Winter Training Tip
WINTER TRAINING TIP: HOW TO SALVAGE A BAD DAY
I recently moved to the USA, as you would have seen a million times over and over if you follow me on social media. I’m currently in Kentucky and absolutely love the riding here. Beautiful, flowing rolling roads for miles and miles. It makes for hard riding as you have to push on the pedals all day long.
Today was pretty grim out there. Temperatures were in the low 40 F (5 *C) and it was pouring rain. I currently don’t have my new Zwift station setup yet so my only option was to head outside. I hate waiting and staring out the window, hoping the clouds clear so that I can go for a ride. So I wrap myself up with an extra rain jacket and brace the weather.
There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.
I found this perfect hill just behind the house. This was enough terrain to do a solid strength session.
I had a few interruptions to my training this week. Firstly, my flight to the US got delayed by one day as poor weather in New York cancelled flights. Not knowing this until arriving at the airport left me with no options other than an extra day off the bike. Secondly, I was battling a bit of a cold this week so had to back off on training when I actually could ride. In hindsight that delayed flight gave me some extra recovery time to fight the cold. I know it was a good thing, but it still drives me nuts. Even though the weather was bad today I just couldn’t afford another day off the bike.
I’m sure a lot of you have found yourselves in this position. This post is about how you could salvage a bad-weather training day.
Strength training
If you are on social media then you have most definitely seen posts and articles about strength training during winter periods. This can be on or off (gym) the bike exercises. I personally enjoy doing both throughout the season. Online you’ll find hundreds of variations of how to do on-bike strength/torque training. Changes in duration, intensity, cadence, recovery time etc. These sessions don’t have to be long in duration making them perfect for days like these.
Side note: I’m in the situation where I don’t have an indoor trainer. I don’t have big mountains to do long steady efforts and it’s pouring outside. This is how I got the best out of the day and used what I’ve got. Had I had longer hills or different circumstances then I would have done this session differently. But, you have to be flexible and learn to get the most out of what you’ve got. Take this into account when planning your sessions.
Short and sweet strength session.
Less than 10′ away from the house I found this dip/valley/hill. Going up either side took about 2′ and turning around to go down around 1′. The average gradient I would guess was around 6-7%. This means I could do a 2′ effort followed by a shorter recovery time of just over 60 seconds, perfect. I used this valley to build an on-bike strength/torque session.
I started down by the river, pushed lap on my Garmin and switched to a big gear (53×15/14/13). 2′ at low 45-55 rpm while staying seated. Power between 370-390W and trying to keep my upper body still.
Once I clocked 2′ I pushed lap again to mark the interval and turned around immediately. This was also the top of the hill. I rolled back down and as soon as I reached the bottom to start climbing up the other side I pushed lap again, starting the second 2′ effort. Again, after 2′ at the same intensity as before I turned around.
I yo-yoed up and down 4 times. This means 4 x 2′ efforts with 1′ recovery in-between. I then gave myself a little bit more recovery time as I rolled around scouting some new roads. I’m new to the area so have to get to know all of the roads and connections. I pondered if I should venture out for a longer ride, but eventually decided to keep the ride short and sweet. Having just come off a cold it’s probably not ideal to be messing around in the rain.
Each arrow marks an interval. This was 2 sets of 2′ on/1′ off.
After I finished the second set it was properly pouring down and the temperature dropped even more. I decided to call it a day before getting soaked to the core. At this stage, my base layer was still dry keeping me warm. In the future I will add more sets to this session.
TrainingPeaks summary of today.
If you ever find yourself in a similar situation and feel the need to do something valuable then I recommend something like this. It definitely wasn’t a massive load, in fact my CTL dropped, but it was an effective quality session. This meant I could indulge my mother-in-laws asian zing meatballs with a little less guilt.