Ahead of his racing return at next week's Tour de Suisse, world champion Remco Evenepoel has logged a huge 'personalised Liège-Bastogne-Liège' training ride.
The Belgian is preparing to mount a defence of his national time trial title later this month and then a defence of his world title in August, with Switzerland the first step towards those goals after his abandon of the Giro d'Italia.
On Tuesday he took to Instagram to document his 231km ride through the Ardennes south of Liège, tackling 20 climbs along the way to rack up a massive 4,335 metres of elevation – the queen stage at the Tour de Suisse has 4,654 metres, for comparison.
Evenepoel tackled several famous climbs of Liège-Bastogne-Liège, including the Col de La Redoute, the Roche-aux Faucons, Côte de Stockeu and Col du Rosier during his seven-hour ride. He has enjoyed great success on those hills, of course, powering to solo victories at La Doyenne over La Redoute in the last two editions of the Monument.
Documenting his ride on Instagram stories, Evenepoel called the climb "my favourite climb maybe in the whole world" – for obvious reasons.
Accompanied by team soigneur David Geeroms, he then went on to stop for eclairs and rice cakes at a bakery at the midway point of the training day, which he named 'La Gleize-Boulangerie-La Gleize' on Strava.
He'll be joined at the Tour de Suisse by Kasper Asgreen, sprinter Tim Merlier, James Knox, Mattia Cattaneo, Mauro Schmid, and Bert Van Lerberghe. The race is bookended by time trials, with Evenepoel set to be among the favourites for the wins in Einsiedeln and Abtwil, if not the race overall after his COVID-enforced layoff from racing.
"We have Remco back on the team and we are looking forward to it," said Soudal-QuickStep directeur sportif Geert Van Bondt. "The two individual time trials suit him, but also guys like Kasper, Mauro, and Mattia can do something nice on those stages.
"As Remco returns after illness, we'll just take it day by day and see what he can do in the mountains, where he'll also have James to help him in addition to the other guys. For the flat stages, our man is Tim, who can count on Bert to guide him, so we're confident in our chances of getting some good results."
Evenepoel's big Ardennes ride was his last day of training on home ground before heading out to Switzerland on Wednesday. The Tour de Suisse kicks off on Jun 11 and runs to June 18.
