Motivation is essential when you are an ambitious cyclist because you spend so many hours on your bike. The best cyclists can motivate themselves – workout after workout, season after season. But even though you think of yourself as a dedicated and motivated rider, you might sometimes feel that you have ended up in a training vacuum: You train every single day, but you don’t get any better.
Change training strategy
Doing the same interval procedure every Tuesday and Thursday is not necessarily the best way to train and, indeed, not the most motivating to ride. However, mixing up your regular intervals with other intervals is not only motivating but might improve some of the skills that you haven’t touched for a while, so if you haven’t done focused anaerobic training, that is one of the fastest skills to improve.
Unorganized intervals (fartlek)
Systematic interval training is the cornerstone in many training programs, but even the best training program needs to be mixed up with unorganized intervals. I talk about Fartlek training, combining many different unorganized intervals with both aerobic and anaerobic events. These intervals are not organized as the intervals you know from regular interval training. Instead, you use the terrain, the winds, or your friends to get inspired to make attacks of various lengths. It is very challenging to train Fartlek if you prepare it with a couple of competitive friends.
Long Slow Distance Training
It might not sound like an opportunity if you are fed up with training hours, but if you have done a lot of periodic intervals with your power meter and got bored, there is a chance that doing a couple of LSD sessions could be challenging.
Participate in Cycling Races
One of the easiest ways to increase your performance is participating in races. There are opportunities to ride different races every week in several countries, which is an excellent alternative to your regular training. In addition, by doing races as training sessions, you get targeted training specific to what you aim for.
Even the best cycling training program has limitations
Evaluating your performance is a process that shall continue throughout your career. Of course, you must optimize your training program as you learn what works best for you. But any athlete must change even the best cycling training program once in a while.
Nice tips, Jesper. Another great idea for riding when it’s cold is to do a spinning class once a week. That is quite challenging and it is also motivating to have an instructor. It is also a chance to ride with people you normally can’t use as training partners.
Thanks for sharing these tips. I guess most riders know the feeling of not wanting to du their scheduled intervals. I switch to do do crit. races when I have that feeling. Racing is so much cooler than regular training.
Good tip with the competitions. It also motivates you into doing more training in the run-up as you don’t want to look like a chump by coming last!
Colin
I love LSD and do them myself. Just like running, I’m pretty sure it’ll lead to better economy.
Hey! guys hows it going. love the tips i like bobbys idea of the spin classes when its cold. I live in colorado so thats perfect for me. The different bike thing worked wonders for me also. keep up the good tips!