HOW MANY KILOMETERS DO PROS RIDE DURING A YEAR?

Season 2018 has just started, but professional athletes have already ridden a few thousand kilometers.

They are professionals, of course, and riding is their job. Nowadays riders are to used to training less than in the past. Now there is a more scientific approach to training so riders can benefit from more focused trainings and restructure and recovery are emphasised more. But certainly they are still putting in a hell of a lot of kilometers.

Thanks to power meters over the last few years we have been able to see their exact data and know how hard or easy they are going throughout the season.

The athlete who covered more kilometers during the 2017 season was the Dane Michael Valgren. The long-distance rider of the Astana Pro Team covered 33,908 kilometers between races and trainings, taking part and concluding the most important three-week race: the Tour de France. He also concluded other important competitions like Milano-Sanremo, Ronde Van Vlaanderen and the World Championship of Bergen, finishing in the first bunch. As for the specifics, he rode 2,800 kilometers on average a month and 650 kilometers in a week. In 2017 he climbed the final altimetry of 437,152 kilometers. In fact, the terrain ridden throughout the year is another important factor, and thanks to their skills on flat terrain, Valgren became the workaholic of the group.

The Dane rode for 336 days, and after an hard one day race he had a rest day or a few days of easy riding to recover and get ready for the next battle. In general pro riders don’t tend to train more than 5 hours a session. This is to maximise the effectiveness of workouts. More is not better, smart is. Valgren stayed in the saddle for 1,052 hours and 43 minutes, a long time.

Definitely, riders who cover more than 30.000 kilometers in a year with the hardest conditions need high-quality products, and Full Speed Ahead, which in 2018 celebrate the ninth year in a row as technical sponsor of Astana Pro Team, will guarantee Michael Valgren and his teammates the utmost reliability for all those kilometers.