Inside a WorldTour pro's off-season: Watching NBA with Remco, much-needed days on the couch, and exhausting wind tunnel tests - Luke Tuckwell's column

If you've scrolled through social media over the past few weeks, you'd have come across countless posts from professional cyclists around the world enjoying their off-seasons and giving followers a small glimpse into what they have been doing. I'm guilty of this too. Posting 20 photos on Instagram of where I've been, what I’ve eaten, and who I’ve been spending my time with. It’s straight to the point. So today I'm going to give a deeper dive into what my off-season looked like, how it’s shaping my 2027 season, and why it was the best off-season I have had to date.

I was one of the lucky pros at the end of this year (admittedly, that depends on how you define lucky) because I finished my season relatively early after a jam-packed neo pro season. The World Championships road race in Montreal was my final event of the 2026 season, and although I didn’t finish, I had a great time with the Australian team. It was a perfect way to close out the year.

As I sat on the flight back to Barcelona, I had a strange feeling inside me, though. I didn’t really want the season to end. It had been so good to me, and I had enjoyed it so much. Being a neo pro was nice too. It gave me the luxury of making mistakes and not having as much pressure on my shoulders at races, and as you move further into your career, more is expected from you as an athlete.

On the other hand, I was completely exhausted. I had 41 race days under my belt before July arrived without having raced the Giro, and rounded off the year by finishing my first Grand Tour at La Vuelta. I ended the season with 67 race days, almost the same as my 2024 and 2025 seasons combined.

Needing time to do absolutely nothing

I was well and truly ready to take some time for myself, sit on the couch for hours on end and enjoy the few weeks of the year when I can truly do whatever pleases me. After a few days at home post-travel back from Montreal, I planned to travel to the Basque Country in northern Spain with my parents and some family friends for a few days. But when the day came to travel, I was still completely exhausted, and all I wanted was to sit on the couch and spend some time in my own apartment.

It was a good decision in the end, because after almost two weeks, when it was time for the ‘planned’ holiday part of my off-season, I already felt completely rested and my body was returning to normality, if that's how you want to call it.

I wasn’t keen on any overseas holidays this year like a lot of my fellow pros do (I have these trips planned in my head for the coming years), but instead I wanted to stay local and avoid yet more air travel. Thankfully, the beautiful Costa Brava in northern Spain is only a three-and-a-half-hour drive from my home in Andorra. So I spent a wonderful, very relaxing few days there with my girlfriend, whose off-season it was too. We both recharged our batteries lying in the early autumn Spanish sun. By now, it had already been close to three weeks without the bike for me, and I was starting to get a bit antsy.

Throughout this time, I tried to exercise to keep me sane, opting for walks or hikes. It felt nice to spend an hour outside every day just following a dirt track and seeing where it took me. I didn’t do any crazy hikes to mountain peaks like others do; I don’t have the required skill level for that. I stuck to what I knew because the last thing I wanted was to call up the team and tell them I can’t walk or start riding again because I'd sprained my ankle…

By this point, the off-season finish line was edging closer and closer, but there were still two big requirements to tick off. First was my team’s annual October medical camp at Red Bull HQ in Austria, a jam-packed two days of tests at the Athlete Performance Centre (APC) followed by commercial shoots, all in preparation for the 2027 season. But the big ticket item of my off-season was still to come. Every year the team sends roughly six riders to Specialized HQ in Morgan Hill, California, for wind tunnel testing. I was fortunate enough to do this twelve months ago when I was still on the Rookies. But this year our trip had some extra flair.

The realities of wind tunnel testing

Alongside my teammates Remco Evenepoel and fellow Aussie Jai Hindley, I jetted off to the USA as part of the first group of riders, and this year we had a little side quest mission in Los Angeles to complete. After the twelve-hour flight from Munich to LA, we had a basketball game lined up that evening, the first NBA game I've watched in my life and a cool introduction to America’s sporting culture. We visited Red Bull’s APC in LA and toured their facilities across the pond. We played beach tennis, visited the Santa Monica Pier, took part in a community ride with Specialized Santa Monica, and carried out a cheeky recon of the potential LA 2028 Olympics ITT course. All in all, I haven’t laughed that much in a long time, and it truly felt like a Year 10 boys' school trip. But we still had the ‘work’ part of the trip to go: the wind tunnel testing at the Specialized WinTunnel.

Without giving too much away, I personally made significant gains on my TT position thanks to all the new pieces of equipment developed by Specialized and the team. I am sure most of the readers of this are also aware of the wind tunnel testing Cyclingnews Labs carries out, but I want to give you an insight into how tough wind tunnel testing actually is on the body.

For context, testing at Specialized is made up of six and a half-minute runs. So every time you change something, even the smallest detail, you complete one full run to gather data, and sometimes you even complete that same run twice to reinforce the findings. My time in the tunnel consisted of two morning sessions which ultimately ran into the early afternoon. On day one, I completed 18 runs, followed by a solid 24 runs the following day (I broke my personal 2025 record of 22 runs, so I was pleased). But the hardest part is consistently holding the extremely aggressive position on the time trial bike again and again and again. You get to the point where you cannot feel your arms anymore, and your back, neck, and shoulders are crying out for a moment of relief. But the pain is temporary; we are here to get faster, so you take down another can of Red Bull and keep going for another few hours.

While you're in the tunnel with 50km/h wind blasting you in the face, all you can think about is how happy you will be once it’s all over, but to be honest, I look back on it with fond memories because it is such a rewarding experience. You can literally see how much faster you are getting with each run, and I can tell you that is a pretty special feeling knowing you are making those gains. I am already looking forward to the next time I get the opportunity to return to the WinTunnel.

So that summarises my off-season. After a long journey back from Morgan Hill back to Andorra, I decided it wasn’t quite enough travelling for me, so I spent another twelve-hour day travelling to visit my girlfriend in Denmark. Yes, she is Danish, so don’t worry we didn’t just come to Denmark in early winter for fun. As I write this, I am ten days back into training and feeling extremely motivated for the new season. I'll spend another two weeks here in Denmark, two weeks back home in Andorra, two weeks in Mallorca for December camp, then travel back to Australia for Christmas and, all being well, I'll start my season at the Tour Down Under again.

Thanks for taking the time to read this column. I hope you enjoyed it, and see you again soon.