The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast by CTS
Coach Adam Pulford delivers actionable training advice and answers your questions in short weekly episodes for time-crunched cyclists looking to improve their cycling performance. The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast (formerly The TrainRight Podcast) is brought to you by the team at CTS - the leading endurance coaching company since 2000. Coach Adam pulls from over a decade of coaching experience and the collective knowledge of over 50+ CTS Coaches to help you cut throught the noise of training information and implement proven training strategies that’ll take your performance to the next level.
The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast by CTS
Tour de France Femmes Podcast - Stage 3 & Inside Look at Alison Jackson's Training
Welcome to the Tour de France Femmes Podcast, from the producers of "The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast"
CTS will publish daily Tour de France Femmes podcasts with Coaches Adam Pulford and Renee Eastman. They'll recap the stage, but the unique aspect of these podcasts will be coaching insights about how athletes prepare for the demands showcased in that day's stage.
STAGE 3 PODCAST OVERVIEW
Stage 3 of the 2025 Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift was dominated by a 4-rider breakaway containing CTS Athlete and Canadian National Champion Alison Jackson from EF Education Oatly. Although the breakaway was caught before the finish, Jackson was strong in the finale and still led out her teammate. Coach Adam Pulford reveals insights and details of her pre-TDFF training and TrainingPeaks metrics to help put her fitness and preparation in perspective for everyday athletes.
RESOURCES
- https://trainright.com/cycling-training-terms-and-acronyms-explained/
- https://trainright.com/what-is-chronic-training-load-ctl-and-how-to-use-it-to-improve-performance/
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Co-Host: Renee Eastman
Renee Eastman is a CTS Premier Level Coach and has been coaching with the company for more than 20 years. She has been a professional bike fitter for 15 years and was one of the first fitters to use the Retül bike fit system. She has a master's degree in exercise science, has worked for USA Cycling, and is a 6-time Masters National Champion.
Renee Eastman bio: https://trainright.com/coaches/renee-eastman/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/renee.eastman/
HOST
Adam Pulford has been a CTS Coach for nearly two decades and holds a B.S. in Exercise Physiology. He's participated in and coached hundreds of athletes for endurance events all around the world.
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Welcome back Time Crunch fans, tdff fans and my co-host, rene Eastman. Today at the Tour de France, femme of X Zwift was it all about the breakaway or was it all about the sprint? We'll recap the stage and then talk about what it means to be in the break, to potentially win or lose from the break and the art of coaching, maybe some fueling, maybe some other nerdy topics and whatever else Renee wants to ask me today. So that's where we're at, renee give us the stage, recap and tell us what's up, adam?
Speaker 2:thanks, great to see you this morning. Well, it was an exciting stage. It was exciting for you and me in particular Maybe not for the whole race. So I woke up early this morning I started following on the races live ticker. As much as this race is awesome and we're getting awesome coverage, we do not get start to finish coverage. So here's a little pro tip for you guys. If you are obsessed, like I am, and you want to follow the race from go, go to the Tour de France website. Follow along. There's plenty of updates, little live video clips and I was super excited from go because our friend Allison Jackson was in the main break of the day.
Speaker 1:Yes, she was. And to that point and to the pro tip, where my location was at, I didn't have Wi-Fi. So I had to skedaddle out of there and drove with my wife down to a place where we had Wi-Fi. And here we are now. And along the way, Renee was like here's the live stream, Check this out. And I'm like, oh my God, I didn't have a clue because I didn't have any way to listen. So thanks to Renee for keeping me in the loop.
Speaker 2:It was like the olden days when you had to get the little Twitter and text updates on what's going on in the race Twitter and text updates on what's going on in the race. Anyway, just in my fashion, I've been doing all week my when to watch alert. For you guys who want to stay spoiler free, go to the last 20K, because that's when the race starts getting a little bit dramatic and you definitely don't want to miss the last 10K. Today was just a sprint stage Very flat, not a lot of wind, not a lot of hills to break up the pack, but our buddy, allison Jackson. She and a group of four it looks like they went on that first KOM climb, or I guess the only KOM climb climb, which is about 150 kilometers to go. So they were in the break basically all day long. Um, it was allison jackson of ef oatley, sarah martin of movie star uh, anise catalina soto from from uh laboral and uh. Clements latimer from arkea. Uh is a as is kind of a fun break because three out of the four national champions allison from canada, sarah from spain and uh uh soda from uh where's she? From cuba anyway, a lot of national champions in the break, yeah, um, the break just rolled along. They had like four minutes at one point with with 100k to go. I'm texting adam like four minutes, oh my gosh, because four minutes seems like a lot. But yeah, but eventually uh, team sd works uh started pulling because they had the big favorite today, weavis. And then I don't know why, but Chloe Dygart, american superstar, went to the front with about 25k to go and brought down about a minute of the gap, just like that.
Speaker 2:Anybody who is watching the race Chloe's really easy to pick out because she's always wearing pink shoes. That's her thing. She's only pink shoes in the peloton, but the reason why she can pull that back all by herself. She's a former world time world champion, time trialist and pursuitist. She's a gold medalist in the team pursuit. She is an engine and it is really hard for a group of four to combat the power of chloe diger. So anyway, between her and esky works, they brought it back uh, with about 6k to go. Right before they got caught, the brakes started attacking each other, kind of broke stuff up, um, so we settled in with 5k to go. We're like, okay, sprint time. Uh, time for weebis.
Speaker 2:Um, and then a big crash, big crash, adam um by the way it was around a corner with about three and a half k to go. It totally smashed up the field and the biggest news of the day, I think, was that Demi ballering, gc favorite 2023 winner, went down. She looked pretty hard, she did finish. She didn't lose any time. There's a rule with the racing that within the last five kilometers of a sprint stage, if you, if you, get delayed by a mishap, you won't lose any time. So she did finish way behind everybody, but they don't count that time. So the result is that that's okay, but we don't know how she'll be tomorrow. Now on to the sprint. In the last couple of kilometers, our hero of the day, Allison Jackson, was still up there.
Speaker 1:It looked like she was trying to set up her teammate Adam. Yeah, I mean that was the goal for the day. I mean it was a sprinter stage and we'll talk more about the breakaway here in a minute. But Noemi Rugg, the sprinter for EF'll talk more about the breakaway here in a minute. But uh, noemi rug, the sprinter for uh, ef, oatly cannondale and uh, you know, if everything went to plan, it would have been leaving out um noemi, yeah, with uh h off the front, kind of getting swallowed up.
Speaker 1:She did a really great job of uh, you know just changing. Uh, you know the, the tactic right there. She's like okay, sat on a couple wheels and then started working for no noemi, which was awesome because of uh, you know just changing. Uh, you know the, the tactic right there. She's like okay, sat on a couple wheels and then started working for no, no amy, which was awesome because she just I texted. You know, it's like full honey badger mode right now because you can tell she was still fresh. She was, you know, third wheeled work going for it that's.
Speaker 2:I was blown away, um, and then rook went to the front. With what? 300 meters to go? I don't know what she was doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know. I mean it's hard to be the post-race quarterback afterwards and say that you know everything about tactics. Who knows, it wouldn't have been what I would have done. Necessarily. It did seem like she had a good jump. I mean she snapped away from the group and that group had Voss and Vibas and everyone else in it, but like good snap. But then, you know, got caught and Vibas got the win.
Speaker 2:Yeah, with Voss hot on her heels. So those guys go 1-2.
Speaker 2:American making traps up there sprinting for fourth yeah, I saw that she's on team Picnic Post NL. They lost their big sprinter, charlotte Akul. She dropped out yesterday Effects of a crash from another race. But anyway, great to see Megan up there. We just win no surprises. A small change in GC Boss is now back in the yellow just due to the time bonuses and really the top Not too much change in the top 10. Demi's still up there, pfp's still up there, ken McCourt's still up there, so no big time loss from them. The only other GC update that we had already talked about yesterday is Longo Brugini's actually out of the race. She was already out of GC but she just not fit race. She was already out of gc but she just not, so anyway, uh, I would call it pretty status quo, especially among the gc favorites, but we gotta see what's gonna happen, demi overnight?
Speaker 1:yeah, I mean that's. That's a big decision, right? If dami um, you know, pulls out of the whole race or stays in, that that crash is gonna affect her. I do believe now we saw last year she crashed, you know, lots of drama around that, but she still came back and fought like a fricking champ, so you never count her out. She's tough as nails, but I mean anytime that you hit the deck. Renee, as you know, riding your bike the next day is probably the last thing you want to do.
Speaker 2:Oh, for sure I've, I've fallen through it hard but you talk about a tough cookie. Do you remember that she finished last year's tour with a broken coccyx? She was only lost by four seconds of the race.
Speaker 1:I was talking with Kristen last night and I was like, well, remember, she had a broken freaking hip when she did what she did last year and uh, anyway.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, quite quite the stage. And you know, I think that, like for our listeners, it'd be good to talk about that breakaway, you know, because I think, like the asterisks or the caveat is, you know, you got to have the guts to go on the break, but it's it's it's not always the strongest riders, even though there was some strong riders in there today. So to you, renee, I mean my, my kind of take on it is like, when a break goes at this level, sometimes it is just like a gutsy, you know, move with a ton of grit and it sticks. Other times, when there's no uh in this case, there's no um uh, time bonuses up up the way, no huge things for the peloton to go for, they'll let an established break go and and get some time and, and that's up to the peloton to decide right and then it's on the riders in the break to capitalize on that opportunity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, none of the riders up in the break today were a GC threat. Yeah, I don't know how much time any of them had already lost, but none of them are known as climbers. They're not going to win the race. So even if they had finished with four minutes, at the end of the day it's not a threat to to demi, it's not a threat to pfp.
Speaker 2:However, the dynamics of, you know, letting them go is there's uh, it, it can just settle the peloton down a little bit, like, okay, let the break go and then we'll just be orderly. And you know whoever's interested in you know other, either maintaining gc or the stage. We're going to pull a little bit, but if there is no break then the pack can get really chaotic. You know, it's just like attack, attack, attack, attack and it's a little more dangerous, it. It's not as smooth. So a lot of times they let the break go, knowing that, oh, if we just let them dangle out front by a certain amount, we can bring them in before the finish. And we saw that SD Works was doing most of the work all day because they had the stage favorite and none of the GC teams really had a vested interest in bringing them back.
Speaker 1:It's important to recognize when and how a break goes, and at the level of the Tour de France, fama, the Zwift or the men's Tour de France, it is usually when the peloton, kind of as an amoeba, as a one thing, decides it's okay, that's an okay combination of riders and we don't need to do anything with it just yet. And then, as the race evolves, then they decide when, if, if they go, when they go, how hard they go. And chloe, I guess to your point. Yeah, I don't know exactly why, but I'm also not going to sit here and say I you know, I know everything about race tactics at this level yeah, I, it's not.
Speaker 2:It's not beyond my scope to know why chloe brought that back, other than you know she had neodoma right on her wheel. Maybe she was just trying to keep neodoma safe because it was kind of technical there coming back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say the only reason I could was number one self-preservation, and number two for Cassia neodoma thinni, by the way is to keep everybody safe. And generally too, when you have steady, hard riding going through technical stuff, that makes for a safer peloton regardless, as opposed to kind of wide, and then all of a sudden, oh there's something, and then dartiness. That goes on. So I mean I think it was a good move for sure. And then once Chloe gets into her work mode, she's a thoroughbred man. It's hard to snap her out of it.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, so strong. Adam, I wanted to ask you some questions about the break Because, as we were texting back and forth today about, like is she going to do it, is she not? Like, I was just kind of wondering, like, how are your nerves after all that? Like, how do you do watching your rider in a break like that, especially like the biggest stage of the world, especially like the biggest stage of the world, cause she's she's won at least one other really big race from the break. Uh, perry Ruby.
Speaker 1:For those of you guys who didn't know, Uh, yeah, she's, I mean, she's won some big races. Uh, she, she won the stage at the Vuelta as well, and I believe that was either, um, a reduced packs uh sprint was either a reduced PAX sprint or a small breakaway, I can't remember, but Kristen Faulkner was there to, I believe, lead her out, and that was just last year. I mean, that's a huge, huge stage win. Perry Roubaix, yeah, and I think, whether it is you know, aj, or you know one of my elite juniors or somebody else else, when I'm, when I'm, you know, able to watch it. Number one, it's just so cool that we have coverage, that we can watch this stuff now. But as I texted you, I've learned to become much more stoic in that, because anything could happen, right, yeah, and back, like barry rubay, I remember watching that one. I was actually going to a bike race poolsville road race, uh and I remember watching it and just, you know, losing it and our dog was like crazy and I was so excited. But then, uh, my wife Kristen was like we need to get going to the bike race and we had like 10 minutes to leave or something like that, you know. So I mean, yeah, I get super excited, but in this case, because they had 100K to go with a four-minute gap, I was like anything can happen. So you're excited, but you also know how it could go Now, in this case, because she is strong right now and she was the one driving that ship, I think, very motivated, from what I saw anyway, and she's done it before and she's also been, uh, amstel gold, uh, this year, phenomenal effort there, with a seventh, sixth or seventh place, uh, in the break, really working hard, um, doing doing some magic there.
Speaker 1:Also fifth in the peri ruby this year as well. So she's, so she's had some top results this year. She's actually won more, has more wins this year than I think the past couple of years. She won a couple of stages at a Czech Republic stage this past year and got the GC there. So overall she's rolling good and that's why I was like, yeah, this could happen, this could happen.
Speaker 2:Well, we've been talking about Allison behind the scenes a little bit and you're like she is super strong right now and I wonder, like how do you know, like what are some things that told you that she was so strong? I mean, you know, like behind the numbers you don't have to reveal any, like you know watts per kilo or anything, but you know, was it just her attitude or mood, or numbers like?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know you can geek out on numbers, but I think the first one I'll say is you know she won a national championship race. Ok, and so winning, you know being the best in the road race.
Speaker 2:Wasn't it like a 90K solo.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so she attacked with 80K to go. One other came with, she attacked again and then just soloed it, for I think that was like 60K solo, 80k with one other person and which ended up being her peak two and a half hour power all time. So in just like a month ago, right? So when you're hitting peak power numbers, especially high aerobic numbers like that, yeah she's strong, right, you can. You can say for certain you are riding some of the best you've ever had before. Right Now we don't have, you know, a ton of two and a half hour time trial sort of data points, but the ability to do that is certainly telling.
Speaker 2:She's been a pro for a while now and she's been at the top for a while now. I mean Perry Bay winner. You know she's well respected in Peloton. Consistent rider, consistently good. How is she still getting better at this point? Yeah?
Speaker 1:I mean, I think a couple of things. One, as you get older, you get smarter, and you get smarter at racing and you get smarter in how to take care of yourself. And I think what I've learned with working with riders now I've been coaching for a long time now, rene, but kind of that arc is, you know, when you're junior, when you're young, I mean you're just kind of all over the place, right, you're eating cookies post ride, which some of us still do, and um, and you just have to learn to take care of yourself, how to manage your energy, what true recovery looks like, all this kind of stuff. So I think it's part of that. I think it's part like, as you mature, as you get more K's in the legs, you get deeper fitness, as you get more experience too Remember racing Perry Roubaix. Now she knows exactly where to be at what moment and she gets real stoked for that race. She's the team captain for many of the races because she has all that experience.
Speaker 1:But incredible awareness she's not Tata Pigaccia, but incredible awareness. Kind of like she's not tied up, but like when the the awareness that tate has, like always just knowing you know what, who needs what, when. She's a very good communicator and she's had to work on that. She hasn't always been like that. So I think that, um, those are all elements to her getting better, because there's some power durations that haven't improved, but she's very close right. Um, there's some power durations that haven't improved, but she's very close right. Um, there's some asterisks there too, with different power meters over time and and not having any formal quote, uh, uh, standardized testing of what I would want for a power duration B, but that's beside the point. Uh, for the past six months, either way, um, her sprint has never been better. Her long breakaway power has never been better, and it's you know, when you're seeing all that in training and then leading up to it and then, like I said, you know, get in text message from her saying I'm real fucking strong right now, like that's another data point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, I know our, our, uh, listeners, our time crunched athletes are, you know, always wondering like what are the pros doing and I'm not going to ask you for too many high level secrets but like, what kind of volume and intensity does a rider, you know, like Alison, I mean a Tour de France rider like what kind of volume is she doing? Like, maybe, like what's her CTL going into a race like this? You know, can you give us some broad strokes about, like what it takes to do the Tour de France Femme in terms of, you know, kind of the level of preparation?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean there's no real secrets out there. I mean a lot of people can, can read and see a bunch of stuff now. So I mean I think like, but then like, where does it matter? Where does it hit? How can you relate? I think CTL is one of those markers. I think CTL is one of those markers because everybody knows or looks at their blue line. What's your blue line? What's your fitness number? Pop open TrainingPeaks. Fitness is right there.
Speaker 1:We spoke a couple of days ago about how time crunch rider, if your fitness score is only around 50 or a lot of masters racers might be 60, 70, that's your fitness score and all that is related to how much time you're riding at below or above your FTP for a given day.
Speaker 1:You rack points over a month and a half and that's your fitness score. So that's how it's determined, right? So with Pro Tour rider, pro Tour women's rider, anyway, we'll be rolling 110 to 140 CTL for a lot of the year and in AJ's case we had national championships and then altitude camp right before the tour and then came down, freshened up and then race the tour. So we were up at 140, I think 138 just before the tour and then we freshened up, came in right around like 128 ish, leading into the tour, but importantly, her TSB, or training stress balance, or AKA freshness, was positive. It was upward trending and positive. So again, all of these markers of get really fit, then get really fresh, rock and roll away we go. I think that that's super important. The other element I look at to make sure we're going good is hitting some peak numbers of some kind. When we have that high fitness score.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I have a couple of follow-up questions for that. Yeah, yeah, what are the TSS scores like for the for these stages?
Speaker 1:Oh well, let's take a look as I go over to her training and as you're thinking about that.
Speaker 2:I'm going to also ask what's her TSB going to be coming out of this?
Speaker 1:Real negative. Yeah, yeah it's. You know that TSB I mean, once you're in the stage race, you just kinda, uh, it has to be what it is right, because the stress levels are going to be high, right, um, you know.
Speaker 2:So stage one was one 80, one 85, something like that that was like a super short as a two hour stage.
Speaker 1:Right, right, 185, something like that. That was like a super short as a two-hour stage, right, right, um, and let's see yesterday bigger like 278, right, um.
Speaker 1:And then today was probably, yeah, today more right. So big stressors, absolutely um, and we hit those stressors obviously in other races, but also we hit those stressors just a couple of weeks ago at altitude camp with volume. And you mentioned volume, I mean we, we have recently done some 25 hour weeks. I think our biggest week this year has been 28 hours of, you know, aerobic training, and then you got strength training on top of that. So I mean she, you know, when you're a professional bike racer, you are logging hours oh yeah, that's why they get paid to do this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, before we uh wrap up on, uh on ally, you think she's gonna be uh disappointed tonight, or? Or like yeah, because she got caught with 6k to go.
Speaker 1:That's why like close but no cigar yeah, you can never keep allison jackson down. Good first rule of life all right she. However, she will be mad that she didn't win. Anytime that she or her team doesn't win. She's not happy because, I mean, she's an alpha female man, she loves winning, she wants to go for it and she doesn't get it. Yeah sure, sad, but like can't keep her down uh.
Speaker 2:One final question for you, adam on on this uh stage today um uh, what do you think about their pick for most aggressive rider today?
Speaker 1:Disagree, however. I didn't see the full coverage, I didn't see how it went, and of course, I have a bias in AJ. It looked like she was rocking it, driving it, and was a big component of keeping that gap, or that gap, you know, long up to the point it wasn't Meanwhile. I think too, though, is it's important to recognize what AJ did after, like Sarah Martine attacked and then they dropped riders right, and then AJ was still there, got soaked up by the Peloton and then went back to work for a team. So I think, like, when you're looking at the most aggressive or the most combative, you got to look at that too, not just how the break established yeah, uh, I um they.
Speaker 2:They ended up giving the most aggressive rider to uh latimer, a young french rider. In the break. She was, uh, actually the first one to get dropped and I just kind of say you know, it's a french race, french rider, they want to put a french rider on the podium, but I would have been so psyched for allison because I thought she deserved it. Um, but yeah, no doubts that we will see her again.
Speaker 1:Uh, yeah, exactly no, she's not a gc rider. For everybody like trying to understand what's going on, she's not a gc rider, she's a helper, she's um, she's a team captain. So she's going to be orchestrating a lot of moves and things like this, but, uh, in terms of, you know, being high up in the GC not her role lead outs for sprints, doing hard works and leading into key hill climbs for, uh, kerpo. That's another, you know, uh, role of hers. So you won't see her in the GC but you'll see her animating the race. Okay, renee, I mean, that was super fun and, you know, having a stage like this, really fun to talk about one of my riders in there, and thank you for everybody listening for me. You know being able to do that, but you know we're not going to talk about Allison Jackson every stage unless she keeps on doing what she's doing. Let's look ahead, renee. Tomorrow, what's it looking like?
Speaker 2:It's going to be a stage similar to today, really flat and probably another breakaway. So we could have the little contest of is it going to be the break or the bunch sprint uh sd work seems pretty motivated to get uh weeb is her wins, because if you get weeb is close to on these flat uh finishes she's likely to win. The finish isn't as technical so I hope no crashes. Um, I think the I'm really curious to see what happens with demi tomorrow, if she if she's hurting or not. I hope not because that's a shame.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yes, Never great when you see a GC rider go down and get up as slowly as she did, with teammates pushing her to the finish line. But in terms of the stage, yeah, it's even flatter than today and it's even flatter than today and it's even shorter. So I think that, uh, definitely another VBIS stage in my fantasy. Uh, the Tour de France, Femme, uh league for sure. And uh, a day for the sprinters. I would say, maybe watch some uh tactics from Visma. Maybe they use PFP to drive something up the road. Just, you know, try to shake Vibas, Cause I don't know, if I were calling the shots, I would, I would try to shake her before. And if a crosswinds come into that or or something else, yeah, you can't bring Vibas to the line and think that you're going to win. Not, not in this group anyway.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she's staying my pick for tomorrow too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so. Final question to you, Renee, and then we'll wrap this thing up. Are you having fun?
Speaker 2:I am having fun. I gotta tell you, though, I don't know if I was more nervous than you were today, because I was like, on pins and needles, I'm like it's gonna be great content for the podcast. No, just super excited to see somebody that I am familiar with in front of the world showing off what they can do in front of the world, because we don't get to see that too often. So it's pretty awesome and this has been fun to talk to. You. Talk about racing. I finally have somebody I can text to the whole entire stage like oh my gosh, you see what's going on. That's really why I wanted to do this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I think it is awesome. I mean, the truth be told for everybody, listening is this is making us extremely time crunched on the rest of our time and Renee and I are both reducing our training hours and we need to get back to building schedules, but I do think this is super fun. I hope audience members are enjoying it and, if you are, feel free to drop in comments. You know what you want to hear more of, if you're liking what we're doing, and if you have any specific questions for us, let us know and Renee and I will weave it into the next outline for tomorrow. And we'll keep on talking about the Twitter fonts from AVEX Zwift.
Speaker 2:Thanks, adam, I'll see you tomorrow.
