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Amgen Tour of California: Leipheimer fitter than ever

After winning the Tour of Germany, Leipheimer is training harder than ever

Photo: AFP (file photo)

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Editor’s note: When America’s biggest bike race, the eight-day Amgen Tour of California, starts this weekend in San Francisco, some of the world’s leading riders will be starting their 2006 seasons at the head of major ProTour teams. In the current issue of VeloNews, you can read detailed profiles of two of these men: Discovery Channel’s George Hincapie and Team CSC’s Dave Zabriskie. Here on velonews.com, we are featuring three of the other major contenders. We began yesterday with an in-depth interview with Phonak team leader Floyd Landis; today's installment features Gerolsteiner leader Levi Leipheimer.

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Santa Rosa resident Levi Leipheimer has been intimately involved with planning the course for the inaugural Amgen Tour of California, which starts this weekend. "Some of the roads originally chosen were washed out in the floods we had in December so the course into Santa Rosa had to be rerouted," he told VeloNews during a recent interview in Germany. Reflecting on the California race’s eight stages, the Gerolsteiner team leader said that the San Jose time trial on February 22 would probably decide the final outcome.

Whether Leipheimer will be able to use his renowned time-trial ability so early in the season — this is his first race of 2006 — is another question. At 32, the American looks set for his best year yet, especially as he has never gone into a season as fit as he is now. "I can tell you, comparing this year to last year, [my fitness level] is much higher. I would say the work I have been doing already would equal the kind of fitness I had in March last year," he said in January.

Every year since he made his European breakthrough by finishing third at the Vuelta a España in 2001, Leipheimer has stepped up his game. His results were mixed in three years at Rabobank, highlighted by two top-10s at the Tour, and he didn’t really establish his role as a team leader until last year.

Two major things factored into his outstanding 2005 season: moving to the Gerolsteiner team and hiring a personal coach, Massimo Testa. An associate physician with the sports-medicine program at Sacramento’s UC Davis, Testa worked for a decade as a sports doctor for the 7-Eleven, Motorola and Mapei cycling teams before moving from Italy to California.

"Max has made a huge difference for me," Leipheimer said at the hilltop Hotel Calluna, overlooking the small, snow-speckled town of Gerolstein. This is home base for his team sponsor, Gerolsteiner mineral water, where he had just arrived after a two-hour drive from Frankfurt following an overnight flight from Northern California.

As he tucked into a vegetarian lunch at the hotel’s bistro, Leipheimer began talking about his best winter of training — despite the heavy rains of late December. "I train so much harder than I used to," he said. "Sometimes I can’t believe it. I’m just like, ‘Wow!’ I think back to the way I used to train and think, ‘How was I even any good?’

"It’s almost like I’ve had to train myself in order to train harder. Mentally. Once you know you’ve done something in training, you know you can do it and you know you can recover. Then you get stronger in your head. It’s just a positive effect."

The positive change in his preparation — he also trained extensively with Lance Armstrong before last year’s Tour — brought Leipheimer greatly improved results in 2005. These included second overall at the Tour de Georgia, third at the Dauphiné Libéré and sixth at the Tour before his outstanding overall victory ahead of Jan Ullrich at the Tour of Germany.

Defeating Ullrich
"Germany was the highlight," Leipheimer said of his 2005 season. "We’re in Germany, we’re on a German team, we’re up against another German team that’s probably the biggest team in the world [T-Mobile] and Germany’s biggest sports hero, Jan Ullrich.

"I was really happy with the way I rode, especially after the Tour de France…. After the two Tours I did before I was just mentally tired. But last year, partly because what happened on the last day [losing fifth place to Alexander Vinokourov in the final sprint], I felt like I still had something to prove. So I went home, rested well, trained well and looked after myself, and I went into Germany really relaxed, not expecting anything … and came out really good."

To achieve a major success was important for Leipheimer, as were the lessons he learned in the earlier races. Perhaps the most important was losing the leader’s jersey at the Dauphiné because his team was not strong enough to hold a long-distance breakaway in check. A weak team wasn’t the case a couple of months later in the German tour where his Austrian colleague Georg Totschnig was highly motivated by having two of the stages in his homeland.

Indeed, with Totschnig’s help, Leipheimer took the race lead in the Austrian Alps on what the American called "the toughest climb I’ve seen." Above the ski resort of Sölden, the dead-end climb to the Rettenbachferner rises 4317 feet in 14km, topping out at 8800 feet above sea level — higher than any mountaintop finish at the Tour de France!

"We were on the 27 [sprocket] most of the way," said Leipheimer, who was well prepared for the task ahead. "Totschnig knew the climb because he’s from the area. Also, I knew it was at altitude, so I was really conservative, especially in the beginning of the climb.

"Ullrich had attacked a couple of times, and I actually let them go away and came back slowly, trying not to overextend myself too early. And I think when we got to the last 5 kilometers — it was way up there, really barren, and you could feel there wasn’t much oxygen — I had the most left in the tank."

Leipheimer rode clear to win the stage by 15 seconds over teammate Totschnig, followed by Ullrich at 50 seconds and Cadel Evans of Davitamon-Lotto at 1:22. Winning the stage and taking the yellow jersey was a great achievement for the quiet American, but there were still five stages to go, including a tough climbing stage in the Black Forest and a flat 31km time trial.

Leipheimer said the stage to the 4200-foot-high Feldberg, the highest peak in the Black Forest, took place in "horrible weather, the worst I’ve ever ridden a bike in. I had an undershirt on, a jersey, a vest, arm warmers and three rain jackets all at the same time. So I had six layers on and I was barely warm. It was really miserable.

"They say that Ullrich’s not good in the bad weather, so maybe it was good for me in the end. But it was really hard. Totschnig did a great job. He took over halfway up the climb and started riding pretty fast. He really made it hard … and when [Fabian] Jeker [of Saunier Duval] attacked, it was only me, Cadel and [Jörg] Jaksche [of Liberty Seguros] who could follow. My muscles were like wood, it was so cold."

Ullrich, who lost a further 30 seconds to Leipheimer on that climb, fought back to win the next day’s time trial; but the American came in third to run out the overall victor by 31 seconds over the German, with Gerolsteiner teammate Totschnig in third. "It all came together," Leipheimer said. "because [our] team was really strong for the Tour of Germany. Everybody seemed to be at their best."

A different way
Asked if that win has given him good morale for this year’s Tour de France, Leipheimer said, "Oh, definitely. I think that for me my expectations always go up a little bit based on the results I’ve had in the past and what I expect out of myself."

And since Leipheimer began training under Dr. Testa’s tutelage at the end of 2004, he has gained more and more confidence in what he is capable of doing. "I mean, I look at the training, I look at the intervals, at the cadence, at the wattage, everything’s there [on the power-meter printout]…. I enjoy training hard now more than I thought I ever would and more than I ever have. It’s weird. I love to go out and ride my bike fast … and suffer.

"I think it’s just because you have objectives and goals and you can see the progress. Maybe it comes with age, the focus and patience, because the way I pick my racing schedule now, I [have] big chunks of time just training.

"Even when I was third in the Vuelta, I didn’t train that hard compared to now. But I wasn’t strong enough then to train like that. Not physically or mentally. No."

Leipheimer agreed that connecting with Dr. Testa was one of the smartest moves in his career. "I think the biggest difference is, he gives me a training program and it’s really spelled out. I look at it, I visualize what route I’m gonna take, so [when] I go out the door, I know exactly what I’m doing and I can just leave my brain behind….

"Sounds kinda strange, but I don’t think at all [when I’m training]. A lot of times I over-think. That’s my weak point. So now I just do the training…. Obviously, I understand the training. We agree about it, but it’s to the point that I can go out and train so much harder that way. Just doing it. Not thinking, ‘Is this the right thing, or the wrong thing, should I do something else?’ Just do it.

"In the beginning of the season, when I start off, he gives me a couple of weeks [schedule] — now we’re doing more like a week to week, or even that can change a little. We talk almost every other day. And he’s a super-nice guy, always positive."

Unlike many top riders, Leipheimer doesn’t work in the gym lifting weights. "I do Pilates," he said. Instead of weights, springs are used as resistance in the various exercises invented by a German, Joseph Pilates, at the beginning of the last century.

Leipheimer was doing two one-hour sessions a week in his pre-season buildup. "It’s unbelievably hard," he said. "It uses all these little muscles that you don’t realize. It’s just about your body being in alignment and balanced and square — something you definitely need on a bike. Being in one position like that is not how we’re designed, and things start to deteriorate….

"For example, there’s this one machine called the reformer. It has a carriage that slides back and forth. One foot is on the end that’s stable and the other foot is on the carriage, which is on a really light spring so it wants to spread apart. You have [light] weights in your arms and you lift them up … and at the same time let your legs go out as far as they can. Then you bring ’em back in, and do that with your feet turned out, turned in, bent … and by the time you’re done the inside of your legs are so trashed. You’re sore for like three days.

"But those muscles on the very inside of your thigh, they don’t get used, certainly not on a bike, because we’re so two-dimensional. But if those [muscles] deteriorated, it would affect your efficiency on the bike. Hips wouldn’t sit square, things like that. And I don’t really enjoy weight lifting. It’s not always [smart] doing something because everyone else does it.

"I always like the way I feel when I leave a Pilates [session]. I just feel like I’m straight, standing erect." And that’s important for Leipheimer who has often had back problems, the result of a ski accident that fractured some vertebrae in 1991 and a mass pileup in stage 1 of the 2003 Tour de France that broke his sit bone.

Toward the Tour
As for his 2006 racing season, Leipheimer will follow the Tour of California with two "training" races, the Coppi and Bartali Week in Italy and the Tour of the Basque Country in Spain, before returning home in April for another crack at the Tour de Georgia. Next come his "big three" — the Dauphiné, Tour de France and Tour of Germany.

"I think time-trialing is going to be important this year, especially in the Tour," said Leipheimer, even though he has yet to produce his best time-trialing form at the Tour. Asked why his Tour time trials "aren’t that great," Leipheimer said, "It just seems to be one thing after another … just a little thing that knocks me off.

"Like last year, the first stage was fine. It wasn’t on a course for me and I was okay [14th, 1:13 slower than stage winner Dave Zabriskie], and the last time trial I had a bit of a stomach issue, which can happen in a three-week race. I was a little bit off [again finishing 14th, but 3:13 slower than stage winner Armstrong]." However, Leipheimer’s results were an improvement from the 2004 Tour, when he conceded more than four minutes to Armstrong in both the time trials of the final week — 29th at L’Alpe d’Huez and 12th at Besançon.

Leipheimer’s time-trial performances have been much better in other events. In particular, he was second by 11 seconds to Colombian Santiago Botero at the final TT of the 2001 Vuelta a España ("I was surprised I didn’t win that day"). The performance lifted Leipheimer to third place on final GC. "That was a special moment in my career," he said.

Then, last year, he was runner-up, again to Botero, in the Dauphiné’s hilly time trial. "At the top of the main climb, I was like 17 seconds ahead of Botero [and almost a minute faster than Armstrong], then I lost it all downhill. I’m too small," said the 5-foot-7, 135-pound Montana native, who lost that stage to the Colombian by just seven-tenths of a second on the 47km course, with Armstrong in third.

"That was one of my better time trials for sure … and Germany was good also … because it was dead flat and super windy. So definitely not favorable to me."

Leipheimer is pleased that the Tour of California time trials both feature a little climbing: Sunday’s prologue to Coit Tower in San Francisco, and next Wednesday’s stage 3 on rolling roads to the south of San Jose. He knows the courses well, but his legs will be turning at racing speeds for the first time this year, while his mind is firmly fixed on competing against Ullrich and Ivan Basso five months down the road.

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