If there have been times in my life when I’ve been fit and fast, then it was mainly by accident. I have never subscribed to a real training program, and I lack the discipline to ride in specific ways at specific times. To quote the great philosopher Cyndi Lauper, “Girls just wanna have fun.”
Have I matured? Likely not.
But coming into the 2025 season (calling it a season makes it feel like a discreet and coherent campaign) I’m thinking about trying to rebuild my fitness in a more organized way. For those who haven’t been reading along, I’ve been off the bike since the end of November, when I broke some ribs. I needed a reset. I needed to attend to some lower back challenges, a calf strain, and a few other pesky physical problems.
The good news is that my body is (mostly) free of pain (I did smash the ever-loving-tar out of my left thumb on the last run of a great ski day about a month ago). The bad news is that my cardio-vascular condition might be at its lowest ebb in more than a decade.
My smarter and more helpful friends suggest I look at this as an opportunity (this is a thing optimists do apparently). It’s not that I have to rebuild my fitness; it’s that I get to.
“Tomato. Tomato,” as they say.
Here’s another piece of good news though. Early season fitness comes from a lot of slow riding, and THAT is a trick I’ve got down, and I have a crew who are in similar straits, so I won’t be alone.
This week’s TCI Friday wonders if you train in any organized way, or whether you just depend on the ambient fitness that comes from whatever riding you can manage, whenever you can manage it.
My only rule is to take it easy, start slow and be patient building up a base. Like you I had a long layoff this winter, although I did get a lot of hiking in. I rode a whopping 30 minutes Monday (coming off 3 weeks of flu) and did an easy 90 minutes Thursday. Both rides were just pure joy of being back on the bike and savoring each soft pedal stroke. Nothing worse in my mind than overdoing it and feeling like crap the next day
Every year I think I’ll train in an organized way, use one of those Zwift training plans, or maybe pay for trainer road but then I wake up one day and it says “do 10×10 intervals at BLAH BLAH BLAH and it just go ride my bike on some dirt, maybe go to the bike park and then delete the training plan. I feel like my best plan is on that particular day do some riding at whatever pace my brain/body thinks will be fun. My only constant now that I’m old is 3 days a week doing HITT stuff at one of those fruit named fitness places and that’s only because my wife goes.
It’s only taken me 40 years or so to go from building winter studded frankenbikes and gluing tubies to now joining the Team Slow/Team Dropped with a grin. I might look like a kitted racer but underneath is a 60 year old cancer recovery Dad with an ftp that dropped from 250 to 150 in the past year. So, why not embrace it? I think I will enjoy more scenery and even start to stop mid ride more often, maybe bring the camera along! Hell, isn’t that what a top tube bag is for?
Never good at structured training, I just rode as much as I could when I could. My best method was using the “full racing calendar” style of training- the more races that I entered, the fitter I was. The springtime off-road races were not pretty but by the time CX season rolled around I was feeling really good. In my post racing/chill riding style I’m back to taking what I can get. This past winter beat me down so it’s gonna be a slower process this year.