Last year I raced on Zwift all winter. By the time March came & the weather broke… I was OVERTRAINED! My whole year was screwed up & a roller coaster as I never recovered!?
I cannot repeat that mistake.
Can you help me in designing a sensible training plan that I can use Zwift, but do workouts and make sure I am strong in March/April/May?
We all love to train and improve, that’s one of the reasons you are on this mailing list! Our goal as cycling coaches is to share our knowledge, so that you can shortcut through years of trial and error and achieve your goals using your available time. We are all time constrained and that’s one of the reasons that indoor riding has become so popular. It allows you to train whenever you can, regardless of weather, time of day or where you live. Zwift and other indoor apps have been incredible in providing “Trainertainment” and gone are the days when I used to ride in the basement on the rollers, starting a concrete wall beside the cat litter box!
With our new indoor training tools, the temptation to just race inside Zwift or ride hard everyday is strong, but this is a mistake. Riding hard or racing 5-6x a week inside a virtual world is a recipe for disaster as not only will you not be training the energy systems correctly, you risk riding poorly when the spring comes and you can ride outdoors. You see, our bodies don’t like continual stress. We need rest, we need a progressive ramp up of intensity and we need the correct combination of volume with intensity. Just riding as hard as you can indoors everyday is not a plan for success. It’s no plan. If you do not have a plan for success, then you are planning for failure.
If you do not have a plan for success, then you are planning for failure.
We can help you plan for success using your indoor training apps! All of our coaches use them as well, and designing a plan using these new popular indoor training tools, coaching you along the way, riding with you in a virtual world, all of that is part of becoming a coached athlete here at PCG. Let us help you MAKE 2019 great!
–Hunter Allen