Mads Pedersen's coach explains astonishing Flanders comeback training load: 'Completely insane'

Mads Pedersen's spring did not go as planned. The Lidl-Trek rider crashed on the very first day of his 2026 season, and saw a significant chunk of his preparation go up in smoke. He returned remarkably quickly — and that comeback was largely built on a training regime that defies belief.

On 4 February, it went wrong at the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana. Pedersen, who had again targeted the cobbled Classics as a major goal, crashed heavily and broke both his collarbone and his wrist. It looked like the early Classics might be written off — but nothing could have been further from the truth.

He was back at the start of Milan-San Remo on 21 March, finishing fourth to prove his condition was genuine. That form carried through the E3 Saxo Classic (ninth), Dwars door Vlaanderen (tenth), the Tour of Flanders (fifth) and Paris-Roubaix (seventh). No wins, but exceptional results given the circumstances — particularly as he picked up an illness after the E3 and suffered another training crash before Flanders.

Those results were made possible by the extraordinary training work Pedersen put in during his recovery, his coach Matthias Reck revealed on the Half Wheeling podcast. The Dane wasted no time — he joined Lidl-Trek's training camp almost immediately after his crash.

At camp, according to Reck, Pedersen completed 80 hours of training in two weeks. "In the first week he was only on the turbo trainer." That alone accounted for 37 hours. "And these were not easy sessions — he was also doing intervals. Three hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon, six days in a row."

Was that it? Far from it. "In between, he also did a one-hour recovery ride." And that pattern continued throughout the entire spring. "I think he did the hardest training week of his life before Flanders. It was insane. On Tuesday he trained for five hours — with intervals, pacing sessions behind a scooter and, if I remember correctly, a heat acclimatisation session too."

Reck continued: "Wednesday was seven hours. First Dwars door Vlaanderen at an average of 48 kilometres per hour, then two more hours at high tempo back to the hotel — straight into a full headwind. Thursday was another five-hour session, partly behind the scooter. And on Saturday he put some sharpness in the legs ahead of Sunday with a solid three-hour ride."

Reck is under no illusion that this approach is replicable. "To anyone listening to this: don't try this at home. Not many people come out the other side of a cold and a crash doing this." He is also honest enough to admit it was something of a gamble. "But because of the frustration of having setbacks again at a moment when we really couldn't afford them, it was mentally necessary to do more than ever before."

That experience led Reck to a conclusion he had been building towards for years. "It has taken me years to understand how much training load Mads can handle. It is completely insane when you think about it. It is so much training. He has an incredible capacity to recover. If he does too little, his heart rate is high and his power is low. That's why we train this way."

The annual numbers? "He does between 1,100 and 1,200 hours a year. To do that while also travelling extensively and racing a full calendar, you need a lot of 30-hour training weeks. We are very lucky that he genuinely loves being on the bike," Reck concluded.