The Route in Numbers
The official profile puts the longest climbs at both ends. The Col de la Colombière starts almost straight out of Cluses (506 m) and tops out at 1,618 m after 19.5 km. The Col de la Croix Fry follows at km 44. The route then drops to Ugine (422 m, the lowest altitude marked on the profile) at km 80, before the short Col de la Forclaz de Queige. The Col du Pré (1,748 m, km 117) is the highest point of the day, and the Montée de Bisanne tops out at km 150, four kilometres before the finish at 1,650 m.
Multiply each climb’s length by its gradient and the five climbs come to 53.2 km and about 3,939 m of height gain. That is about a third of the distance and four-fifths of the day’s 4,850 m.
1. Col de la Colombière · summit 1,618 m at km 19.5
2. Col de la Croix Fry · summit 1,477 m at km 44
3. Col de la Forclaz de Queige · summit 853 m at km 89
4. Col du Pré · summit 1,748 m at km 117
5. Montée de Bisanne · summit 1,723 m at km 150
The 2027 regulations (version of 20 October 2026) add the practical details. Feeding points are set up every 30 km and after the finish, and personal assistance is allowed only at those points, with no following vehicles. Entry also needs a sports licence from the French federation (FFC) or one of three other named federations, or a “Module Santé” health certificate generated through an FFC account. If that self-assessment comes back negative, a doctor’s certificate is required. Riders must be born in 2009 or earlier, and a bib costs €185 including taxes at the single rate, while bibs last. Riders have at most 10 hours 30 minutes, counted from when the last participant crosses the start line, and time barriers at the feeding points are to be published on the event website.
What the Climbs Ask of You: A Worked Example
How long you spend on each climb depends mostly on your watts per kilo. To put numbers on it, we used the road-cycling power model of Martin et al. (1998). On the road it predicted measured power with R² = 0.97 and a standard error of 2.7 W. Its terms cover gravity, rolling resistance, air resistance, wheel-bearing friction and changes in speed. For a steady climb we keep the first three, add a drivetrain loss, and leave out the two small terms.
The inputs are our assumptions, not measurements. The rider weighs 75 kg and the bike and kit 9 kg. We set drag area to 0.40 m², the rolling-resistance coefficient to 0.005, air density to 1.1 kg/m³ and drivetrain loss to 2%, with no wind. At 3.0 W/kg (225 W) the Colombière comes out at about 12.4 km/h and 77 minutes. Of the 220 W that reach the rear wheel, about 197 W lift rider and bike and only about 9 W push air. That is why the assumptions barely matter: with a drag area of 0.30 and rolling resistance of 0.004 the climb takes 75.5 minutes, and with 0.45 and 0.006 it takes 78.5.
| Climb | 2.5 W/kg | 3.0 W/kg | 3.5 W/kg |
|---|---|---|---|
| Col de la Colombière | 92 min | 77 min | 67 min |
| Col de la Croix Fry | 34 min | 29 min | 25 min |
| Col de la Forclaz de Queige | 34 min | 28 min | 24 min |
| Col du Pré | 80 min | 67 min | 58 min |
| Montée de Bisanne | 83 min | 70 min | 60 min |
| All five climbs | 5 h 22 min | 4 h 31 min | 3 h 55 min |
In this example, a 75 kg rider spends 3 h 55 min to 5 h 22 min going uphill, in single efforts of up to an hour and a half. The plan has to build that kind of sustained climbing, not just general fitness.
What the Day Costs in TSS
Joe Friel’s TrainingPeaks guide gives the TSS formula as (seconds × NP × IF) / (FTP × 3600) × 100. Because IF is NP divided by FTP, that reduces to hours × IF² × 100. An hour at FTP scores 100, the standard Hunter Allen describes in his account of how TSS was developed with Andrew Coggan. As an example, a rider who needs eight hours at an IF of 0.70 collects 8 × 0.49 × 100 = 392 TSS in one day.
Compare that with CTL. In Coggan’s Performance Manager, CTL is an exponentially weighted average of daily TSS with a 42-day time constant. In practice it is your recent average TSS per day. A rider at CTL 60 is absorbing about 420 TSS a week, so the Étape asks nearly a full week’s load of that rider in a single day. That is why the long ride grows through the plan below. Our weekly TSS targets guide covers how to spread a week’s load.
Ramp Rate: Why Starting in November Helps
Friel puts a sensible CTL increase at “about 5 to 8 points per week” for most athletes. He writes that some can handle more than 10 a week for a while, but the outcomes are unlikely to be as good if that goes on much beyond a week. Coggan is more cautious: raising CTL by more than 5–7 TSS/d per week for four weeks or more often leads to illness or other signs of overreaching.
The 42-day formula shows what those rates cost. TrainingPeaks updates CTL each day by 1/42 of the gap between that day’s TSS and the previous day’s CTL. Over one week, CTL closes about 15.5% of the gap between where it stands and your average daily TSS that week (1 − (41/42)7). Starting from CTL 40, a ramp of 5 points in a week takes about 505 TSS, and a ramp of 3 takes about 415. With 36 weeks to go you need neither. The example below goes from CTL 40 to about 70 and never ramps by more than about 2.3 points a week.
The Plan, Phase by Phase (Example)
Stated inputs: CTL 40 on Monday 2 November and the weekly TSS figures in the table below. Until the taper, the weeks run in blocks of three load weeks and one lighter week, in line with Friel’s advice to hold a ramp for a few weeks and then take a few easy days. The final two weeks follow the taper research covered further down. Hours assume Coggan’s figure that most people train at 50–75 TSS per hour. If you start below CTL 40, scale the TSS figures down. The principles of the CTL plan-building guide still apply.
| Phase | Dates | Weekly TSS | Hours / week | Key sessions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Base 1 | 2 Nov – 27 Dec | 300–390 (easy weeks 210, 240) | 4–8 h | Endurance rides (56–75% of FTP), one tempo session a week |
| Base 2 | 28 Dec – 21 Feb | 390–460 (easy weeks 260, 280) | 5–9 h | Tempo blocks (76–90%) building toward 60 minutes; longer weekend ride |
| Build: climbing | 22 Feb – 18 Apr | 450–520 (easy weeks 300, 310) | 6–10 h | Threshold repeats of 10–30 min (91–105%); 40–60 min tempo climbs; fuelling practice starts |
| Specific | 19 Apr – 27 Jun | 500–580 (easy weeks 320, 340) | 7–12 h | Long rides linking two or three climbs at July pace; full fuelling rehearsals |
| Taper | 28 Jun – 11 Jul | 320, then 232 (Mon–Sat) | – | TSS cut 45%, then 60%, against the peak week; intensity and frequency kept |
Example inputs, not a prescription. Intensity ranges are Coggan’s power levels as a percentage of FTP; hours are the load-week TSS divided by 75 and by 50.
November to February: Base
The first two phases build the habit and the aerobic base. Most riding sits in Coggan’s Endurance level (56–75% of FTP), with one Tempo session (76–90%) a week. In January and February the tempo blocks get longer. Coggan gives a 60-minute block at that level, between an easy warm-up and cool-down, as an example of a tempo session. That is close to the 77 minutes the Colombière takes in the example above. Our base training guide covers this phase in detail.
Late February to mid-April: Build for Climbing
Threshold work starts here, done the way Coggan describes it: repeats of 10–30 minutes at 91–105% of FTP. Alongside it, the example adds long tempo climbs of 40–60 minutes. To size each day, Friel works from CTL: a hard day is CTL plus 50–100%, a moderate day CTL plus 25%, and an easy day CTL minus 25%. At CTL 60 that gives hard days of 90–120 TSS, moderate days of 75 and easy days of 45. He calls these ballpark targets, not fixed values.
19 April to 27 June: Event-Specific
The last 12 weeks line up with the organiser’s own plan, written with the FFC. It is split into three four-week blocks (velocity, strength and power), with a “Finisher” version of three rides a week and a “Chrono” version of five. The version on the site is still the 2026 plan. If you follow it, keep the weekly TSS close to this phase’s range. Either way, the key session is a long ride that links two or three climbs at the pace you plan to hold in July, eating exactly what you will eat on the day.
Fuelling Is a Trained Skill
The UCI’s nutrition position statement (Burke et al., 2026) sums up a UCI project that drew on 54 researchers and targets elite cycling. It scales carbohydrate intake to race length: 30–60 g per hour for races of 1–2.5 hours and 90 g per hour beyond 2.5 hours. Intakes of 120 g per hour or more in professionals are noted, but the statement says their benefits still need to be confirmed. Above 60 g per hour it advises products with mixed glucose and fructose. It calls gut tolerance critical, and says it can be improved by “gut training”: practising with gradually larger amounts of the products you will race with.
For an eight-hour day, 90 g per hour comes to 720 g of carbohydrate. You collect that from feeding points spaced about 30 km apart, carrying what you need in between. From the Build phase on, treat every ride over 2.5 hours as a rehearsal, and raise the hourly amount step by step over the weeks. For example, go from 60 to 75 to 90 g per hour, moving up only when the current amount sits comfortably. The statement also says each rider should develop a race nutrition plan and keep adjusting it. Our on-bike fuelling guide has the practical side.
The Taper
Bosquet et al. (2007) pooled 27 studies in a meta-analysis. The most effective strategy they found was a two-week taper, with training volume cut exponentially by 41–60% while intensity and frequency stayed the same. The example follows that: the first taper week drops to 320 TSS (45% below the 580-TSS peak week), and race week to 232 TSS from Monday to Saturday (60% below). The short hard efforts stay in.
In the example, CTL falls from its peak of 70.1 on 27 Jun to 62.6 on race morning, and TSB rises to +16.6. Coggan writes that a TSB above +10 usually comes with fresh legs, and treats −10 to +10 as roughly neutral. The trade is a few points of fitness for a large gain in freshness. See CTL, ATL and TSB explained for how the three lines interact.
What the Model Can’t Tell You
Coggan is explicit about the limits of the Performance Manager. It is a descriptive model, and it has not been possible to link its structure to specific physiological events. It doesn’t know whether your training matches the event. And it is only as good as your FTP: set FTP 4% too low and every TSS comes out just over 8% too high. He also warns against reading too much into periods where more than about 10% of ride files are missing. So retest FTP during the plan, record every ride, and judge each phase by how the long climbs feel as well as by the chart.
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- Official event and race information (read October 2026): L’Étape du Tour de France, “Route” page and official 2027 route profile; “Sports Rules and General Terms of Sale, L’Étape du Tour de France 2027 Edition” (version of 20 October 2026); “Training plans” page (FFC plan); Tour de France, “Official route of Tour de France 2027” and “Stage 11, Cluses > Les Saisies” (letour.fr).
- Training load: Andrew Coggan, “The Science of the Performance Manager” (TrainingPeaks, 2022, updated 2023); Andrew Coggan, “Power Training Levels” (TrainingPeaks, 2016, updated 2026); Joe Friel, “Why Ramp Rate Is an Important Training Metric” (TrainingPeaks, 2015, updated 2026); Joe Friel, “Applying the Numbers Part 2: Training Stress Score” (TrainingPeaks, 2015, updated 2026); Joe Friel, “Estimating Training Stress Score (TSS)” (TrainingPeaks, 2009, updated 2026); Hunter Allen, “The Development of the Training Stress Score” (TrainingPeaks, 2011, updated 2022); TrainingPeaks Help Center, “Fitness (CTL)” (October 2025), “Fatigue (ATL)” (August 2026) and “Form (TSB)” (October 2022), for the daily CTL, ATL and TSB formulas.
- Research: Martin JC, Milliken DL, Cobb JE, McFadden KL, Coggan AR (1998), “Validation of a mathematical model for road cycling power”, Journal of Applied Biomechanics 14(3):276–291; Dahmen T, Byshko R, Saupe D, Röder M, Mantler S (2011), “Validation of a model and a simulator for road cycling on real tracks”, Sports Engineering 14:95–110 (for the model’s terms); Bosquet L, Montpetit J, Arvisais D, Mujika I (2007), “Effects of tapering on performance: a meta-analysis”, Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise 39(8):1358–1365; Burke LM et al. (2026), “UCI Sports Nutrition Project: Position Statement on Nutrition for Cycling”, International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism 36(6):700–726, published online 15 September 2026.
Climb times, event TSS, the CTL path and the taper figures are our own arithmetic from the stated inputs; they are examples, not predictions for any individual rider.