Stage 4 of Paris-Nice 2026 finished on Signal d’Uchon today. Juan Ayuso leads the GC after Ineos Grenadiers’ TTT win on Stage 3. Jonas Vingegaard is chasing. The race is very much alive.

But the climb that decided the stage deserves attention on its own. Signal d’Uchon is the kind of climb that exposes everyone who’s been training gradients wrong.

195km from Bourges, 2,145m of total climbing, crosswinds that split the peloton in the valleys before anyone even hit the final ascent. And then an 8km climb at 4.5% average that contains ramps surging to 16%. The average gradient tells you almost nothing about how hard it actually is.

Here’s what today’s race teaches about climbing, and how to train for climbs like it.

What Signal d’Uchon Actually Is

On paper, 8km at 4.5% average sounds manageable. That’s gentler than many local climbs. If you ride by average gradient alone, you’d pace it like a steady tempo effort and feel fine.

The reality is different. Signal d’Uchon’s gradient is wildly irregular. Long stretches sit at 2-3%, almost flat. Then a ramp hits 14-16% with almost no warning. Then it backs off again. The average washes out all of that.

The irregular gradient creates a specific physiological problem. You can’t lock into a sustainable power output and hold it. Every ramp forces you above threshold. Every flat recovery section tempts you to overpace. By the time the final steep pitches arrive, riders who tried to ride steady power are already in trouble. They’ve gone deep on the ramps and never recovered between them.

The pros who survived today did something different. They varied their effort deliberately, not reactively.

Lesson 1: Average Gradient Is a Lie

Before your next climb, pull up the elevation profile and look at the shape, not the summary number.

A climb with 500m elevation gain over 10km at constant gradient is a completely different physiological challenge than a climb with the same numbers but 200m flat followed by 300m of 10%+ punching. The total work is similar. The demand on your body is not.

Signal d’Uchon’s 4.5% average hides gradient variance from 2% to 16%. That means any rider pacing to average power will either blow up on the steep ramps (if they set power to average) or crawl them (if they set power to the flats). Neither works.

What to do instead: On irregular climbs, pace to effort on the steep sections, not to a fixed wattage. Set a power ceiling (say, 110-115% of your FTP) and treat the steep ramps as the constraint. Let your power drop on the gentle sections rather than building a debt you’ll pay on the steep ones.

The early season race prep guide covers pacing strategy for variable terrain. The core idea applies directly here: pacing to a ceiling is smarter than pacing to a target.

Lesson 2: The Crosswind Before the Climb Was the Real Selection

By the time the peloton hit Signal d’Uchon today, it had already been split by crosswinds in the valleys. Riders who’d spent energy chasing splits or bridging gaps in the echelons arrived at the base already compromised.

This pattern shows up in almost every hilly race with open terrain in the approach. The climb gets the headlines but the selection started 40km earlier, in the wind.

For amateurs, this translates to one thing: protecting your position before the climb matters more than what you do on the climb itself. Getting caught on the wrong side of a split in a crosswind section burns matches you needed for the ascent. There’s no recovering from that mid-race.

If your goal events involve any exposed terrain before the final climb, practice riding in crosswinds. Learn where to position in an echelon. Train riding hard into a headwind at tempo pace so your legs know what that demand feels like when it comes in a race.

The crosswind element also changes fueling timing. If there’s a guaranteed hard section in the valley before your target climb, eat before it, not during it. Reaching for a gel in a crosswind echelon is a good way to get dropped.

Lesson 3: 16% Ramps Need a Different Gear Strategy

When a climb spikes from 4% to 16%, most amateur cyclists do one of two things: they power through at the same cadence and go deep into the red, or they panic-shift and lose momentum at the worst moment.

Neither is right.

The pro approach is anticipating the ramp before it arrives. Watch what the climbers who survived today demonstrated. You see the pitch steepening 50-100 meters ahead. You shift down one gear proactively, accelerate your cadence slightly, and let the steeper gradient absorb the extra leg speed. You arrive at the steep pitch spinning rather than grinding.

That sounds simple. It’s surprisingly hard to do when you’re fatigued and the road suddenly tilts. Which is exactly why you need to practice it before race day.

Specific drill: Find a climb near you with at least one punchy steep section (10% or steeper) embedded in a gentler average. Ride it at moderate pace, but practice the proactive shift every time you hit the steep section. Your goal isn’t maximum speed on the drill. It’s building the habit of anticipating gradient change rather than reacting to it.

With modern electronic shifting, there’s no excuse for late shifts under load. But the habit of anticipating still needs training. 1x drivetrain setups make this even more critical. You have the range, but the timing of each shift matters more when you only have one chainring.

Lesson 4: Train Surge-and-Recover, Not Steady Threshold

The irregular gradient of a climb like Signal d’Uchon doesn’t let you ride threshold. It forces repeated surges above threshold, separated by brief recovery windows, across the full duration of the climb.

Most amateur training focuses on steady threshold work. Sustained 20-minute intervals at FTP. Longer tempo blocks. These are valuable. But they don’t train the specific demand of riding hard, recovering partially, and riding hard again. Repeatedly.

A single surge to 130% FTP is manageable. Three surges to 130% FTP within 10 minutes, with 90-second recoveries between them, is a different story. Your lactate clearance matters as much as your peak power.

The workout that addresses this directly:

• Warm up 20 minutes easy
• On a climb or with resistance on the trainer, ride 6 minutes at 90% FTP
• Insert 3x [30 seconds at 130-140% FTP / 60 seconds at 70% FTP] within that 6 minutes (these are your simulated ramps)
• Ride the remaining time at 90% FTP
• Recover 5 minutes easy
• Repeat 3-4 times total

RPE: The steady sections should feel like 7/10. The 30-second surges should feel like 9-9.5/10. The 60-second recoveries should feel like 5/10: hard enough to not fully recover, easy enough to prevent full blowup.

This trains your body to clear lactate under sub-maximal load. That’s exactly what the irregular gradient demands. The spring classics base-to-race training block has a version of this in weeks 5-6, labeled as “punch-and-hold over tempo.” That’s the session.

Lesson 5: Ineos Won with Team Tactics — and So Can You

Ineos Grenadiers’ TTT win on Stage 3 put Ayuso in yellow. Their collective riding was more decisive than any individual. Today’s stage unfolded with Ayuso’s rivals playing defense, trying to limit losses rather than dictating the race.

The tactical lesson for amateurs isn’t about having a team of eight. It’s about what Ineos did on Stage 3: they prepared for a specific format, practiced it, and executed it under pressure. The TTT is an extreme example of riding at shared effort: pacing to the weakest rider’s threshold to keep the unit together. The reward was race leadership.

On club rides or fondos, the equivalent is knowing how to work in a group on a climb. Riding within your group’s capability rather than surging off the front on every rise. Contributing a consistent pull on the approach so the group arrives at the climb intact, rather than burning yourself showing off and then getting dropped.

Riding with others well is a trainable skill. Not just fitness. Pacing judgment, communication, knowing when to take a pull and when to sit in. If your goal events include any group riding, practice this on weekend rides before race day.

The Paris-Nice amateur training guide covers stage race format more broadly. This stage specifically showed that the work done in previous stages, and the team organization around them, determined who was contending today.

What This Means for Your Training Right Now

Paris-Nice runs through Sunday. Stage 4’s queen stage just finished. There are still mountain stages ahead that will further test whoever’s in the lead.

But the training lessons from today are actionable immediately.

If you’re building toward spring events with irregular climbing (any sportive with punchy hills, a road race with rollers, anything in hilly terrain), here’s the priority stack:

This week: One surge-and-recover session on a climb or with variable resistance. The workout structure is above. Don’t skip the warm-up. Cold legs on the first surge is how you pull something.

Next week: Practice proactive shifting on a climb with gradient changes. Ride it at moderate pace specifically to build the anticipation habit. Do it twice before race day.

Ongoing: When you see a climb profile, read the elevation shape, not just the average gradient. Start planning your effort around the steep sections, not the overall average.

If your aerobic base isn’t solid yet, the 8-hour base training plan is the foundation before layering this kind of intensity work. Surge capacity on top of a weak aerobic base just means blowing up faster.

Signal d’Uchon is 8km with a forgettable average gradient and some ramps that will end your day if you’re not ready for them. The lesson is in the variance, not the summary.

---

Paris-Nice 2026 Stage 4 result: 195km from Bourges, summit finish at Signal d’Uchon (8km, 4.5% avg, ramps to 16%), 2,145m total elevation. Juan Ayuso leads GC. Stage raced March 11, 2026. Team Ineos Grenadiers TTT win on Stage 3 set GC positions heading into the queen stage.