The 2026 Tour de France is bringing back the double Alpe d’Huez — and training for it is a different problem entirely. That hasn’t happened since the 2013 edition, when Chris Froome time-trialed up the mountain and then defended on it four days later. Before that, 2011.

The 2026 Tour de France is asking the question again. And if you’re targeting a July climbing event (a sportive, an Etape du Tour stage, or just riding Alpe d’Huez yourself while the pros are on the mountain), you have exactly three months to get your legs ready for not one but two sustained 45-to-70-minute climbs at altitude.

That’s a different animal from what we’ve been training this spring. The Giro pivot from punch to climb was about retraining 10-14 minute efforts. The double Alpe d’Huez is about holding 85-95% FTP for close to an hour. Twice. Possibly in the same week. Your aerobic ceiling matters more than your VO2max. Your fueling matters more than your power.

Three months is enough time to build this. Barely.

Quick Summary: Tour de France 2026

Detail	Info
Dates	July 4-26, 2026
Grand Départ	Barcelona — first ever Spanish start
Total elevation	54,450m across 21 stages
Mountain stages	8, with 5 summit finishes
Alpe d’Huez	Two summit finishes (last double: 2013)
ITT distance	Only 26km — the most climbing-focused Tour in years
New climb	Plateau de Solaison, first appearance in Tour history
Opening stage	Team time trial — first TTT in the Tour since 1971

The amateur training lesson: One Alpe d’Huez is a pacing test. Two in the same Tour is a fatigue-management exam. You need the aerobic base to sustain 85-95% FTP for 45-60+ minutes, and the recovery capacity to do it again days later. That means building volume now, not cramming intensity in June.

Why Two Alpe d’Huez Changes the Training Problem

Alpe d’Huez is 13.8km at 8.1% average gradient. Twenty-one numbered hairpin bends. For a strong amateur — say 3.5 w/kg FTP — that’s somewhere between 50 and 70 minutes of sustained climbing. Not threshold. Not sweet spot for a few minutes. A full hour of grinding at the upper end of your aerobic capacity, managing your effort on pitches that vary from 7% to 13%.

One ascent is a pacing exercise. You go too hard on the lower hairpins where the crowds are dense and the gradient feels manageable, you pay for it on the steeper upper section around bends 7 through 3. I made that mistake the first time I rode it. Felt great through Huez village, went 10 watts over my plan because the switchbacks were intoxicating, and spent the last twenty minutes at 20 watts under target with legs that had stopped cooperating. Classic Alpe d’Huez error. The mountain rewards patience, not enthusiasm.

Two ascents in the same edition compounds that problem. The second time up, you’re carrying fatigue from the first — plus whatever the stages between them demanded. Your glycogen stores are depleted from days of racing. Your legs carry a deep, accumulated tiredness that a single rest day won’t fully clear. The second Alpe d’Huez isn’t 13.8km at 8.1%. It’s 13.8km at 8.1% on legs that remember the first time.

The pros who handle this best are the Grand Tour riders with enormous aerobic bases. Froome in 2013. Quintana in his prime. Riders who could sit at 90% FTP for an hour and it barely registered as hard. That’s what you need to train, scaled to your level.

What Makes a 50-Minute Climb Different From a 12-Minute Climb?

The Giro training piece covered the shift from 4-minute punches to 10-14 minute sustained efforts. Alpe d’Huez pushes the clock out further. Here’s what changes:

1. Energy contribution shifts almost entirely aerobic. A 12-minute effort at 98% FTP still leans on some anaerobic contribution. A 50-minute effort at 88% FTP is almost pure aerobic metabolism — fat oxidation, mitochondrial density, oxygen delivery. Your zone 2 base isn’t just helpful. It’s the foundation the entire effort rests on.

2. Fueling becomes non-negotiable. You can get through a 12-minute climb on what’s already in your muscles. A 50-60 minute climb at tempo-to-threshold burns 700-900 calories. If you’re not eating on the climb itself, you’ll bonk before the summit. This is where all that gut training pays off (or doesn’t).

3. Pacing errors are catastrophic. On a 12-minute climb, starting 5% too hard costs you maybe 30 seconds and some suffering. On a 55-minute climb, starting 5% too hard means you crack at minute 35 and crawl the remaining 20 minutes. I’ve watched it happen to strong riders at l’Etape du Tour — flying through the first 6km, walking their bike at hairpin 5. The mountain is patient. It waits.

4. Mental management becomes a skill. Twelve minutes hurts and then it’s over. Fifty-five minutes requires you to settle into discomfort and stay there. To stop looking at your Garmin every thirty seconds. To accept that you’re going to feel mediocre for a very long time and that mediocre is the correct speed. That’s a trainable skill, but you have to practice it.

The 12-Week Build: April Through June

You have roughly twelve weeks from now (early April) to the Tour’s first mountain stages in mid-July. That’s enough for a proper build if you structure it right. This plan assumes 8-12 hours per week and solid spring fitness — you’ve been riding, you have a recent FTP test, and your base isn’t starting from zero.

Weeks 1-4: Volume and Aerobic Depth (April)

The temptation is to jump straight into 40-minute threshold intervals. Resist it. Your spring classics training — if you followed the Ardennes block — sharpened efforts from 1-5 minutes. Your aerobic floor (the ability to sustain sub-threshold power for extended durations) has likely eroded. Rebuild it first.

Weekly structure:

• 2 zone 2 rides of 2-3 hours. Genuinely easy. Nose-breathing pace. If you can’t hold a full conversation, you’re going too hard. This is the most important training you’ll do in April, and it’ll feel like you’re not training at all.
• 1 sweet spot session: 3 x 15 minutes at 88-93% FTP with 5 minutes easy between. RPE 6.5-7/10. Not dramatic. Not satisfying in the way that VO2max work is. But this is building the floor your Alpe d’Huez effort will stand on.
• 1 long ride: 3.5-4.5 hours, mostly zone 2, with 20 minutes at 85-90% FTP in the final 90 minutes. Practice eating 80-90g carbs per hour from the start. Not from hour two when you remember. From the first hour.

What you’re building: Mitochondrial density, fat oxidation efficiency, and the psychological tolerance for sustained moderate effort. The sweet spot training work reconnects your body with what holding 90% FTP for fifteen minutes feels like. After weeks of short intervals, it’s probably forgotten.

Weeks 5-8: Extending Duration (May)

Now you push the clock.

Weekly structure:

• 1 zone 2 ride of 2-3 hours
• 1 threshold extension session: 2 x 20 minutes at 92-98% FTP, 8 minutes easy between. This is the session that directly mimics what Alpe d’Huez demands. RPE: effort one at 7.5/10, effort two at 8.5/10. If effort two falls apart before minute 16, drop the power target by 3-5%.
• 1 climbing simulation: Find the longest sustained climb you can access (or use a trainer at 6-8% gradient simulation). Ride it at 88-93% FTP for 30-40 minutes continuous. One effort. No breaks. This is the session that teaches your legs what the first half of Alpe d’Huez feels like.
• 1 long ride: 4-5 hours with the final 60 minutes including 2 x 15 minutes at 90-95% FTP with 10 minutes easy between. You’re simulating what the second Alpe d’Huez feels like — sustained efforts on legs that have been working all day.

The key workout to nail: The 30-40 minute continuous effort. That’s the one that separates Alpe d’Huez readiness from “I can ride long but not climb long.” The first time I attempted a 35-minute sustained effort after a winter of shorter intervals, I cratered at minute 22. Not because my FTP was wrong — because my body didn’t know how to distribute effort across that duration. It wanted to start at 95% FTP and fade. It took four sessions before I could hold 90% FTP from minute one to minute thirty-five without a steady downward drift in power.

Weeks 9-11: Race-Specific Intensity (June)

This is where the Alpe d’Huez-specific work lives.

Weekly structure:

• 1 zone 2 ride of 2 hours (reduced — you’re tapering volume, not effort)
• 1 Alpe d’Huez simulation: 45-55 minutes continuous at 88-95% FTP. Varying the power slightly every 5-10 minutes to simulate gradient changes. Bends 21 through 14 are mellower (7-8%). Bends 13 through 7 are the steep section (up to 13%). Bends 6 through 1 are moderate again. Build your effort around that profile: 88-90% for the first 15 minutes, push to 93-95% for the middle 20, settle back to 88-90% for the final stretch. If you can do this, you can pace the real climb.
• 1 back-to-back session: This is the double Alpe d’Huez simulator. 2 x 30 minutes at 88-93% FTP with 15 minutes easy between. The first effort represents your first summit finish. The second represents the second one, days later, on tired legs. Your target: the second 30-minute block should be within 5% power of the first. If it’s not, you went too hard on the first. Sound familiar? Same rule, longer duration.
• 1 long ride: 4 hours, zone 2 with aggressive fueling practice. Your body needs to normalize eating 80-90g carbs per hour for four-plus hours.

Week 12: Taper (Late June)

• Monday: 2 x 20 min at 90-95% FTP. Controlled. Last meaningful session.
• Tuesday-Wednesday: Zone 2, 60-75 minutes each.
• Thursday: 45-min spin with 3 x 2-min openers at threshold. Nothing more.
• Friday: Off. Completely.
• Weekend: Your event, or ride Alpe d’Huez itself while the Tour is in town.

The Heat Factor

The Tour starts July 4. Southern France in July means temperatures regularly hitting 35-38C. If you’ve been training in spring weather — 15-22C — the heat will cost you 5-8% of your power output on a long climb unless you’ve acclimated.

Heat training is worth starting six weeks out. The simplest protocol: one indoor session per week in a warm room (28-32C), no fan, for 60-90 minutes at tempo. Your body adapts to heat stress within 10-14 sessions — increased plasma volume, earlier sweat onset, lower core temperature at the same effort level. It’s free speed on a July mountain.

I added heat sessions in June two years ago before a trip to ride cols in Provence. The difference was dramatic. Same power, 8 bpm lower heart rate at 33C compared to the year before when I’d skipped heat acclimation entirely. Eight beats per minute is the difference between grinding to the summit and dying on the road.

Fueling for an Hour-Long Climb

The caloric demand of Alpe d’Huez is brutal. At 3.5 w/kg for 55 minutes, you’re burning roughly 800-1,000 calories on the climb alone. Your muscles store about 2,000 calories of glycogen (more with good carb-loading). That means a single Alpe d’Huez effort eats nearly half your fuel reserves.

Two ascents in the same Tour? You need a fueling strategy that goes beyond race-day gels.

Pre-climb: 80-90g carbs per hour during the approach stages. Every day. Not just summit finish days.

On the climb: Take a gel at the base and another at the halfway point. Yes, eating while climbing at 90% FTP is uncomfortable. Practice it. A lot. You should be able to open a gel wrapper, consume it, and chase it with water without your power dropping more than 5 watts. This is a skill, and skills require repetition.

Between summit finishes: The days between the two Alpe d’Huez stages need aggressive glycogen replenishment. 8-10g carbs per kg of body weight per day. For a 75kg rider, that’s 600-750g of carbs daily. Rice, pasta, bread, sport drink, recovery shakes. More than feels reasonable.

How to Watch the 2026 Tour Like a Training Nerd

The Barcelona Grand Depart opens with a team time trial — the first in the Tour since 1971. Then the race heads north into France, building toward the Pyrenees and Alps.

Four things worth studying:

1. Who negative-splits Alpe d’Huez. The first ascent will show you who has pacing discipline. Riders who start conservatively through the lower bends and accelerate above Huez village have done this before. Riders who attack from the base are gambling.

2. Power drop-off on the second ascent. Compare body language between the two Alpe d’Huez stages. The riders who look the same — same cadence, same posture, same controlled breathing — have the deepest aerobic reserves. The riders who are rocking their bikes and grimacing have reached their cumulative fatigue limit. That delta is what you’re training to minimize.

3. Plateau de Solaison. This is a brand-new climb in the Tour — never appeared before. Watch the gradient profile and how the peloton reacts to an unknown ascent. New climbs create uncertainty, and uncertainty creates pacing errors. Even pros get it wrong on climbs they haven’t ridden in anger before.

4. The 26km time trial. With only 26km of individual TT across the entire Tour, this is the most climbing-focused route in recent memory. The GC will be decided in the mountains. Watch which climbers conserve energy on flat stages and which ones waste watts in crosswinds and sprint finishes. Energy management across three weeks mirrors what you’re doing across your 12-week build.

The 54,450-Meter Question

That’s the total elevation gain across 21 stages. Eight mountain stages. Five summit finishes. Plateau de Solaison, Alpe d’Huez (twice), and whatever else the organizers have hidden in the Pyrenees. This is a climber’s Tour — the kind of route where the best sustained-power rider wins, not the best time trialist.

For amateurs targeting any piece of this parcours, the message is the same: build your aerobic base now, extend your sustained climbing duration through May, sharpen the specifics in June, and show up in July with legs that know what holding 90% FTP for an hour feels like.

One Alpe d’Huez rewards fitness. Two Alpe d’Huez rewards preparation. The difference is measured in months of consistent work, not weeks of panicked cramming.

Start now. The hairpins are waiting.

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Based on personal experience training for long alpine climbs and prior Alpe d’Huez ascents. Route details from the official Tour de France site and stage profiles via ProCyclingStats. Find the longest sustained climb you can access — ideally 30+ minutes at a hard, steady pace. Ride it twice in one week. If the second time is within 5% of the first, your base is deeper than you think.