if there are any Etape historians out there that know better please reply in the comments!).
The biggest mistake you could make is to not understand what these figures mean. Anyone who’s not ridden something approaching a ride with this much climbing won’t have a good enough idea of what’s required. If you’ve ridden mountainous terrain, with at least 3000m or more in one day, then you’ll be able to put this into perspective – if not then I would strongly recommend that you try to do a ride of this scale at least once prior to the event. Of course I’m aware that only a lucky few will have this kind of potential ride on their doorstep, so a close second best is to get yourself to somewhere you can rack up a decent amount of smaller climbs to total 3000m+ over the equivalent distance. It’s not quite the same but a hell of a lot closer to letting you appreciate what you’ll need to be able to do on the day! Anyone who thinks ‘I’ve ridden that far before, this has just got more climbs in it so it will just take a bit longer’ has a big surprise coming their way!
The next suggestion is to study the route – understand where the feed stations are, & the length & gradient of the climbs. Kind of obvious, but what you’ll already know if you appreciate how many calories you’l be likely to be burning on a ride like this is that pacing and nutrition are going to be critical. In addition, knowing how you might react to 2600m+ of altitude could be very useful to know, or perhaps realising that the last couple of kilometers of both the Galibier & the Sarenne climbs is the steepest part might influence your pacing strategy.
Pacing
There is nothing like a big race or sportif, combined with big long climbs to totally mess up your chances of correctly pacing an effort. Not only do you start off all hyped up, probably already popping some gels to get that blood sugar even higher, you’ll feel like the first part of the climbs are easier than you expected and you’ll decide, ‘why don’t I try and follow that wheel just ahead, I’m sure it’ll be fine!’. It will be fine for the first 10 minutes or so, then you’ll feel a bit of fatigue coming in and you’ll back off. This might be when the gradient steepens and you’ll subconsciously work harder, without even realising. By 30 minutes in you’ll be wanting the climb to end, but it just won’t stop. An hour in you’ll have slowed down to what feels like a crawl and it will still feel hard. You’ll get to the top of the climb feeling like you’ve worked harder than you would have hoped for, but the bad news is there are 3 more like that and eventually it turns into a deathmarch to the end, or worse still, abandoning.
If you can see anything of yourself in there – even though I might have played it up for dramatic effect 🙂 then the good news is that not only does it not have to be that way, you can also go faster for the same level of fitness. The key to this is pacing your effort – starting off by acknowleging that each climb will likely feel a little harder than the last. The way you can successfully adjust for this is to accept that the first climb should feel easy, the second ‘just starting to work’, the third a challenge, which leaves the ‘I’ll give it my all’ for the last climb of the day as it should be, rather than the second onwards resulting in a downward spiral in pace. Prepare to have to make a metal effort to hold yourself back on the first couple of climbs (especially the first) – this will be challenged every time you see someone go past you. You can use this to help you though – look for someone who seems to be the ‘old you’ – passing you, yes, but clearly working way too hard, and then think to yourself ‘I’ll see you later’.
Nutrition
The other key aspect to maintaining speed, apart from good pacing, is ensuring that you are providing enough calories and hydration to meet your needs. Beware of thinking ‘more is better’ – especially if you haven’t trialled that quantity (grams per hour) of:
– that specific energy drink / electrolyte / gel / bar
– for an appropriate duration
– at race effort.
All these factors can mess up your digestion, if applied at higher levels or for longer than you’ve practiced for in training. The end result of an upset stomach is that you can no longer add calories at the required raet which means you either a) slow down significantly or b) risk bonking / hitting the wall. Neither option is great but I’d suggest if you have to pick one, pick the first one!
I wont give any advice about specific race fuelling plans – that’s a massive subject in itself, but I would say you need to find something that seems to work for you well in training all the way up to a hard training ride of 80% race duration (guess how long it will take you and make sure you do at least a couple of rides of this duration prior to the event). We are all different – there is not one size fits all solution for nutrition, which is why there are so many opinions out there for it, so experiment, find out what seems to work for you (by testing different types and rates per hour) and then stick to it.
Lastly – hydration can be a key factor, as it can hit the mid to high 30’s on a hot day here in the Alps. One advantage is that as you climb it will cool slightly, but do not underestimate the effect of having to get up a 30km valley stretch in mid 30’s heat, at pace. Again, there are only a few (lucky?) people who can test this out in practice but I’d say that for anyone who can’t expose themselves to this level of heat in order to adapt, then just allow for the fact that you will have to slow down a little, and drink copious amounts of both electrolytes and water whenever you get the opportunity.
I’m not typically a big drinker while riding, but I worked out that I consumed at least 17 x 600ml bottles when I rode in the 2015 Marmotte (which if you didn’t know is essentially the same route as the Etape with Alpe d’Huez rather than Sarenne at the end). That day the temperature was in the low 40’s at the bottom of the Alpe – hopefully you won’t have to experience this during this year’s Etape but be ready for it just in case!
Training
I’ll keep this one short – again, there are so many ways you could approach this I’ll just give a few general pointers:
– Make training a habit which becomes an integrated part of your life / schedule – it’s just ‘what you do’. If you are forever having to ‘fit it in’ then you’ve entered the wrong event.
– Volume is king. You can follow all sorts of different methodologies and techniques etc, but if the one thing you do is aim for a 80/20 ish split of endurance to intensity, at the highest volume you can cope with / squeeze into you life, you won’t go far wrong
– As mentioned earlier, build up to at least 2 rides at 80% (time, not distance) of your estimated race duration, with the second ideally 3 or 4 weekends prior to race day. This should be ridden at a ‘decent’ pace – in between easy relaxed coffee shop ride, chatting the whole way, and full on race mode. The last third (at least) should be a mental as well as physical test!
Final Thoughts
To close, have a think about your goals for the race. There is a huge difference between training to get round and training to race for either positions or a specific time. Your training and commitment to it should reflect the ambition of your goals. On the day, if in doubt, take a conservative approach! It’s likely that for a lot of people this will be the single hardest and longest ride they’ve attempted. If this could be you, then be prepared to drop the pace at any time as maintaining a sustainable pace is both faster in the long run and gives you a better chance to get to the finish.
Lastly – don’t forget to look around, enjoy the spectacular scenery and enjoy the day! In the end, unless you are a top flight international amateur, this is what it’s all about.