In today's Roadman Podcast, I want to talk to you about whether you…
In today's Roadman Podcast, I want to talk to you about whether you should take a break off the bike for winter. Let's cue that intro! The big question is this. How do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness and our long chances? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Welch and welcome to the Roadman Podcast. Hello roadmen, welcome back to another Roadman Bites short form podcast. Today I want to talk to you about a topic that's troubled me from time to time over the years. Should I take a winter break? Do I need a little bit of time off the bike? What factors should I consider when deciding whether I should take time off the bike? And if I do decide to take time off the bike, how long should I take off the bike? Because we don't want to undermine the chances of a successful season to come already before we even get started and it has the potential to do that. Before I jump into that, let's quick shout out as always to patreon.com but our patreon subscription now is coming with a twist on creating a new episode and ask me anything from patreon members only. It's called the secret podcast once a month. If you want to get access to the secret podcast. It is the price of a point of beer once a month. If you head on over to patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore Walsh, sign up and at the end of each month you will get access to the much anticipated secret podcast. Thanks to my existing patreons already. The questions are starting to float in and I'm looking forward to giving you guys the edge on your competition with this secret podcast. It's the first one is coming at the end of September so get signed up in the next couple of days if you want to get this month's secret podcast. Sounds like there's some crazy FBI shit going on there doesn't it? I just listened to Ed Snowden on the Joe Rogue and experienced one of the new episodes. If you want your mind blown stick that on the Turbo Trainer after you finish this episode some crazy mass surveillance shit going on. Okay so winter break it's getting to that time as I look out the window here in Dublin, Ireland, it is poor and rain. Not an unusually, you might say, but the rain's a little bit colder than normal and that's how we know winter's common. We get the warm rain in the summer and the cold rain in the winter. So the cold rain is on its way. The idea of this taking a break, this very much is trickle down, like a lot of our stuff is from the professional Reuters. Now think about the professional riders for a second. They race hard, they train their nuts off 25 to 35 hours a week, and they have a pretty grilling travel schedule. Also when you're a pro rider, there's a lot of sacrifice that goes into this. It's missed birthdays, families, broken promises, and a strict diet all year round. So the off season for them, it's very much a time to loosen that discipline, let the hair down and have some fun. If you're listening to this and you're tinking to yourself, I let my hair down, have loose discipline, I'll have fun all year round. Already there's some warning signs here that you may not need a winter break. So the two aspects to the winter break are do you need to mentally recharge? Do you need to physically recuperate? So that's what we need to think about. The same reasons that the pros take the break, they've tried hard, they've raced, that's physical. Then they've to travel, the broken promises, the missed birthdays, that takes a mental toll. So we're going to use that same criteria, a mental and physical criteria to see if we need a break. So I'd be asking yourself, how much have you trained? Are you doing a casual four hours a week or are you consistently doing 15, 20 hours a week? If it's the former, it's putting a tick in the maybe don't take a break column. If it's the latter, it's putting a tick in the take a break column. Are you recovering from injuries? Again, weigh that up. What part of the world are you in? If you're here like me in Dublin and and you're looking out at some pretty bad cold weather. Again, that's ticking towards maybe take a break. If you're based over in Tenerife, Lanzarote and you've beautiful weather earlier around, you know, it's a reason not to take the break. Motivation, you're looking at the bike now and it's feeling like a chore or you're still fresh, can't wait to get out the door.
Find yourself consuming all the cycling content you can because the…
You find yourself consuming all the cycling content you can because the motivation is just like ready to go. There are some of the factors that I'd be thinking about when I'm in voice and clients to take a break or if I'm considering taking a break myself. The last one is how many events have you participated in this year? If your events are coming ticking fast like I'm talking one a week, that's a tick and to take a break column. If your events are sporadic, you know, one every couple of months, don't take a break column. I tally all these up, make a little pros cons, list, weigh up your, count up your ticks, count up your against and then you make your decision. And if you decide to take a break, I would aim to take a two week break. And in that time, I would take time off, like we said, let her down, loose and disciplined, have fun, et cetera. You can have your glasses of wine with dinner. But also towards the end of that, start thinking about winter training and starting to prepare yourself for it. Get your winter bike. You know what, that's a good idea actually. I might do a full podcast next week on winter bike and the pros of using a winter bike. Because if people aren't using a winter bike at the moment, something I'd highly recommend. Get your winter bike off into the boychop to get fixed up. You don't want to be starting back a first day of winter training and realize you know broken chain, broken spokes, the boy doesn't have your power meter. So get that sorted now. I'm starting to think about the transition to winter kit right now. There you go, another podcast topic. Winter kit, what's the difference between winter kit and summer kit? I'm starting to think the low shields the kit I love to wear. I'm starting to think about now putting in my orders, my birthday's coming up so I'm telling family members and friends, you maybe I need an extra little set of shorts here, an extra thermal jacket there. Also, it's a time to plan for next season, but the planning for next season kind of starts with a look back on last season. We have that famous, much overused quote, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and looking for a different result, but it truly is. If you look back at last season and it didn't go the way you planned, look just don't do the same stuff again. You know, None of us are getting any younger and this is a tough sport and none of us are in this for the next 50 years You know it does take a towel on your season after season as enjoyable as it is so you know make the seasons Count make them count Make sure you're getting the roided voice Make sure you're getting the right direction and make sure you're getting better season after season because you should be getting better Also in the two weeks, I'd encourage you to stay active You know great so you're gonna know for a few beers you're gonna have that desserts extra desserts after dinner extra dessert like two desserts. That's a social taboo about ordering two desserts. Don't know why. You always see people ordering two sides but you get a funny look of your order a brownie and a cheesecake. Hmm interesting. So I had these messed up and I wouldn't encourage you to stay active especially if you're the double dessert kind of guy that social taboo type guy. Stay active get out on the walk like get out and you know try and get a see swimming in, get out and out, run, do some cross-strain. It doesn't have to be structured but just stay in active. If you have a partner, husband, wife, girlfriend, boyfriend and you haven't been able to ride with them through the year because they're maybe not a cyclist, now is the time to catch up on physical pursuit with them, maybe it's a wake-amp and for the weekend, maybe it's rock climbing, whatever it is. But stay in active and definitely start to build those bridges that you may have put a little bit of strain on. That's probably will say throughout the year. So I wonder how many broken merges it's responsible for? Who knows? If you've decided that you don't want to take a break, you are this rare breed that has unlimited motivation. Force the accostionate and say, I've seen this, I'm like an ill boy now, I sound like my dad back in my day. I have seen this so many times before though. Guys go into October with super motivation, intervals out to Wazoo in October, no winter break, structure tapered, red Joffreels trying to boil, they've read Andrew Cogans trying to raise him with a parameter, nothing is holding them back.
Real racing doesn't get going until next summer
The real racing doesn't get going until next summer. These guys are what we end up calling Christmas champions, the winter world champion. And the winter world champion is a guy you're gonna need to watch out for. And he's a guy who we definitely need to develop a full podcast because I have my only on a couple of Winter World champions at the moment and they're gonna burn out, they do every single time. So I would caution you if you're an aspiring Winter World champion to sit back, take your break and maybe learn from mistakes at all. Don't be a, what's that saying? Don't be a point? You always know the pioneers because they're lying face down the door to an arrows in their back. You know, you don't need to figure this out on your own. Someone has figured out all this stuff before for you. I would encourage you if you're not taking a break, definitely to can the structure, just ride around for a couple of weeks with no structure. Don't ride if it's bad weather, don't ride if you don't feel like riding, don't put pressure on yourself to ride. Have some fun, ride a different bike, go gravel ride and go mountain bike and go fat biking. Also I would say to you, get your coach, get on board with your coach. You know, if you can pop us an email if you're not working with a coach or if you're working with a coach, talk to him and And regardless of you're taking the break or not taking the break, make him accountable and say there's a line in the sand and it's two weeks from now. That's when I'm going to come back to structure training or that's when I'm going to get back on the bike. Because I've often seen two weeks drifting into two months and then you're the guy who's coming into the Christmas period where we typically over-indulge anyway with extra kilograms and it's a really bad way to start the season. because you're coming into January then before you properly get settled. I'm trying to quote waste and you're going in, you're saying to yourself, oh, use the first couple of events to shed weight. It's a disaster. So there are a couple of cautionary tales and I actually remember I had a team ace out in France and he stopped racing. I'm going to say in like end of July, start of August and he'd taken his two three weeks and he was back like winter trying him by the end of August. But he started off October. There was no stop in this man. He was on course to be the greatest Winter World Champion of all time. But when the season rolled around April, he was kind of, motivation was weighing in a bit. Come June and Nationals. The guy was just host, hooked. We see time and time again. So I'll just caution you against being that guy. And add up all those pros and cons and see if you need yourself a winter break for the vast majority of us who've been going through structured training and racing, the extra stress of COVID, work, different work situations, etc. It's a good idea to take at least two weeks off the bike. Guys, that has been another Roadman short-form boys podcast. Enjoy the World Championship this weekend in Emmala and I'll be back on Monday to unpack the World Championships and crown ourselves a new World Champion. Until then, Roadman, enjoy your weekend and ride safe out there. Hey everybody, it's Anthony again. Really quick, I want to invite you to join arguably the best thing I've ever put out inside the roadman community. It's a challenge. It's a challenge called the 14-day Kickstarter Challenge. So regardless of where your fitness is at right now, this is going to be the catalyst for making you faster and making you leaner. I've created this challenge to take the guesswork out of everything. It's 14 days, training plans, regardless of what your level is. There's a master's beginner advanced. There's meal plans, shopping list and even a video course holding your hand and talking you through it all. So what I recommend you do right now is just stop everything, press pause on this audio and go to roadmansoycling.com forward slash 14 day or check out the link in the bio that roadmansoycling.com slash 14 day.