One of Neilson’s most important lessons from his first Tour came at the tail end of these stages. Deep in the finales, when it came time for the breakaways to race for the win, he noticed that he didn’t quite have the power to launch decisive attacks. Developing that capacity has been his main focus in training during his build-up to this year’s Tour.

“The first half of winning a stage in the Tour is putting yourself in the right situation and being physically strong enough to last, to keep yourself in the race long enough to have the finish line in sight, and I had that first aspect within myself last year,” he says. “That didn’t help me too much when it came to the ends of the races, though, when I needed to be able to recover and go again after explosive efforts. Part of that was because I spent a lot of last year just working on steady power and improving general strength, trying to develop a diesel engine.”

This year, Neilson has been turbo-charging his engine.

That process began in December 2020, when Neilson committed to a more vigorous strength training regimen, as he began to build steady power on the bike.

“Three to four times per week, I was walking to a park with kettlebells and a red cord. At first, you don’t really see much improvement; you’re just pretty sore the next day. The real improvements you start to see two to three months later when you start to up the intensity quite a bit more on the bike. I have always done a little bit in the past, but this winter I saw it more as a key part of my training, rather than, ‘Oh it’s just sort of a warm-up protocol.’ I tried to just get the most out of every session, even if it was only 20 minutes. I would really just prepare and mentally put myself in the mindset that this was going to help me down the road.”

It did. Neilson’s first peak of the year was supposed to come in March. As he began doing harder and harder intervals, all of those early sessions in the park began to pay off. He had more explosive power. Heading into Paris-Nice, he felt as if he was in the form of his life. Unfortunately, he fell ill and had to take a few weeks off the bike. Turns out that may have been a blessing in disguise.

“I was extremely fit, but still had a few more weeks of racing on the horizon,” he says. “Getting sick forced me to abandon those racing goals, and that made it a lot simpler in terms of my planning to build for the Tour.”

Once he was healthy, Neilson headed to the Tour de Romandie to stoke his competitive fire and enjoy the support that his EF Education-NIPPO team offers at races, with massages every night and chef-cooked meals. Then, he headed up to his apartment in Andorra for a three-week block of altitude training with teammates.

“It wasn’t a full-blown team camp, but it was, I would say, the perfect medium,” he says. “We didn’t ride with the team every day, but we had four or five teammates up in Andorra and a few staff members. Basically, they would give us the route every day, and we could come, or we could not. Two or three days a week, we would have structured team training, just to break up the solo training rhythm a little bit. It was an amazing three weeks. I feel like I improved so much when I was there, just having a little bit of team support, but also the freedom to do what we wanted to do. I got to spend a lot of time with Frances, my wife. The stress levels were so low, but the training stress that I was able to accumulate and recover from there was at the highest level that I have ever experienced.”

In training, Neilson was focused on building his race-winning power: basically, his ability to accelerate for short bursts and then recover, while maintaining a very hard effort. Most of his intervals were “over-unders”. Using his power meter, he would accelerate up to his Functional Threshold Power (FTP)—effectively the maximum power output he is able to maintain for one hour—or just below it, and then, at regular intervals, pick up the pace for short, very intense efforts, before returning to his previous pace. These sessions are like doing 200-meter or 400-meter sprints every few minutes, while running a 10k at race pace.

“A really solid preparation workout that I did that I really enjoyed was a ride that was 20 to 30 watts sub-threshold, but every four minutes doing 20 seconds as hard as I could, and then trying to settle back into threshold again. Every four minutes for 25-30 minutes, you’re doing a 20-second all-out sprint and then trying to settle directly back into threshold,” he says. “And then, after that climb, I did one more climb that was one minute on, four minutes off, so it was one minute at VO2, four minutes at threshold, one minute VO2, four minutes threshold, one minute VO2, four minutes threshold, basically for 30 minutes.”

VO2 refers to Neilson’s VO2 max, the maximum rate at which his body is able to consume oxygen during exercise, so he was going as hard as he could possibly go during those efforts. He would gauge his improvements by comparing his power numbers to his heart-rate data. He knows he is getting fit if his heart rate is lower for a given steady power, so long as it will also jump up to its max when he wants. If his heart-rate fails to respond during an all-out two-minute interval and is, say, 10-20 beats below its max, he knows that he is getting fatigued.

In this effort, he saw some of the best numbers he has ever seen.

“That was a fun workout, because you just fly up a mountain,” he says. “It was just in a training workout and I didn’t realize it until I got home, but I was just like, wow, that was the fastest that I have ever gone on that climb, and the hardest I have ever gone for 20 minutes, and I didn’t even feel as if I was going for that. I was just sticking to the workout, and on the last couple I kind of pushed, because I was feeling really comfortable and feeling really good, and I think that bodes well for the plan for improving that recovery from explosive efforts.”

At the Tour de Suisse, Neilson’s work this year came to fruition. It was his final week of competition before the Tour de France, and he rode a fantastic race, ushering Rigoberto Urán to second place overall. By the last day, he was climbing with the best ten riders in the race in the high mountains.

“In terms of my own ambitions, it was really motivating to close out the Tour de Suisse getting stronger each day and having my best day on the final day,” Neilson says. “It just makes me really excited for what can happen in the Tour.”

We are too.