Cycle-Smart: Solutions for Cycling provides individual coaching for road, cyclo-cross, mountain biking and track cycling. Their coaches are experts at guiding clients of all ability levels through the unknowns of training for competitive cycling. With coaches located throughout the country, Cycle-Smart is able to offer unique, personalized coaching plans for all of their clients.

You Gotta Have A Plan
Designing your winter training plan

  Written by Adam Hodges Myerson
  Cycle-Smart President
  January 8, 2006

In the 15 years or so I've spent racing full-time and in the 8 years I¹ve worked as a coach, the month of January has always stood out as the most dynamic, and perhaps most important of the season. In normal winters I would have two weeks off at the holidays to recover from cyclo-cross season and head somewhere warm for road racing in February or March. Some years I went to Europe after 'cross nationals and raced another 6 weeks without a break. Other years I attempted to be a year-round New Englander and spent 2 months Nordic skiing before I began structured road training in March.

Wherever you live, there's something about the winter solstice passing and days getting longer in January that says it's time to get serious. Serious can mean different things to different people, so before you throw a leg over the bike, you've got to decide what exactly it is you're going to get serious about. You gotta have a plan.

Cycle-Smart Training Articles A Case For Base    by Adam Hodges Myerson    February 2, 2007 Power, Stability, and Confidence    by Adam Hodges Myerson    September 20, 2006 Training While You Work    by Adam Hodges Myerson    April 25, 2006 Surviving The Trainer    by Adam Hodges Myerson    March 2, 2006 You Gotta Have A Plan    by Adam Hodges Myerson    January 8, 2006 Peaking For Cyclo-Cross Nationals    by Adam Hodges Myerson    November 29, 2005 How To Improve Your Starts For Cyclo-cross    by Adam Hodges Myerson    October 18, 2005 Interval Training for Cyclo-Cross    by Adam Hodges Myerson    September 9, 2005 Hang On To That Form!    by Adam Hodges Myerson    August 9, 2005 Resting Your Way To Fitness    by Adam Hodges Myerson    June 22, 2005 How Long, How Hard, and How Often?    by Adam Hodges Myerson    May 25, 2005 Warming Up    by Adam Hodges Myerson    April 11, 2005 "Training" in Training Races    by Adam Hodges Myerson    March 13, 2005 Preparing for a Cyclo-Cross Race    by Johs Huseby    November 16, 2004 Choosing Between a Club or a Team    by Kirk Albers    October 6, 2004 Running for Cyclo-Cross    by Adam Hodges Myerson    September 22, 2004 My Aching Back (and legs, shoulders, hips, feet, neck)    by Christine White    August 4, 2004 Key Workouts for Early Season Mountain Bike Racers    by Kurt Perham    July 14, 2004 The Philly File    by Adam Hodges Myerson    June 12, 2003 Training Weaknesses, Racing Strengths    by Adam Hodges Myerson    May 15, 2003 The Lanterne Rouge - The fine art of driving the bus in a stage race    by Adam Hodges Myerson    April 18, 2003 Choosing a Coach    by Adam Hodges Myerson    March 13, 2003

Designing your winter training plan is like building a bridge. You know where you are now, and you know where you want to be once the racing season starts. You need to come up with the infrastructure that's going to let you cross that gap. We can start that construction process by focusing on the endpoints first. Where exactly are you right now, and where exactly do you want to be?

Where you are now can vary dramatically depending where you live and when you stopped racing. For some, the road or mountain bike season might have ended in September or October, and you may not have touched the bike since. Others may have taken a short break and then started an off-season period of easy riding and perhaps some time in the gym. More and more of you likely had a full season of cyclo-cross that kept you very fit all fall ­ perhaps with a peak for Nationals in mid-December ­ followed by the past few weeks completely off. However you got here, it's important to make a separation between what you've been doing, and what you're about to start. Look back at your past 3 months of training, evaluate your progress and put parentheses around the completed phases. You want to view the period a whole and make a clean break.

Next, look across the gorge and decide just how large that span is. Consider your local, regional, or national racing calendar and ask yourself a couple of important questions, working backwards: When do I want to peak and be in top form? When will I start racing? When will the weather allow me to train outdoors? With answers to those questions you can answer the most important one: how many weeks do I have between now and these points?

Let's assume that no matter what you've been doing this fall, you're starting your new program in early January. Perhaps where you live, training outdoors on your bike will be difficult this time of year. Your racing season begins with training races in March, more important races in April, and you want to peak for a series of criteriums in May or perhaps a stage race in June or July. With this we've got the general outline of the structure we want to build, and now it's time to pour some concrete.

• First will be a pre-season that starts now and lasts 4-6 weeks, consisting of cross training like Nordic skiing, running, gym work, and riding when the weather's good. This phase is about staying fit and having fun, without worrying much about riding your bike. Enjoy many different activities and build your fitness as a whole. (If you live in a warm climate where the racing starts early, or if you get lucky with a mild fall or winter, you might skip this phase altogether.) The primary goal of this phase is to minimize fitness losses, refresh mentally, and work on any injury rehabilitation or structural balance and stability that needs to be addressed.

• Second will be a base cycle, again of 4-6 weeks, which will take you to the first training races in March. In this phase you might cut back on cross training and ride your bike as much as possible, indoors and out. You can still lift to work on strength and compensate for bad weather and limited daylight. Your on-the-bike training should be in the form of steady, light intensity intervals of 15-30 minute blocks and 60-180 minutes total, and middle intensity, threshold intervals of 12-20 minute blocks, building up to 30-90 minutes total. The primary goal of this phase is to increase workload by increasing the duration of the work you do.

• Third will be a second base cycle of 8-12 weeks that will take you to the end of your aerobic build up and into those more important events. This is where you hit the volume limits of the light and middle intensity intervals you'll need to be competitive during the season, and see the biggest increases in your power production. The primary goal of this phase is to increase workload by increasing the power output at set intensities and durations, with smaller increases from week to week in the durations themselves.

• Fourth will be an intensity period where you dramatically decrease the volume and increase the intensity, with a focus on submaximal anaerobic work capacity intervals and high intensity VO2max work. Sprint training, 1-minute, all-out intervals with full recovery, and 5-minute, supra-threshold intervals with partial recovery are all on tap for this month-long phase. The primary goal of this period is to increase the size of your anaerobic gas tank, and raise threshold power with efforts above threshold, at VO2max.

• Fifth will be an in-season cycle where you add lots of racing, recover fully between events and workouts, and focus on fine-tuning and maintaining the fitness you have with as little as one mid-week workout, if at all. This phase lasts as long as you can keep good form rolling by racing, recovering, and occaisonally doing a maintenance workout to address any perceived weak spots in your form.

This plan gives the basic data to build a blueprint for passage from darkest winter to spring and summer fitness. There's obviously still much to consider: what do I do each day, how long should my workouts be, what should my intervals look like, what gearing should I use, etc. A variation on this I employ with increasing regularity is to move the intensity phase up between the first and second base phases, so that it overlaps with the first races of the season. I've found this allows many clients to be more prepared for early season races, is more compatible with available daylight and training hours, and keeps riders mentally fresh through what can be a long winter and spring.

With these options you can consider each segment of your season's training, and with future articles we will guide you through the training ­ and racing ­ to come.

To learn more about Adam, or for more articles by Cycle-Smart coaches, visit www.cycle-smart.com.

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