'A proper immunity booster' – Wout van Aert puts in huge Strava gravel ride with Visma-Lease a Bike teammates
The Belgian's six-hour-plus ride also featured Queen stage levels of climbing
Wout van Aert's intense preparation for the upcoming and newly-named Tour Auvergne-Rhône Alpes continued at the weekend with a monster 181km gravel ride with his Visma-Lease a Bike team-mates.
Christened 'That was a proper immunity booster' by the Belgian Paris-Roubaix champion, the six-hour ride also involved Matteo Jorgensen, Eduardo Affiini and Bruno Armirail, and took place in Spain's Sierra Nevada mountains.
Van Aert and members of the Dutch team have been based at the ski resort of Pradollano near Granada for nearly two weeks now. At 2,100m above sea-level it means this half of the team is enjoying some useful altitude time – the other half, or at least part of it, are supporting Jonas Vingegaard in the Giro d'Italia.
Perhaps not surprisingly given the location, Van Aert's ride also featured a serious amount of vertical height gain – 4,022 metres, according to Van Aert's Strava file. That's Queen stage territory and around 100 metres more than he will face on stage six, the biggest climbing day at the Tour Auverge-Rhône Alpes – formerly called the Critérium du Dauphiné. With that amount of climbing and distance, and the rough roads involved, the 29kph (18mph) average speed is impressive.
According to the latest provisional start list Armirail will be joining Van Aert for the race in south-east France, although as part of Visma-Lease a Bike's proposed Tour de France squad, both Affini and Jorgenson are likely to be at Tour Auvergne-Rhône Alpes too, given its status as a key Tour warm-up event.
There are some lengthy stages on the race though, including a mountainous day from Saint Martin le Vinoux to le Puy en Velay on stage two, which will see the riders chalk up 237km – something Van Aert and co may have had in mind when he put in a six-hour stint.
Somewhat by the by – but anyone who enjoys the (admittedly slightly niche) pastime of 'tiling' by bike will enjoy this – the previous day Van Aert polished off a 123km ride with the title 'A squadrat a day, keeps the doctor away'. Again in the Sierra Nevada and again super-hilly at 3,633km, the title hints at his tile-collecting side hustle. And indeed, a quick check of the Squadrats website – one of the numerous tiling sites, with Veloviewer being another biggie – reveals Van Aert has ridden through a whopping 45,210 mile-square map tiles, putting him 85th on the world leaderboard.
Mind you, he has healthy competition: Thomas De Gendt is 10th with 68,810, Toms Skujiňs (Lidl-Trek) is 18th with 59,558, and team-mate Sepp Kuss is 42nd with 51,703 tiles.
