Andy Anderson

  In November of 2005, I registered to “compete” in the l’Etape du Tour. Until a month before registering, I had no idea this event existed, and came to find that not many people know about the event, even those who consider themselves “avid” road cyclists. In short, l’Etape is an event held every year whereby you get to ride a “stage” of le Tour du France on closed roads with supported food stations. To make the event interesting, they often select a mountain stage, which, for 2006 was stage 15 from Gap to l’Alpe d’Huez.

  Let me start by saying, I am not a “roadie.” I’ve owned my road bike for 3 years, but have been mountain biking for 16. I’m 36 years old and only purchased a road bike because it was an alternative to mountain biking when I couldn’t get to the trails.

  All of my training began with me having no concept of “how” to train. Until November, I didn’t even know about “heart rates”, lactate thresholds, % of max, etc. I borrowed a heart rate monitor for the first two months of training. Everything I learned was from the internet. With this said, I didn’t even know if I was training the right way.

  After 3 ½ months of training on my own, I felt like I was making progress and improving my conditioning, but much of what I had read mentioned that, if you don’t train “right”, all of your work may be wasted and not help you improve. It was at this point, I was put in touch with Adnan

  Despite the premise of how I was connected with Adnan (i.e. on-line training), how he approached the training was via real-time conversation. I find it difficult to have a “conversation” via email, which is what I thought much of the relationship would entail. This was not an issue with Adnan, in fact, often times, he would call me to check to see how things were progressing. Talk about first rate customer service!

  In addition to setting training plans that were tailored to achieving my goal of l’Etape, he was also very open to “educating” me on why I was doing what he had planned. It was clear I was an amateur, and when I asked the questions, it often turned into a conversation that ended with me knowing more about why I was doing what I needed to do.

  Adnan also took the time at the beginning of our relationship to understand what I was trying to achieve, the time I had available to train, my personal situation (family, job, kids, dog, etc.) His approach wasn’t “cookie-cutter”, it seemed to be custom to my situation. As the months went on, and different events came to be, each week was planned with him understanding what I had going on. Again, this was all achieved via real-time phone conversations, not via email. I felt like I was getting “personal attention.”

  In the end, I completed l’Etape and finished well above what I had expected. It was clear that the amount of training prescribed by Adnan as well as the “type” of training he had me doing was spot on. The only thing that prevented me from finishing even better than I did was my own fear of Alpine decents and not fully understanding what type of physical shape I had really been able to get myself into.

-Andy Anderson