Tour de France Prologue Master Class Profile

You think the Prologue of the Tour de France is too short, too “wimpy”? Think again! This ride will have your students seeing double, and will get them excited about the TDF stage profiles to come. This profile is for all ICA members and is a little taste of what to expect from the ICA Tour de France package. Get ready to blast off your Tour de France program with the Prologue stage, Liege to Liege. What? You think the Prologue is too wimpy, since it’s “only” 6.4km? Ah man, then you haven’t seen these guys’ faces when they race these short time trials! It’s basically an all-out, gut-busting VO2 max effort for 8 minutes. No wimps allowed for this profile! But you’ve got to know how to be able to put out that kind of effort in an effective and productive manner. Bryon tells you how in this special edition ICA master class.

I’m excited to introduce Bryon Black as one of the contributors for this year’s Tour de France profiles. I think you’ll really appreciate his style, which is slightly different from Tom Scotto’s and my approach. Bryon is a longtime cyclist and brings his racing knowledge and cycling experience into the cues of this profile. He has experienced firsthand the pain and commitment of time trials! You already know Bryon for his musical prowess (Friday Favorites and Wednesday Timeless Classics) and his mind-body acumen through his tips on how to teach endurance classes with a zen focus earlier this year, but you’ll be pleased to know that he’s been leading exciting Tour de France profiles in his classes for well over a decade.

This Prologue profile is being made available to all ICA members as part of your monthly detailed profiles. It’s not audio, but in the handout, Bryon gives you many cues to coach this profile. Bryon will also be providing another profile in the ICA 2012 TDF package, one of the 6 additional profiles of this year’s Tour de France.

Let’s get back to this Prologue profile. In order to ride 6.4km as fast as you can and be a contender, it will be extremely important to warm up in the specific way required for an effort such as this. That is what sets this profile apart–the “warm-up”! It will erase any preconceived notions you may have about the definition of “warm-up”!

Go ahead, try this ride, I dare you! (But please, be careful, and make sure you’ve been leading your students to this level of intensity carefully over many months. If not, then don’t go this hard.) If you like this one, then don’t miss out on the ICA Tour de France program.

4 Comments

  1. I’m a little behind the times, but I taught this class for the first time today. Thank you so much for taking the time to put it together! They loved it! I had to make a few changes as my class is only 45 minutes long, but it worked very well.
    The best part? When my hard core cyclist participant came to me and said “that was great!”

  2. I normally shy away from TDF profiles. Tried this one myself and thought it was challenging and I enjoyed the background information as well as the easy-to-understand cues.

    Question related to the quantity of time spent >85%: I’ve typically coached by explaining that these efforts cannot be held for such lengths of time. Examples – sprinting, explosive efforts, etc. How do you marry these 2 concepts – such an intense effort being held for a relatively long time?

  3. We taught the Prologue ride while simultaneoulsy showing the NBC Sports TDF presentation. It was so enjoyable for many of us who are “thick” body types to see what thighs and a booty do best!!! Teaching the Prologue ride is a wonderful primer for all things TDF. Really well presented by Byron, great explanations of the warm up trainings-there was a short segment on NBC showing Cadel Evans warming up for the Prologue on his trainer next to his team bus, and he was dripping buckets of sweat-it really helped to support the idea of intensity in the warm up as we watched Cadel. Thank you Byron and Jennifer. You make me look good as a teacher. The ICA is a dream resource….I feel so grateful to have access to this information and so blessed to be able to share it with our students. peace love, k

  4. I taught this class tonight and got rave reviews! It was challenging and everyone liked all of the information about this part of the TDF. Loved it! Will be teaching it again on Saturday!

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