Jolanda Neff Raced on 'Legs & Heart' Without a Bike Computer or Power Meter at the Tokyo Olympics
Jolanda Neff raced without a bike computer, power meter or heart rate monitor on her way to winning the 2021 Tokyo Olympics last week unlike many of her competitors. Neff told us she relied on her "legs and...heart" rather than data to power herself to victory by more than a minute over compatriots Sina Frei and Linda Indergand.
Bike computers are almost universal in endurance bike racing from the Tour de France through to World Cup cross country racing and they can provide riders with data such as their power output, speed, heart rate or lap times. In theory, the information allows riders to use data to measure their effort and theoretically pace themselves better throughout the race. Neff instead raced on intuition and relied on her body telling her how much effort to use as she completed 5 laps of the Izu Peninsula track.
In fact, this isn't unusual for Jolanda, who said she has almost never used a bike computer or power meter in competition and only started using it in training this year. She said: "I have never done any race in my life with a power meter or a heart rate belt or even a bike computer until 2021, with one exception, which was the Tokyo test event in 2019 where I did the race with all 3 and recorded every detail of the parcours. All the years before that, which is 21 years of racing to be fair, I always race on my intuition and my feeling... To me, skills and fun on the bike are the number one priority."
This is a philosophy that Neff wishes to pass onto younger riders who may rely too heavily on numbers over enjoying riding their bikes. She continues, "I would love to give this message to any bike rider in the world, and especially young riders. Please enjoy riding your bike to the fullest, have fun with your mates, admire nature and the animals you get to see and forget about the numbers. You will get fast by riding your bike not by producing some certain numbers. Yes, you need to train and you need to overcome challenges and setbacks but please do it with your heart. Ride your bike for one reason, because it is fun."
Neff accepts that this approach may not work for everyone but it has been incredibly successful for her with a palmares that includes 3 consecutive U23 World Championships, 3 overall World Cup wins, 12 World Cup wins and National Championships wins on and off road. She said, "I have been training like this all my life and it didn't stop me from having success. Yes, it was great fun but also a great success. Often people think when you have fun you're not working hard, which is not true. You can be having the most fun and working the hardest and have success at the same time. Everyone has their own style and I totally respect that and as long as you ride your bike, no matter what gadget, that's totally awesome. I'm just saying this is my style and I'm happy with it."
Author Info:
Member since Nov 14, 2018
Must Read This Week
Sign Up for the Pinkbike Newsletter - All the Biggest, Most Interesting Stories in your Inbox
PB Newsletter Signup
Nice race Jolanda!
She totally nailed it.
Works every time and they don't need batteries..
A) Learning how to pace. As you note pro athletes have learned this skill, but the process of learning it can be difficult the power meter helps. Knowing your limits numerically, what it feels like at the start of the race and how hard to you need to not go to blow up etc.
B) Tracking long term fitness and trends. It's a lot easier to spot when you aren't getting better when the power goes down. Can catch overreaching before it becomes a bigger problem. It also makes it easier to analyze as a coach and figure out "hey this person numerically really responds well to this".
ugh wrong hobby, sorry
2. For those who care. The drop the power meter argument has been around for a bit...but has tempered a bit in recent years. That said, the Yellow Jersey riders are now so measured in the TDF because they know where they sit. This is a good summary article. www.velonews.com/news/road/the-power-meter-debate-rages-on
(*) Granted, if you're from a smaller country this may be more important just based on getting to see your country represented on the world stage, not a problem for us.
Félicitations Canadian Womens Soccer (sic)
(note to our English second language friends: "sic" means spelled incorrectly, and is often used to indicate a mis-spelled word being used as part of a joke)
These days it’s not easy to see an athlete’s personality though, because they are either discouraged from showing it, or too scared to show it, knowing that a section of society is listening carefully for something offensive.
In a race it is useless anyway. What if your opponent attacks on the second to last lap? Are you not going to match because you would exceed your targeted power output for that section? In a race the other people you are competing with has much more influence on when and where you have to increase effort. If you were to only race based on measurables, you would never win
- Your gadget does not help with poor planning. Spontaneously deciding to ride 100km as simply an older enthusiast is you not listening to anything smart at all.
- Gadgets can be an incomplete picture. My HR felt under control but without a power meter and unfamiliar with every climb I had no idea I was going to crack by wasting my legs to fast.
- Your gadget doesn't feed you or tell you when to eat in the 2 days preceding your ride(s), or during it.
- When you're cracked and cramped at the side of the road and can't stand properly and still have 30km to go with no ability to get vehicular help...your gadget won't help you. It's all you to get there, no matter how fast or slow.
- When you are in that last 30km you are utterly by yourself. The only number I wanted with 5 left to go was time...even through the pain I was trying to hit my target. Got it, but holy shit did I pay for it.
TL/DR...in the end your ride is all on you. Plan, prep, ride, finish...only you can do that. I will still ride with my Garmin but valuable lessons learned yesterday and from this article.
For someone with high fitness goals who doesn’t have a full support team of coaches the HR and Power Meters can be awesome tools to help in ride planning, getting through rides while hitting training goals, and can help you understand what went wrong if you end up cracked on the side of the road.
Go Jolanda!
Can't argue with that philosophy. What's more, she seems to embody this attitude - her default start-line expression is pretty unique among top pro athletes - she seems to radiate joyous anticipation
I might start wearing one when I pass 50…
But at the same time, wouldn't dropping a power meter, heart rate monitor, and bike computer save a lot of weight too?
Idk how much value there is in a shorter event like XCO, but in longer road races with more complicated tactics going on riders rely on them to budget energy and avoid blowing up - can you sustain this attack, or are you gonna blow up before the finish line at this pace?. Obviously people have done this by feel since before power meters existed, but power meters remove a lot of guesswork.
Some online training tools will adjust your upcoming training schedule based on the ride data you upload. Even if you're using a less fancy training program, if you're logging all your indoor speed workouts on the trainer it's nice to have your outdoor rides logged too.