This season, 20-year-old Zoe Bäckstedt took her first professional win, on the Simac Women Tour – the place she additionally completed third on the GC. Now, she’s into the cyclocross season, the place she holds the rainbow stripes of the Beneath-23 World Champion.
However the final result might have been so completely different, with a summer time of sickness conserving her off the bike. Biking Weekly caught up with the Canyon-SRAM rider earlier than the muddy-season kick off, to seek out out about how she made her 2024 season comeback doable.
You had been sidelined for a lot of the summer time with sickness. How did you prepare to return to racing?
Zone 1 rides, as flat as doable, conserving the center fee low. For the primary week, I began with simply half an hour a day on the turbo, and slowly progressed from there. Once I began to really feel stronger, I added 30-40 watts and simply stored the chain tight for a couple of minutes. I’d typically do 4 instances 4 minutes over the area of two hours. By the point I bought as much as eight minutes and it began to harm a bit, I knew I used to be getting stronger.
You received the time trial on the primary stage of the Simac Women Tour, your first professional win. Was it a goal?
No, I hadn’t focused something. Simac was only a race that I wanted to do to get some extra race days underneath my belt. I’d executed just a few weeks of onerous coaching and got here into that first stage pondering I’d be pleased with prime 10. Once I crossed the end line and heard I had the quickest time, it was a little bit of a shock. I believed possibly they had been speaking about another person, however then my dad [Magnus Bäckstedt] confirmed it on the race radio. I hoped to hold on for a podium – to win was actually one thing particular.
With the CX season arising, are you approaching all of it weapons blazing, or will you retain half an eye fixed on the street?
Yeah, for now I’m specializing in the cross, with about 16 races to do. I wish to put as a lot into every one as doable, after which take into consideration the street season afterwards. In any other case, it turns into a season of six or seven months, whereas if I take a look at it as lasting simply till the tip of the cross season, it’s solely two and a half months.
How do cross and street coaching differ – are you able to mix the 2?
These days, there’s been much more shorter intervals, forward of the primary races. You come from the street season, having executed plenty of super-long efforts, to the cross season, the place the ability is so up-and-down. Firstly of subsequent yr, once we go on a coaching camp earlier than the [CX] Worlds, it’s extra of a mixture of efforts, as you’re then coming into the street season – I’ll adapt the intervals the others [team-mates] are doing, making them shorter or slightly higher-power. I received’t be doing 20-30-minute efforts for a cross race, after I should be doing 30-second all-out sprints.
Fast fireplace spherical…
In the event you might journey one place for the remainder of your life, the place wouldn’t it be?
Sweden – nice on and off street, with a mixture of snow and solar.
Dream race to win?
Paris-Roubaix
Your largest inspiration?
My sister [Elynor Bäckstedt]
Favorite mid-ride cafe snack?
A pastry with cream within the center and strawberries on prime – my go-to.
What’s essentially the most embarrassing track in your playlist?
The entire playlist is embarrassing!
What’s your favorite sport or pastime exterior of biking?
Watching Components One, and I like constructing Lego.
Title the celeb you’d most wish to tackle in a motorcycle race?
Zendaya [US actress and singer] could be cool.
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