1st training camp: Théo Ouvrard looks back on it
Team Arkéa-Samsic held its first winter training camp this year in Castellón, Spain, from 11 to 19 December.
Photos : Franz-Renan Joly
“The aim of the first December training camp each season is to finish off the foundations laid by the riders over the winter. This year we were grouped together near Valencia, in Castellón to be precise. There were riders from the UCI WorldTour structure and those from the continental development team. We were able to do a lot, with some initial efforts made. There were sprint workshops with introductory sessions with Arnaud Démare, and work focused on time trials with a view to the stage of this type scheduled for the next edition of Paris-Nice, with a lot of emphasis on the technical side of the exercise. The group who will be taking part in the Santos Tour Down Under, Torquay Race and Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race in Australia were a little further ahead in their training sessions than the riders who will be resuming the season on the Old Continent. They worked on acclimatising to the heat by doing saunas and home-training sessions in the heat and humidity, and the very last phase will be to gradually adjust to the time difference between Europe and Australia, which is very important. The entire WorldTour team did 29 hours 30 minutes of training throughout the course”.