'A free mind equals fast legs' – How my mental state helped me wear the yellow jersey for two days at an unforgettable Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes

Hello again everyone!

When my coach informed me, after my performance at the Tour of Romandie, that instead of racing the Tour de Suisse I would go to the Dauphiné… my bad, the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (or TARA, as I will call it for the rest of this piece), I was initially quite apprehensive.

Although I had just earned my first WorldTour top 10 GC result, finishing sixth in Romandie, I felt like it was a potential step too far, due to the fact that the race is widely known amongst the pros for how hard it is, actually harder than a week of a Grand Tour.

My coach brushed it off and said back to me, "Well, you shouldn't have done so well at Romandie!" I couldn't really disagree with that, so I now had three weeks until the Tour de France preparation race, and not in my wildest dreams could I have expected what occurred.

Luke Tuckwell

Luke Tuckwell is a professional cyclist from Australia riding for Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe. This year is his first year as a pro, and it has already been a highly successful one. In his first column for Cyclingnews, he told us about how he turned pro, and in this instalment, he recalls an unforgettable result at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes.

But before I talk about my memorable week in France, I want to bring you back to the weeks prior to the race. My girlfriend is from Denmark, and due to the extremely busy few months prior for both of us, we hadn't seen each other for over two months. I pre-planned going to Denmark to see her many weeks before I knew I was doing TARA, so two weeks out I went and visited her for 10 days.

What struck me was that practically 80% of the peloton that was racing TARA was at altitude during this period, the majority of them in Sierra Nevada. Even my own teammates that were racing as well were up on a mountain breathing thin air, and there I was at sea level, at my girlfriend's house, riding around the rolling Danish hills around Vejle. I should mention the longest hill is about three minutes, so not ideal for mountain training. Yet, the most important factor for me during this period was the mental benefit of being around my loved ones. I still did my training; I still did a few active heat sessions, but the main point was that I wasn't feeling lonely and exhausted on top of a mountain.

My time in Denmark wasn't all sunshine and rainbows, though. While I felt extremely good on the bike doing my long endurance rides, I was really struggling to complete any form of harder VO2 efforts. I felt as if I couldn't push my body to its limit. I felt as if my head would just give up from the pain of the efforts.

I've experienced this a few times this year, especially after the passing of my younger sister in September last year. Some days I can wake up feeling completely 'normal', eat my breakfast, roll out for my ride feeling fine, but as soon as I start my efforts, I have no motivation. I felt emotional and weak. This happened one day while doing a hard VO2 session. I got roughly five minutes into my first set, and my body just gave up. I had a bit of an emotional moment on the side of the road as I felt sorry for myself, questioning why this was happening, and stressed over the fact I was racing TARA in a week's time. I spent the rest of the day feeling miserable on the couch, being comforted by my girlfriend.

Over the next few days, I slowly felt more like myself again, and together with my coach, modified my training depending on how I felt each morning and the mental state I was in.

'I went to the race excited for the week ahead with a smile on my face'

I won't lie to you, I was now feeling even more nervous about TARA after being mentally unable to finish any efforts for the last week, but I said to my coach I still wanted to race because it was something else for my brain to focus on, and my body still felt in good condition post-Romandie.

What is great about the systems that are in place at Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe is that information about the athlete is shared with all individuals working with the rider. So even though I only explicitly told my coach about how my head was feeling and the struggles I was going through during this week, that information was shared with my personal directeur sportif, my nutritionist, my doctor, and the wider coaching group.

I spent two days in Girona, my old European home, between travelling back from Denmark and going to TARA. My DS, Shane Archbold, a retired former professional who was in the Bora team for many years prior to the arrival of Red Bull, also happened to be in Girona over the same period. He asked if I'd like to join him for a ride before I left again, and the conversation that we had on this ride completely changed my outlook for the week ahead.

I hadn't seen Shane for a while. The only race we had done together this year was Tour Down Under, and he had just returned from the Giro. On this ride, Shane put it simply to me. I had already exceeded expectations this year, both from a personal standpoint and from a team standpoint. My performances at Catalunya and Basque Country delighted the team, and a sixth place in Romandie was the cherry on top of that that no one was expecting. Already to finish in the top 10 on GC as a neo-pro in a WorldTour stage race was a massive achievement. I could have ended my season there and been more than satisfied with my year.

So, Shane told me to go to TARA with a free mind. There was no pressure from the team; the only pressure I had was the pressure I was putting on myself. He said to go and have fun, race with a smile on my face, find my physical limits. He said to try something crazy, and if something crazy happens, that's amazing, but if you blow up and finish twenty minutes behind the winner, that's also great. He also told me to race with my sister on my shoulder, and use the thoughts of her as motivation to get the most out of myself.

This one-hour conversation I had with Shane completely changed my feelings. I suddenly wasn't nervous anymore; I didn't feel stressed, and the emotional feelings I had floating around for the last few days evaporated. I went to the race excited for the week ahead with a smile on my face, in a clear mental space, and with no pressure. I felt free.

As I mentioned, Shane said to try something crazy, and if something crazy happens, that's amazing. And well, we tried something crazy and something crazy did happen.

The day that changed everything

I think by the middle of the race, the majority of people thought they knew how the race was going to pan out. A great victory on the first day by EF's Alex Baudin put a Frenchman into the maillot jaune on day one. The TTT confirmed that the superstar riders were ready to battle it out in the mountains. Everyone was talking about the inevitable Paul Seixas vs Isaac del Toro showdown that was going to happen sooner rather than later, but stage 6 of TARA flipped the script.

As a team, we had highlighted this stage as a seriously good chance for Maxim Van Gils to win the stage from the breakaway, so he deliberately lost time on GC two days earlier in order to go up the road without any other teams panicking. What we didn't expect was a sixty-man breakaway, half of the peloton, to be riding away from the main peloton. What we also as a team didn't expect was for me to be in that group only 1:03 down on GC. But I saw from the front of the peloton a few extra Uno-X riders bridging to the breakaway and remembered what they did on the final day of Basque Country this year.

For those who don't know, here is a brief explanation: Uno-X put their entire team into the breakaway with Tobias Halland Johannessen and rode him into third on GC. I instantly thought this was my chance to make a move for my own GC result.

And so the chaos began. I could probably write an extra two thousand words about how the stage went, but I won't let you suffer through that, so here is the short version. The breakaway instantly started working together, and the time gap kept increasing and increasing. Maxim and I were staying together in the group, and we were both feeling good. We came to the first of two final climbs, and the group immediately shrank in size, and we had a ridiculous 4:55 on the chasing peloton. I knew by this point that, all going well, I would be in yellow at the end of the stage, but in my head the priority was to win the stage. So that's what we set about doing.

On the final ascent to Crest-Voland, Maxim reduced the group to three; I bridged across myself a few minutes later to make it four and immediately started setting a hard tempo to set Maxim up for a sprint. We rounded the final bend with three hundred metres to go, and Maxim and Tobias duked it out for the stage win, and I emptied myself to the line to have as much time as possible on the group of GC riders behind, flying up the mountain.

Firstly, the joy that came over me seeing Maxim with his hands in the air taking the stage win actually made me forget for a moment about what I had achieved, but as I rolled across the line and towards my soigneurs it quickly sunk in that I was in yellow. To be honest, I only thought Seixas and Del Toro were probably only a minute behind us, but one minute became two, and two became three, and 3:15 after I finished they came across the line.

In short, I could not believe it. I was in yellow at the biggest one-week stage race in the world, as a neo-pro, with two days left and a three-minute advantage. This already felt like a win for me. Compared to how I was feeling on the side of the road in Denmark crying because I couldn't understand why I was unable to complete my efforts, to a week later standing on the podium in yellow with my first iconic lion, it was amazing. I genuinely couldn't stop smiling, and together with Maxim, we watched each other up on the podium and enjoyed the success together.

This is where I've been told I announced myself to the cycling world. I went from a relatively unknown rider to suddenly having a real possibility of winning TARA. But I wasn't too concerned about what would happen. The position I was in I could have never imagined. I felt like I had won already. I felt no pressure for the last two stages of the race. All I knew was that I would give my absolute all to try and end with the best result possible, and as long as I did that, I could be proud of myself.

I feel I don't have to give a play-by-play recount of the final two days because I am going to assume most people reading this article also roughly know what happened on those final days. I fought my heart out to keep the jersey on Grand Colombier and only had an advantage of 42 seconds over Matteo Jorgenson, and the following day I suffered like a pig up the Plateau du Solaison and somehow managed to hold onto second on GC.

This was a career-defining result. The result does change my trajectory within professional cycling. It shapes the rider I hope to eventually turn into, and my name is now more widely known. I have the memories of spending two days in the maillot jaune, and they will stay with me for the rest of my life. As I am writing this article two weeks after the race, I've had enough time to reflect on the week and the result I achieved. I am incredibly proud of myself.

But my biggest takeaway upon reflecting was the realisation of how a positive, free, and relaxed mental headspace coming into a race is equally as important as the physical shape you arrive with. A part of me wonders if this side of the sport is often overlooked in pursuit of the smallest possible gains in order to be in better form than our rivals. I wonder if there is some sort of magic in this, enjoying time at home with loved ones, recovering well from racing, not destroying yourself everyday in training, and appreciating the ups and downs of life. It also feels weird for me to comment on this after only being in the WorldTour for six months, and it's something I will continue to think about, but what I can say for sure is that a free mind equals fast legs.

See you soon,

Luke