Year-Round Cycling
How to Extend Your Cycling Season
Is one of your New Year’s Resolutions to have more fun on your bike by extending your cycling season throughout the year? To start building your fitness for your best summer season by continuing to ride through the winter? To cycle more for health and weight management? To get more outdoor exercise to stave off seasonal affective disorder, or SAD? To commute more because it’s green and cheap? Coach John Hughes and most of his clients ride year-round for these and other reasons, in sometimes harsh weather. In this article, he shares his expertise on how to start cycling earlier in the spring, ride later in the fall and, if you wish, ride in the winter.
He breaks the article down into six factors to successfully ride year-round:
- Goal setting and Planning: How to pick your goals, select your events and assess your strengths and weaknesses.
- Training: How to organize your cycling year into different phases and vary your training by phase to get the most benefit.
- Clothing and Equipment: What you need to keep warm and dry in winter, as well as modifications for your bike to carry clothing, ride in the rain and be safe in the dark, if necessary.
- Nutrition: How much you need to eat and drink to keep the furnace burning, what tastes good in colder weather, and how to carry provisions in inclement conditions.
- Technique: How to ride safely in wet or even snowy conditions.
- Motivation: How to stay motivated to meet your goals for the entire year.
Year-Round Cycling: How to Extend Your Cycling Season runs 15 pages and includes a section of resources with further information on many of the topics discussed.
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