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After coming back from China where he took part to the last event of the World Tour season, Davide Martinelli spoke about this experience with SportPlusHealth.
In China I completed a stage race very hard also from a psychological point of view. Usually by the end of October we are already in holiday. Despite this a lot of athletes arrived here in great shape. In World Tour races you can always find numerous champions and the competition level is high even if someone was more tired than usual. In fact the group was reducing in number more easily than during other races.
Davide was in China to cover a role which was very important for the final result.
“I was there to help Fernando Gaviria. I was the second-last man and I did my job in the best way. I had the same responsibility during the Giro d’Italia, helping Max Richeze and Fernando Gaviria. The outcomes has been very good, with 4 victories and a second place.
As you can see from the attached file we put a lot of effort and during the last 200 meters of the stage we made the best performance ever. Even during the hardest stage we worked hard for Alaphilippe, bringing him to the 4th place of the ranking. Another great outcome.”
After coming back to Italy the athletes are preparing themselves to rest, but with some shrewdness.
“It is true – Martinelli admits – our bodies are used to train very much, up to 22 hours per week. For this reason suddenly interrupt the workouts would be a bad idea. It is better to perform light trainings because the muscles would suffer instead.”
After this short period there are 15-18 days of full rest. A good moment for family and friends.
Around the 20th they will start back with alternative trainings, like footing and gym. Then from the 20th they move back to bike together with gym. Instead after the 1st of December the bike workouts will be the only activity performed.
What is the best way to start over?
Three days of gym followed by bike and two days of footing. A total of five days followed by two days of rest. Also from a psychological point of view this is not an hard come back. The effort increases around the 10th of December, when the retreat starts in Spain.
The winter is very important to reset the emotions and restore the body. You free your mind, thinking to something different from the bike while doing all those activities impossible to manage during the season.
The coach analysis:
Analyzing the file from Davide Martinelli, regarding the 6th stage of the Tour of Guangxi, the last event of the season, we see a 168 km track at an average speed of 44 kmh. A very fast stage with an high cadence even if this is the last seasonal effort. The total distance has been covered in 3 hours and 47 minutes.
In the last part of the stage we can see a number of fast rythm variations, very complex to manage. These continued until the moment when our athlete took the control of the race with a progression of more than 1100 Watt which hits the group and allows the Quick Step Floors racers to win the stage.
We can confirm, as already mentioned, that a good job during the finishing workouts allowed Davide to be ready for the second-last man role, the one bringing the sprinter teammates in front of the group.
THE DETAILS: in the last 7 km you can measure an average power of more than 295 Watt and an average speed of 53 kmh. The maximum speed is 65 kmh during the launch phase, when he sustained the highest effort.
To confirm how good was this exploit we can look at the heart rate, its peak of 188 ppm and 1162 Watt during the key phase of the race.
The end of the race has been very hard because of the continuous sprints and rhythm changes until the last moment.
One last note confirming the great physical condition of Davide: once its work was done, he recovered very rapidly until the GPS stop, passing from 188 ppm to 140 in more or less a minute.