EXCLUSIVEThe alpha male of the British track cycling team and in possession of (deep breath) nine world championship gold medals, two Commonwealth golds, an Olympic gold, Olympic silver and five World Championship silver medals, Chris Hoy recently led British cycling to unprecedented success at the World Championships held in Manchester. SquareOne caught up with him as he took a well deserved break after the competition.
Diplomatically fending off our gushing congratulations about the World Championship success, Hoy explains that his focus is now very much on the Olympics.
"I am just about to get back into training” he says. “I have done a few road rides and some light work but it is important to have a complete switch off, not just physically but mentally as well, because otherwise you will just plateau before the Olympics."
Having admitted to being something of a trainaholic in the past, Hoy has mixed feelings about resting.
"Initially the break is great but after three or four days you are itching to get back on the bike. And even though to an extent you can eat what you like, you begin to feel a bit lethargic and restless.”
Luckily, he doesn’t have to wait long to put that restlessness to use. The gruelling training schedule in the run up to the Olympics is imminent and he speaks surprisingly warmly of the often brutal sessions he faces in the coming weeks.
"The training we do is not so much about the volume, it is about the effort we expend in the session. We begin with strength work - a lot of work in the gym - then we move on to training that is more about power and speed, and then on to building up lactic tolerance, which is the worst."
Not for the faint hearted, this section of the schedule helps the athlete’s body form resistance to the pain caused by lactic acid. “The drills we do involve the static bikes in the lab” Hoy explains. We do a thirty second burst of effort followed by a one minute recovery. Basically you are creating a massive lactic acid build up followed by a short recovery time which means that when you start the next burst you still have lactic acid in your system.”
As the lazybones SquareOne winces, Hoy claims that the athletes don’t dread these sessions as much as you might think. "It is more that you know they (the sessions) are coming and it is always in the back of your mind. Every time you do that training it feels like the worst you have ever felt and in a funny way the fitter you are the harder that training is, because it is easier to get injured. For fifteen minutes afterwards the pain is really bad but then you come through it and, although you are still tired, you feel pretty good."
A relative veteran of two Olympics, Hoy says that the Olympic village is not all it is cracked up to be. “The village is a very pressurised and tense place before the games, so you don't want to spend too long there, but it is a great place to be when you are finished. Before the games there is huge tension and huge pressure on the athletes and coaches. Tempers can get frayed and the atmosphere can be not that pleasant."
Having been forced into a shift in events after the ludicrous decision to replace the 1km time trial with BMX on the Olympic roster, Hoy will be fighting on three fronts in
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnu9caTTgqc
