1. Train smarter, not harder I remember in 2010 I rode the National 25 and Michael Hutchinson beat me by two and a half minutes. I thought I’d trained harder than ever. That was the turning point. I started looking at skinsuits, positions on the bike… but the biggest thing was coaching and bringing the full package together. That year I started working with Simon Smart at Drag2Zero and also with my coach Bob Tobin. Simon was looking at skinsuit design; Bob helped me understan

1. Enter an early-season event Your target events might be later in the year, but keep yourself focused by entering an early-season event. The prospect of pinning on a number (OK, flattening it out inside your Endura pocket) can be a great motivator when you’re cranking out another 20 minutes of threshold on the turbo in December and wondering if it’s ever going to end. It doesn’t matter if you’re still in your build phase in February or March – just use it as a warm-up event

Turbo training used to be a poor substitute for real riding and something you did only if the weather really was too horrible to get out. You’d either be staring at a concrete wall or squinting through stinging sweat at a soggy piece of paper where you’d written down the intervals you had to do. The turbo itself was a basic frame that when revved up sounded like it was going to take off (fan resistance type) or wailed like a banshee (magnetic resistance type). It was torture

Nutrition on the bike is a hugely personal thing, and what works for one athlete does not necessarily translate to also being another’s ‘magic formula’. But it is a hugely important component of a good training programme for cyclists, in the form of personal wellness as much as it is performance-led goals. And it doesn’t necessarily mean having to splurge on an expensive weekly organic veg box either, there are so very simple things that you can do to ensure that you get the