Team Bottrill Women's Top 3 Winter Cycling Training Tips

With the launch of Team Bottrill - VANGUARD Women we thought it would be good to see how our ladies get through their winter training. Team rider Stephanie Post gives us her take.

Winter training doesn’t naturally fill riders with enthusiasm; less daylight, dodgy road conditions, a never-ending supply of Christmas food temptations, the almost inevitable increase in the turbo training hours...! Here's how our girls keep winter training motivation levels high, build on their fitness and remain focused for 2018's racing season.

1. Develop your own motivational tricks. ​

Let’s face it - we're not robots and some days all you want to do is binge on chocolate or go down the pub for a gin...or two. So for those days when you need an extra incentive:

• It appears that most of our girls use the incentive of food to help. Hone those chocolate cravings to help enforce some calorie burning! Try replacing those boring energy gels with left over stocking filler sweets!

• Get everything prepared for early morning work outs so there are less boundaries between bed and your bike.

• Or even better…incorporate training into your commute. One of our TB riders religiously makes a 4:30 am commute to work and back on their winter-kitted TT bike.

• Stats don’t lie. Use your fitness stats on computer training packages such as Training Peaks to show you the downfall of missing sessions and not hitting targets.

• Competitive edge. Remind yourself of your targets for next

year and of your competition. Use this to make every session count.

2. Variation in training:

• Longer, lower intensity rides are needed to gain a sound aerobic base.

• Explore new routes or even visit friends in different areas and get a ride in a new location....maybe even incorporate a cheeky new TT course into your session.

• Some of our girls use Cyclocross and MTB’ing as a great way to beat the monotony of the road bike, although some, including me, admit to not having the bike handling skills to try these out or being mud averse!

3. Spice up those turbo sessions

• Podcasts and box sets.

• Anything harder requires some serious 'tuneage'. TBW recommend the following motivational belters to

help you through your turbo sessions

• https://open.spotify.com/user/steph8518/playlist/0kIWS4wzNmsmVox3naYDKp?si=KG88H5z_RbGx2G7M6NySGA

• Consider splashing out on some new technology; Zwift and other smart trainers are used by some of our athletes. They give you the added incentive of 'virtual QOMs' and scenery to concentrate on.

• Turbo sessions needs short term targets. The average

concentration span for an adult is about 10 seconds! So ideally have short term targets during your turbo session to avoid utter boredom.

• Our Cycling Coaches are great at adding variation in zones and having cadence targets for different sections. Try including out of the saddle drills to fire up your glutes.