Most athletes have realized the impact of COVID-19 at this point. In response to the situation we’re in, I have seen endless ideas of altering training to maximize productivity. In generating new plans and staying busy it’s interesting to consider what is the healthy balance. The balance meaning, what is the mental, physical, and emotional cost of training to athletes? How does what an athlete is doing now influence what they’re able to do when lockdowns start to lift?

Howdy! If there is a term I have been using a lot in talking with our athletes over the past four weeks it is “redirect”. Given the rapid spread of COVID-19 and the compensatory reactions, the landscape of the typical cycling season has changed quite a bit compared to what most of us thought it would look like when we sat down in November to craft our plan for the year. For a few weeks I was changing training on the level of a week at a time, correcting to what the next target was. Well, at the current juncture, it is pretty clear we have moved past that model. A lot of events have been cancelled, and to me as a coach it is clear that the purpose in training right now should not be driven by what specific event an athlete is training for. I have to say, it is a bit of a relief. First and foremost, because the current health situation goes far beyond sport, and certainly beyond the nuts and bolts of how we’re training for a specific event. So it is a relief to see the global reaction to the situation, and the sporting community reaction to the situation.

Racing season is quickly approaching, if not already arrived for many. One of the biggest challenges to get right, in my opinion as a coach, is to find the balance of how much, and what kind of training to do between races. Generally the longer the period of racing, such as 4 weeks with a race every weekend compared to 2 weeks with a race every weekend, the more challenging it becomes.

Whether calling it “tempo”, “medio”, “zone 3”, “sub-LT”, “sweet spot” - this kind of upper aerobic work, below the line that occurs around FTP is pretty bread and butter work of most athlete’s winter training program at this point. It certainly is bread and butter work for our athletes. We do a lot of this work because of the physiological benefit it has down the road in building up a robust and reliable aerobic foundation without the stress of bringing on form too fast, or overloading with intensity before a proper base is built up.

It’s Fall. The weather is gorgeous (or we hope it is where you are!). And you’ve got a hard earned summer’s of fitness and no races to use it in. What to do? Go enjoy it! We’re big proponents of not “shutting it down” and taking time totally off just for the sake of the racing season being over. There is definitely a need for time totally off the bike, but it doesn’t have to be October if you’re fit and ready to race. There will be a day in the near future where the sun will set at 5 and the mercury will sit below 40 degrees F. So might as well enjoy it while it doesn’t. There are many pros that aren’t able to live this life, as they really need that October break to stay on the right cycle of recovery and building for their race calendar. However, the every day joe is not most pros - so take advantage of it.

Warning - rant format post today. Quick one, but important. Training has gotten really advanced in the past few years, or decades. Mostly it’s really awesome, but sometimes I think it keeps us from getting the hard work done, or even the effective work. With the continued development of training metrics, we have so many ways we can “measure” a ride or effort. What I see happening often is that this then leads to a push to more specifically constructed workouts. A lot of athletes and coaches end up doing a majority of workouts where every effort is to a specific duration, a specific power, specific reps, etc. We’ve gotten very good at quantifying the demands of races, and then using that data to churn out workouts that we believe meet these demands.

This one is going to be a quick one, but as a coach, it is a topic that I find myself constantly thinking about this time of year. If an athlete’s race season starts in March and ends in September, we are about halfway through the season right now. We’ve probably built up for some big spring goals, and hopefully they went well, from a physical perspective a lot of things are still good. When I look at the files the numbers are good, maybe even best, but there’s just something going on lurking in the background and you can start feeling - both as an athlete and the coach - that you’re on a precarious edge. Inconsistencies start to lurk in, maybe mental mistakes add up in races to translate to results that aren’t what the athletes are capable of.