January went well, but not a lot of cycling
I didn’t really have a plan at the beginning of the year. I knew I wanted to do some cross-country skiing, and I also knew that the weather wasn’t going to allow me to ride whenever I wanted. Since I don’t have a turbo trainer at home, I decided to improvise instead of stressing about sticking to a rigid plan.
My January training ended up being a mix of cross-country skiing, ice skating, swimming, bouldering, and occasional cycling, mainly mountain biking, whenever the weather allowed. It wasn’t optimal as preparation for a road race. If I want to improve next year, I’ll need to get a home trainer to be more consistently in the saddle. But overall, I was happy. I enjoyed the winter sports, and the variety kept things interesting. I rode just 150 km in total, and my longest ride was only 45 km. However, counting all the sports I did, I was active for about 37 hours that month, which isn’t bad.
Base training without a camp in Spain
The goal for the early months of the year is to build a solid aerobic base. That means accumulating as much time in the saddle at low to mid intensity as possible. February is when I really needed to start building.
A lot of ambitious amateur cyclists tend to plan a cycling vacation in Spain or another country where the weather is ideal for cycling in late winter and early spring. It’s a great way to get a lot of long rides in warm weather early. This is yet another thing I could improve on next year because this year, I had no training camp in Spain planned. I had to do my best in the local weather conditions of the Czech Republic. I also realized that I should start to structure my riding a bit more, ideally by following a training plan. I decided to see if Garmin Coach would be useful.
Garmin Coach helps with structure
The coach asks you about the date, distance and goal time of your race. It also asks how much time per week you have reserved for training and which days of the week you can do long and short rides. The suggestions seem very sensible: a mix of endurance rides and various intervals to build speed. I have a watt meter, so the intervals seem to be specific to my numbers.
The major downside is that it doesn’t allow you to take a suggested workout and move it to another day if the weather is bad or if you have to make a change for other reasons. So, unless you can commit to training on fixed days every single week until your race, you won’t be able to take full advantage of the somewhat personalized suggested workouts.
In reality, due to weather, illness, and life getting in the way, I missed most of the suggested workouts. But I appreciated seeing the suggestions and incorporated them into the rides I did on my own. It pushed me to do more intervals and intensity than I would normally do. Having a human coach I could talk to, who would help me adapt the training to the realities of my life and the progress I was actually making, would probably work significantly better.
March was my best month
Determined to do some longer rides despite the freezing temperatures, I managed to double my January distance and ended up riding 300 km in February, with my longest ride being 75 km. There were lots of frozen toes and discomfort, but I was happy to actually start road cycling regularly.
March is when I finally hit my stride as the weather improved. I rode 560 km that month, and most rides were multi-hour in duration. I felt my comfort on the bike improve, and my fitness as well.
April is when I started dealing with setbacks
My allergies and allergic asthma began to flare up as the weather turned really warm. My lungs were burning at every climb, my sleep got worse, and it also made me more susceptible to catching a respiratory illness. Combined with a cold I caught, I wasn’t able to follow the plan as well. I kept riding but wasn’t really able to increase intensity. I managed to do my longest ride of the year, over 100 km, and somehow still rode the same 560 km in April as I did in March. So, it wasn’t all bad, but certainly not to plan.
Have I missed too many quality training sessions?
Overall, I think my base training went okay. I spent a lot of time on the bike compared to usual at this point in the season. I am concerned that I missed several weeks where I should have been adding a lot more intensity and hard climbing. I hope I will be able to add more intensity in time before the race.
These are the realities of a non-professional cyclist. Following a training plan isn’t easy. And I didn’t even mention the number of nice days when I was fully healthy but chose to spend time with family instead of cycling. Or that I kept bouldering one to two times per week despite that not being helpful for cycling at all, because that’s where a part of my social life happens.
I’m still optimistic that I will be in good shape by 20th of June, wish me luck for May and early June. Next time, I will write about my fuelling plan and how I practice eating enough on the bike.
