Bradley Wiggins: My Time by Bradley Wiggins Read Free Book Online Page B

state of mind of his riders. Tim might have pencilled in some interval training three days after I’ve won a big race; Shane will look at it and say, ‘No, Brad just needs to ride his bike that day. He doesn’t need the mental stress of doing intervals.’ The outcome is the same: in physical terms I end up with the workload Tim devises, but Shane reduces the impact the training has on my mind and on my life. The key thing is Tim has never been a bike rider whereas Shane has; that means he understands what it’s like and runs the programme through the filter of normal life. That’s where the two of them work well together. Their skills just marry up.
    Between them, Tim and Shane figure out the specific areas I need to work on. They look at everything through the year, they review what went right and what didn’t. Once we’ve reassessed the goals and decided what we’re doing next year, Tim and Shane will go away and write a plan for the season, a phased plan – like a business plan, but working back from the main goal – and Tim will look at it for weeks before coming back with another plan that includes all the specifics. One phase can be two weeks or ten days, one phase could be a week-long rest; for example, you might start off with five weeks general conditioning, getting back up to, say, twenty hours a week; phase two will be pre-race conditioning so it will be Majorca, say 1 January to 19 February. That will be working harder, starting to touch on threshold areas, and then it will be 20 February to 24 March, an initial race phase that includes Paris–Nice. It will be like that all the way towards July. That’s what we’ve always done with the track as well, from the days when we always worked back from the date of the team pursuit at a World’s or an Olympics.
    Before Shane and Tim took over, I worked mainly with Matt Parker, the sports scientist who had begun working with the team pursuit squad in early 2007. Matt had always been at the velodrome; he used to test me on the rig. He looked after bits of my training until 2010 although he wasn’t a constant presence like Shane and Tim are now. I’d ask Matt what training I should be doing for a particular period; he’d send something through and I’d follow it, or at least I’d follow bits of it. It was much more informal, and there was never any criticism from Matt. He was very respectful of me and he always used to say to me, ‘You know yourself better than anyone.’ Which is perhaps why I felt like I could do no wrong. Perhaps Matt had too much respect for me; he is a lovely guy and would never have a go at me or criticise me if I missed out sessions we’d agreed on. Whereas Shane would go, ‘Why the fuck didn’t you go and do that? I didn’t tell you that was a key ride for the hell of it.’ So that’s the difference between Matt and Shane.
    That’s not to say a hairdrying from Shane is hard to take. He’s just honest. It’s always a matter of, ‘Right, I’m going to tell you something now, you’re not going to like it, but you need to pull your head out of your arse, all right? You know I love you to bits, but these next three days are vital.’ It’s in that tone. He’ll tell you you’re the best athlete in the world and you’ve just got to get this bit right. He’ll praise you at the same time as making you feel how important this is. He’ll say, ‘To be honest, last week you fucked up. I’m telling you that as a mate, you messed up big time, you shouldn’t have gone and done what you did, but it’s done now and you learn from your mistakes.’ The reason why athletes like Sir Chris Hoy and I are happy to take a bollocking from him is because when he tells you that stuff you know he cares about you. He’s not ranting at you because he’s going to get in trouble himself or because he’s had a bad day. And you know likewise that when you do well he will never blow smoke up your backside. He will say, ‘Good job, mate, and