A 148.7 km ride with 4,113 metres of climbing on January 27, captioned simply "Morning Ride" was the latest entry for Tom Pidcock (Pinarello-Q36.5) in a week of training which topped 20km of vertical ascent - nearly three times the height of Everest.
The uploads land as the British rider prepares for his first full season targeting Tour de France General Classification.
The routes loop repeatedly through the El Colorado and Farellones area, climbing out of valleys and back toward the team’s base at around 2,750 metres above sea level. Valley temperatures have reportedly been pushing 35°C, which means the work is being done in thin air and thick heat – a double stress that most European winter camps simply can’t offer, but is very close to what riders will be expecting in the mid-summer heat at the Tour de France.
Two days before the latest 148.7 km effort, Pidcock rode 200.2 km with 4,003 metres of ascent, spending more than seven hours on the bike. 8,000 metres across two sessions is the kind of workload that normally arrives packaged as a pair of Alpine stages in July, not a Tuesday and Thursday in January.
And it isn’t just those two rides. The surrounding days show the same shape:
– 175 km with 4,198 m
– 142 km with 3,464 m
– 118 km with 3,380 m
– another 135 km with 3,250 m
Day after day of long climbs, steady gradients and minimal recovery between them.
Logging back-to-back five-hour rides with four kilometres of vertical ascent, with no fanfare, looks very much like a rider who is planning something ambitious in the summer.
That lines up with the direction Pidcock has already hinted at. After finishing third overall at the 2025 Vuelta a España and sixth at Il Lombardia, he skipped cyclocross entirely this winter with coach Kurt Bogaerts, opting for rest and road-specific conditioning instead.
This Chile block runs for roughly 25 days and sits ahead of a season where the Tom Pidcock will likely prioritise a return to the Tour de France, alongside a return to Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Strade Bianche and Milan-San Remo.
Racing is expected to start in mid-February at the Vuelta a la Región de Murcia, before the spring calendar opens at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad on February 28.
Cover image credit: Pinarello-Q36.5
