Have decided to try a more structured approach to staying fit / getting better over the winter months, but I’m not sure what would be the best plan for what I want to achieve. Next year I’m aiming to do some long, mountainous sportives (100 ish miles through places like Snowdonia), plus try 10 mile TT for the first time. As these seem to be quite different objectives, I’m not sure how to train. I can do 100 miles distances, but am slow, so want to up my speed, and overall increase the power in my legs.

So far am doing the following:

2 steady (zone 2) and 2 harder (z3/4) turbo sessions a week (so 4 in total)
1 3-4 hr steady club ride a week
Swim 3x a week
4-5 hr mountain hike / scramble a week

But is the above really suitable for what I want to achieve? If not, what should I change? And how should I start building it up in January?

What are other folks winter training schedules? (And yes, I know I can ‘just get out and ride’ 🙂 )

I’m using TrainerRoad for a winter plan. Only a few days in but reading the explanations it seems reasonable and it’s looking at 2-3 turbo sessions of differing workouts per week and then a couple of rides. That’s all I’ll do though although I MIGHT swim from time to time.

That’s a fair chunk of exercise you’re doing. Are you able to ride more on the road? If not how long are the turbo sessions (particularly the zone 2 ones)? Pointless doing Z2 really unless it’s for a couple of hours+ and that’s mind-numbingly boring on a turbo so kudos if you’re managing it.
I wouldn’t say the swimming/hiking is going to do much for you but if you enjoy them and you’re not feeling perma-knackered (and therefore not recovering properly) then probably no harm in keeping doing them for now (you’ll need to drop some of them next year when you start higher intensity stuff).
Now is all about zone 2 really for people that want to get a decent base down ready for endurance stuff next year. I wouldn’t worry about conflicting requirements for 10 mile TT’s next year, if yo have a good base then once you start throwing in 2×20 FTP efforts + HIIT in the spring you’ll rapidly improve that area.

sorry – what’s zone 2?

Sue, thats a huge amount to do…i’m getting coached (with the aiming of getting my 1st cat licence next year) and i doubt even my biggest base week would look like that! Read the joe friel stuff, seems to be what my coach uses, build a good endurance base, muscle strength (in the gym or on the bike) and speed skills. I’ve got roughly 2 x weights sessions per week (kettlebells, box jumps, trx work, etc) then 4-6 x rides depending on how big the week is. All Z2 stuff (zzzzz) as much as possible except for the club run on a saturday. Insensity builds from Jan with my first race in March but your intensity work might need to start later, depending on when you want to be in good shape for? Its a long season if you are competing, be careful not to do too much just now and burn out.

Make sure you don’t do the same thing week in, week out…ie this week is my recovery week, so i’m doing 8.5hours and changing the rides ive been doing. Next week is 12.5hours, which will be 2 x weights, 3 x rides of 3 hours outside, then the rest on the rollers to make up the hours. The next week is even more, 15 from memory so it’ll change again.

PM me if you want more info 🙂

Thanks all. Looks like a bit of a rethink might be in order.

Maybe aim to do two longish (2-4 hrs) zone 2 rides? (Will need to stop trying to race folks on the club run!)

Plus 2 turbo sessions to focus on harder resistance to build muscle strength?

The swimming keeps me sane during the working week as I go in my lunchtime, and the hiking / climbing is a base fitness and social thing as many of my friends are mountaineers.

Will check out the Joe Friel stuff – any other online or book recommendations?

DGOAB – will drop you a line later if that’s OK?

Trainerroad here too.

Good advice above. Think about the overall shape of your season, what your specific goals are, and avoid doing the same thing all year.
In very general terms, consider winter as higher volume, lower intensity (to build a solid endurance base) gradually transitioning into lower volume, higher intensity to build power and speed for the racing season.

The swimming and scrambling will provide some general cross training and strengthening over winter, and might be good as a mental break from cycling if you enjoy them. However, they won’t provide a lot of specific benefit for your cycling goals so be careful about overdoing them. There is also a risk of eliminating recovery time if you fill all your spare time with different types of exercise. If you start doing intervals properly next year, I guarantee you will want some genuinely easy days where you do easy recovery or nothing at all.

In terms of your conflicting goals, I would concentrate on training for the 10 mile time trials and wouldn’t worry too much about the sportives. I think you will find that your sportive performances will improve if you focus on improving power and speed for the 10s. All you need to do is maintain a bit of endurance training throughout the season. One longer ride a week should be enough once you’ve got the winter base under your belt.

Like other posters have said 12-14 hrs a week is a lot of training especially at this time of year. If cycling is your primary sport then I’d recommend cutting back on the swimming and hiking.

There’s no proof that Periodization like Joe Friel recommends and like Dirty Girl seems to be doing has any advantage. A few professional teams are now doing reverse periodization where speed and strength are worked on during the winter and endurance is built in the spring. Sky seem to use undulating periodization where they mix up speed, strength and endurance work to keep the body guessing- this has the benefit of being more interesting too. During the the past two years I’ve been professionally coached and my coach has used the bit of everything approach with a little more emphasis on endurance in winter and a little more emphasis on speed in the spring.

Currently I’m doing about 60% of the training load I will build up to in the new year just to keep things ticking over. This involves threshold, VO2 max and anaerobic sessions on the turbo during the week (can’t be bothered with turbo sessions longer than an hour) and a longer ride at the weekend. Longer ride will be endurance based but will be mixed up with some tempo or threshold or sweet spot intervals or sprints every 15 mins or maybe some climbing intervals- main thing is to work all your systems. Doing this will get you ready for anything from 100 mile sportives to 10 mile TTs. Bottom line is it probably doesn’t matter what training you do just do it regularly and eat and rest well and you’ll see results.

TrainerRoad is a good source of turbo sessions and keeps things varied and interesting on the turbo.