Episode 1: One of the boys
“For sure I will think ‘what am I doing here?’, but I know it makes me stronger and that is the driving force for me.”
For the second year running world champion Annemiek van Vleuten voluntarily went where no other women has dared to go before; the famous point-to-point Mitchelton-SCOTT men’s camp.
Different from those of their WorldTour counterparts, Mitchelton-SCOTT’s January camp has quickly gained a reputation since it was introduced in 2018.
With ten days of back-to-back 200km days, the camp mirrors the routine of a stage race, with different roads and hotel locations each day. The purpose is to ‘empty the tank’ with load, but without intensity.
Grasping for hope following a serious knee injury at the 2018 world championship, Van Vleuten was set the challenge to join the camp for the first time last year by women’s performance manager Gene Bates.
Despite pushing herself to every limit, including making a conscious effort to ‘dress up’ for dinner in an attempt to hide her fatigue and prevent the team from restricting her participation on follow days, the results spoke for themselves.
The 37-year-old won her second race of the season, Strade Bianche, and went on to have her most successful year to date, including a Giro Rosa title and a UCI World Championship gold medal.
‘One of the boys’ is the first episode in the ‘Annemiek van Vleuten – WHAT IT TAKES’ series. It provides a behind the scenes look at the motivations, struggles and impact her presence has at the Mitchelton-SCOTT men’s camp – an activity that contributed to her 2020 early season training kilometres being higher than all other elite male riders except Egan Bernal (Source: Velofacts / Strava).
Future episodes will take you further inside the world of ‘Vleuty’ – the levels she takes herself to in training, fuelling and preparing, and what controls and powers the mind of one of the world’s best female riders.
