UAE Team Emirates’ trainings on the Etna

Days: 18
Training days: 14
Rest days: 4
Total training time: 54h30’
Total distance:1.704 km
Elevation gain: 30.472 m
Elevation lost: 37.622 m
Average speed: 31,2 km/h
Maximum speed: 72,3 km/h
Average Kcal expended (64 kg athlete): 40.577Kcal
Maximum power: 1280 W
Average power: 3,2 W/kg
Average normalized power: 3,9 W/kg
Best VAM for Etna climb: 1311 m/h

The UAE Team Emirates high altitude training camp was held at Etna volcano, it ran for 18 days from 24 March to 11 April. Three athletes, Rui Costa, Simone Petilli and Jan Polanc, from the team joined the camp and performed 14 training days and 4 rest days. The training camp focused on Classics races and the Giro d’Italia.
Samuel Marangoni lead the training camp with the support from masseur Bruno Lima along with other training and performance staff.

During the long blocks of training on the volcano the athletes performed diversified workouts like strength in a climb and explosive strength starting sprinting at low speed.

The athletes worked a lot on long climbs to prepare for the hardest stages of Tour of Italy. They also did high intensity efforts on the shorter climbs to ensure no loss of explosiveness on the Classics races.

Furthermore, whether they are either GC athletes or Climbers they all did speed workouts including being paced by a car, doing 10-15” sprints to develop the fast twitch fibres that needs to be trained and strengthened.

During the training camp, the three athletes covered the ascent of the 4th stage of the Giro d’Italia. This climb, called “Salto del cane” wasn’t climbed all out like it will be done during the race, however it is valuable to have some idea about the speed and time of ascent which was recorded. During one of the training sessions on this climb athletes took 58’50” to complete the 17.9km climb, recording 18.2 Km/h average speed at 4.6w/kg and doing a VAM of 1232 m/h.

On another training day, the intensity decided by trainer Samuel Marangoni was a little bit higher and athletes took 55’10” for climbing it at an average speed of 19.4 km/h, climbing at 5 w/kg doing a VAM of 1311 m/h.

The riders will do this climb again in May and the VAM will probably be around 1500 m/h, this means that the time to complete the climb will be below 50’ and the power to weight ratio will be around 5.8-6w/kg.

Rui, Simone and Jan can now envisage that climb and they now know it is possible to make a gap here.

UAE Team Emirates will be ready to start their fight at this point of the Giro d’Italia.

Training and performance staff analysed every day the training files from Power2max power meters supplied by the German company (technical sponsor of the team), and could verify that athletes were meeting the specific targets set. They worked extremely well and perfectly replied at the training stimulus.

Rui, Simone and Jan had massages every afternoon to help the recovery phase and they worked constantly on stretching, which is very important especially during a high load period.

The amazing panorama of Etna volcano, the nice weather, the warm hospitality from the owner Rifugio Sapienza, where the riders stayed, and the attention of all the people, always available to help, made the UAE Team Emirates training camp perfect.