{"id":281490,"date":"2025-07-22T03:48:23","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T03:48:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/281490\/"},"modified":"2025-07-22T03:48:23","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T03:48:23","slug":"how-hard-is-it-for-an-amateur-to-ride-the-entire-tour-de-france-route","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/281490\/","title":{"rendered":"How hard is it for an amateur to ride the entire Tour de France route?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"How<\/p>\n

Tour de France<\/a><\/p>\n

Here’s what happens when a bunch of undertrained amateurs try to ride 3,500 km in three weeks.<\/p>\n

\"Matt<\/p>\n

Have you ever sat and watched the Tour de France<\/a> and wondered how hard it would be to ride the same route as the professionals? Ever wondered what three weeks of riding across France would do to your body, and to your mind?<\/p>\n

If so, you\u2019re certainly not alone. And now, thanks to some new research<\/a> out of Nottingham in the UK, we might even be able to answer some of those questions.<\/p>\n

The study<\/p>\n

There\u2019s been plenty of research over the years looking at the physical demands of Grand Tour racing for professional cyclists. There\u2019s been far less research \u2013 if any \u2013 looking at what sort of impact three weeks of riding the same distances and climbing volumes would have on amateurs. That\u2019s not unsurprising \u2013 few riders would willingly ride 3,500 km with nearly 50,000 metres of climbing in three weeks. But some riders are willing, including a group of 16 riders \u2013 15 males, one female \u2013 who rode every stage of the 2021 Tour de France route a week ahead of the pros.<\/p>\n

Those riders, part of the 2021 Tour 21 charity ride<\/a> (organised by British blood cancer charity Cure Leukaemia), provided all sorts of data to help researchers understand the impact of the ride. The results were recently published in the Journal of Science and Cycling in a paper<\/a> entitled \u201cThe physiological and psychological demands of amateur cyclists riding the full route of the Tour de France\u201d.<\/p>\n

There were two main goals to the research: determine the event\u2019s impact on the riders\u2019\u00a0 physical and mental health over the 21 stages, and compare the physical demands of that amateur event with the demands on pro cyclists competing in an actual Grand Tour.<\/p>\n

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Did we do a good job with this story?<\/p>\n

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\n Tour de France<\/a>
\n Science<\/a>
\n Performance<\/a>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tour de France Here’s what happens when a bunch of undertrained amateurs try to ride 3,500 km in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281491,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4104],"tags":[4230,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-281490","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114894845193144167","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281490\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}