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Dec 16, 2023

How Pro Cyclists Recover During Tour de France

Gear-obsessed editors choose every product we review. We may earn commission if you buy from a link. How we test gear. Carbs, massages, easy spins, and more of pros’ methods for maintaining stamina.

Gear-obsessed editors choose every product we review. We may earn commission if you buy from a link. How we test gear.

Carbs, massages, easy spins, and more of pros’ methods for maintaining stamina.

During a stage race like the Tour de France or the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, racers aren’t just battling it out every stage—they’re also racing for recovery. These long stage races often come down to races of attrition, where riders who are losing even a single percent of their abilities after a hard week of racing are unlikely to take a stage win, let alone contend for the overall title.

Even if you don’t have a stage race on the schedule, you can learn from the pros’ recovery tactics—plus, it’s fun to find out what exactly happens after a stage finish. So, we dug into how top cyclists get through those long weeks of racing.

If you watch the finish line of any stage, you’ll notice that soigneurs (those team staffers at the finish line) are quick to pass bottles to the riders as they cross the line. Often, they’re filled with a carb-based sports drink that includes protein in it, though some may contain straight water or just electrolytes, depending on the rider’s preference (and how nauseous they are post-sprint).

When the next race is less than 24 hours away, immediately getting hydration and fuel back in the tank is vitally important, says Human Powered Health’s dietitian Mathis Fluit. Then, riders will often have another meal or hefty snack, like rice and chicken or granola and yogurt, on the team bus heading back to the hotel, since races like the Tour require switching hotels almost every stage, meaning the riders won’t have immediate access to their rooms.

You might be wondering why the heck riders are finishing 100-plus mile stages and then getting onto stationary trainers or rollers. It seems like they’ve already ridden enough, right? But as Human Powered Health’s pro rider, Marjolein van’t Geloof, who’s a physiotherapist in addition to being a WorldTour bike racer, explains, often riders finish with a sprint, so they actually need a few minutes to cool down and prep their legs for another day of racing—an easy session on the trainer will do that.

“It’s really important to get on rollers and spin out your legs, just for 10 to 15 minutes,” she says. “You’re helping your legs flush the lactate out and set yourself up to feel better the next day.”

Team buses are often equipped with a shower, so riders are able to quickly clean up and get changed after a stage—important for hygiene and avoiding saddle sores, which is critical for getting through a multi-week race.

Canyon//SRAM’s Alice Towers says that once racers get to the hotel postrace, the team staff will have already checked in for riders and put suitcases in their respective rooms. That often means riders head straight to their rooms to relax, snack, take a longer shower, or have a nap.

Riders need to be eating steadily throughout the day, on and off the bike, says Fluit. Most of their calories will come from simple carbs, typically in the form of white rice, pasta, and oatmeal.

Riders limit fiber, and because of that, vegetables like broccoli will only appear in small quantities at night. Typically, both right after the race and dinner later on include rice- or pasta-based meals, often with chicken or red meat as the protein source. “It’s not necessarily even tomorrow that riders need to worry about when it comes to eating. They’re thinking about seven stages from now,” says Fluit. “If you’re low on calories or carbohydrates for one day, that’s going to catch up with you after a few days.”

Cyclists push their muscles to their absolute limit in a race like the Tour de France, and that means recovery requires protein in order to repair that damaged tissue. There’s an endurance athlete cliché of chicken breasts and rice for every meal, and it’s surprisingly accurate if you look at how Tour racers eat the night after a stage. They’ll also be drinking protein in their recovery shakes—usually between 20 and 30 grams in a bottle, along with carbohydrates and electrolytes—says Fluit.

“The main thing for recovery is just getting as much sleep as you can possibly get,” says Phil Gaimon, former WorldTour pro and host of his new podcast, Watch the Tour de France with Phil Gaimon. “All of the extras like ice baths and massage are great. But nothing is better than an extra 15 minutes of sleep. Racers know that and so they're focused on getting to bed as early as possible.” Because of this, many riders travel with their own pillows, eye masks, and ear plugs—and are also just great sleepers!

Some riders are fine scrolling the Twitter comments (*shudder*). Others prefer to keep their phones on airplane mode. But for the most part, riders have a routine with how they treat newsfeeds and social media during these races. “I avoid checking any news about the race,” says Canyon//SRAM’s Kasia Niewiadoma. “I like to be as minimally distracted as possible, because I know that the more I read, the more stories that are created in my head and the more I’m thinking about it. And that just keeps me awake at night. We talk about the race at the team meeting, of course, but I don't want to do any extra investigation around it.”

Tadej Pogačar made headlines this year with his speedy postrace ice baths, but he’s not the only one who relies on them.

“I was always a big fan of the ice baths, which the team didn’t enable at all back then,” Gaimon says. “I’d have to make eight laps of taking the ice bucket from the hotel to my bathtub. And eventually, my teammates would also want to use the bathtub after me! It definitely helps after a hot stage. It reduces your inflammation and relaxes your central nervous system. I would always sleep better if I did the ice bath. And I see a lot of racers doing it now.” (Gaimon later created IceLegs in order to make cooling off easier for riders.)

The WorldTour teams all have team physiotherapists, massage therapists, or soigneurs on staff to help riders recover faster with daily massage after each stage. “It’s the best part of the day!” says Canyon//SRAM’s Elise Chabbey, who’s also an M.D. “Most riders will get a massage, but the type of massage depends on what’s happening the next day. If the next day’s stage is not so important, the therapist can really push on the legs to try to release the muscles. But if the next day is really important, they’ll be a bit more gentle. It’s a really nice time during the hectic week: It’s a moment where you can really relax and think about something else and talk about something else.”

Remember how Gaimon mentioned getting as much sleep as possible? That means having everything ready to roll for the next morning: Kit laid out, knowing exactly what you’re having in terms of coffee and breakfast—anything that buys you a few more minutes of sleep in the morning.

“If we had to have bags out of the room and be at breakfast at 8 a.m., I would have all my stuff packed and ready to go with my alarm set for 7:55 and literally roll out of bed and into the breakfast room,” he says.

You’d think on a rest day, riders really, really wouldn’t want to pedal their bikes. And yes, some will skip the ride in order to allow minor irritations, like saddle sores or road rash from a crash to heal, but many will opt for a very relaxed-paced spin to flush out the legs. These rides are short and social—and as Gaimon notes, many teams will use them as a chance to do events with sponsors.

Riders will spend most of their rest days with legs up, relaxing and (no surprise here) eating. (BTW, The Tour de France has two rest days, while the Tour de France Femmes doesn’t have any this year.)

The top-level pros don’t get where they are by bemoaning a race gone wrong. As any pro cyclist will tell you, you lose many, many more races than you win. That means if a stage doesn’t go according to plan, you discuss it with the team at the evening team meeting, then you move on.

“To be honest, all the bad days make me more motivated and stronger,” says Niewiadoma. “You learn from races, and when you make a mistake, you really don’t want to find yourself in that position again. So that makes you want to be better the next day.”

Imagine you just rode more than 100 miles up a bunch of mountains, then sprinted your heart out at the finish line. And that you’d been doing that for two weeks straight. Sure, that massage, quick spin to flush out the legs, and a healthy meal made by the team chef while chatting with your teammates and/or loved ones via FaceTime sounds great. But the reality?

“Typically for most riders, it’s rice and chicken post race, back to the hotel for a massage and then dinner,” says Derek Gee, the young Canadian who became one of the most talked-about riders of the Giro d'Italia. “For me, I was completely cracked on eating rice every day so I finished every stage with yogurt and cereal and I never really enjoy massage or find it helpful. So my postrace was just lying in bed and relaxing, eating more cereal.”

Molly writes about cycling, nutrition and training, with an emphasis on women in sport. Her new middle-grade series, Shred Girls, debuts with Rodale Kids/Random House in 2019 with "Lindsay's Joyride." Her other books include "Mud, Snow and Cyclocross," "Saddle, Sore" and "Fuel Your Ride." Her work has been published in magazines like Bicycling, Outside and Nylon. She co-hosts The Consummate Athlete Podcast.

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