Inside My Andorra Training Camp | OGT – FACTOR BIKES

Go behind the scenes of my training camp in Andorra back in June with my coach and good friend, Jonny Wale, formerly of Team INEOS and now with the BORA–Hansgrohe Red Bull team. Jonny’s one of the leading minds in performance cycling, working with some of the world’s best athletes… and also me!

In 35°C heat and over 2000m altitude, I was in the form of my life after two solid blocks of altitude training this year. See what we do, how we train, and why Jonny has put his weight of knowledge and experience behind me as I keep racing across road, gravel, and even a bit of track.

I’m incredibly lucky to have the support network I do, from my people like Jonny, my sponsors, my family to the people behind the scenes who help make everything possible.

Huge thanks to my sponsors:

WeAreOGT.com
FactorBikes.com
Orientation.Agency
ViresVelo.com

And it was always interesting for me, you’ve got this world-class rider that has no baggage attached to him. So, it’s like it’s really rare in like from a performance support world that I live in to have this unique opportunity to do whatever you want. It’s taken a lot of work, but really when I take a step back and think where I was in the end of 2022 where I really lost everything all at once, it was all just everything went to pot, you know? I’ve got all the stuff that I I wanted. It’s a bit like being a junior again and not tied necessarily and I just uh just got really amazing equipment. So obviously I I I quit once and sort of thought I’d be happy doing something else outside of cycling. But yeah, perhaps this is what I need to do forever. You know, I I still I still love it just as much as as much as ever. So, uh I’m I’m Matt Coach. I’ve been for two and a half years now. This camp has all been about clarity on what we’re trying to achieve. And so every effort you’re doing, you’re visualizing that you know the purpose of what what’s happening, you know, so you’re not just going through the motions. It’s like that whole like holistic psychological buy in to the whole process. Obviously, he’s taken it upon himself to to help me just because he really believes in me. I’ll talk you through it when we get back. But that was two two sets of five. One minute on, 2 minutes off, 500 watt. 560, 630, 680. And what temperature is it outside? That’s a good point. 35 1,800 m. My view within training is totally personal is that like it either needs to be really really hard or really easy. I think people confuse that in terms of like endurance riding or efforts, you know, but it’s also like how stressful is that day? And I think a lot of the stuff we’ve been doing with Matt is trying to really simulate what a race day will be like in some of these key days. You know, you spend like you spend the last 8 n weeks building up to this point. You want to keep them at sort of 90%. And then suddenly we we we we twisted a bit. We squeeze him in these final few days. First day I’ve actually been completely broken. I’d reached the limit of where I was going to get to in with my own knowledge and my attitude towards training and racing. This hill has got bigger. A lot bigger. You just like riding a bike outside, you know, you’re like hacking it up these long climbs, pushing yourself. You’ll have a a 3 4h hour hack, which which is gravel racing, you know, if it’s gone from one goal to the next. It was track and then it was I did really well at the gravel and then I you know I did the Tour of Britain last year and then now I’ve gone right well I need to focus a bit on gravel and the GR at the a few weeks ago. I think it’s a favorite race I’ve ever done. It’s a hell of a step down from what I was doing but it’s still just as good. Like it’s it’s it’s great fun. What is success? You know like what’s the time scale on this? It’s like the beauty of his project is that there is no end end point. You know, he’s got a really nice close-knit community of people that have helped him. So, this is all still part of the process, you know, and it comes with pressure. You know, you look at him and it’s like, how is how are you going to deal with this pressure in these next 12 months? You talk about what you want to achieve, but this should just be a stepping stone of it. And if it’s success or failure in this camp, I don’t really care. Like all I want out of Matt is like as a personal growth and a professional growth in 2 3 4 years time whenever he finishes he can like take the helmet off and be like I did everything I could you know I went through the process. I followed it. I believed you know that that’s success. It’s an amazing life and I’m lucky to do what I do. I just really enjoy racing. That’s what I’ve I’ve realized. I I do it because I because I love doing it. Yeah. So, why not do what you’re good at and do what you do what you love.