Geraint Thomas (Team Sky) has no regrets about celebrating his Tour de France victory long and hard into winter, finding the recent suffering he has needed to get back to form as 'sadistic' but enjoyable. Thomas only raced the Deutschland Tour and the Tour of Britain after winning Tour de France and was determined to savour every minute of the celebrations despite warnings from Team Sky to watch his weight and keep riding. Thomas was visibly heavier than his racing weight at the Saitama and Shanghai criteriums in November and only got back into regular training in early December. He has since done blocks of training in Los Angeles, raced the Vuelta a Valenciana in Spain and spent time at altitude on Mount Teide. He has lost much of the weight he gained during the winter but is not yet competitive in races.ADVERTISEMENT “It was definitely worth it, you never know how often you win the Tour. It could be the last race I ever win so at least I enjoyed it,” Thomas said before Tirreno-Adriatico, where he will share team leadership with Wout Poels. “I knew it was going to be really hard work, but that's what I enjoy in a bit of a sadistic way. I enjoyed training hard and getting back. When you start to feel that condition coming and you start to lose that bit of weight and you are going up the climbs a little bit quicker, it's just a snowball effect. You thrive off of that. I just enjoy that side of bike racing, the riding and training.” Thomas revealed that Tom Dumoulin (Team Sunweb) had teased him about how big he was in November before the Tirreno-Adriatico photo shoot on Tuesday. He avoided the scales for a while. Tirreno-Adriatico perhaps a bit too punchy
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