Autumn is quickly approaching here in the northern hemisphere and that means falling leaves and falling temperatures. The crisp mornings and mild days are a welcome reprieve from the oppression of the summer heat and humidity. But as the leaves litter the ground and the temperatures dip, motivation can wane like the length of the days.
After a long season of intervals, structured training, and watching power numbers, it can be difficult to find a reason to get in the saddle. Fortunately, the change of seasons offers more than one way to stoke your motivation as opposed to killing it.
For this Motivation Monday, it's time to give you a few ways to get your mojo back. Click through the jump to explore a few ways of cranking up your motivation and finishing your season strong.
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Fun and Fitness in the Fall
So you've spent the spring and summer watching your power meter and ripping off interval after interval. You've conquered A, B, and C level events and finished your calendar. Now you're getting tired and wondering what you can do to finish off the season right. Well, there are a couple of ways you can boost your fall fitness and have a bit of fun doing it. After all, that's what Motivation Monday is all about, right?
Hit the trails:
A lot of cyclists enjoy jumping off their road bike and onto fat tires during the fall. In fact, mountain biking can be a great compliment to road bike fitness. Mountain bikes offer the opportunity to ride very differently from on the road. Mountain bike riding is very stochastic, meaning it's tons of surges followed by tons of rest. Trail conditions are usually pretty rough as well, offering a completely different kind of ride. Bikes are heavier and require upper body and core stability work to handle at speed, giving you the perfect kind of cross training. As a bonus, you get off the busy roads and into the beautiful fall woods.
It's some of the best interval work you can do, and it's usually hard short duration efforts. You'll also build a ton of muscular endurance due to the high pedal tension required on uphill drags.
The thing to remember with a mountain bike is that it's not a simple transition from the road. You'll probably find your skills a little lackluster after a few months on the road, so be cautious! It wouldn't do to get all busted up your first ride out!
Gravel grinding:
Gravel grinding has become really popular in the past couple of years. It's no coincidence that organizers love to hold gravel events in the fall. In a lot of cases, gravel roads traverse remote, often beautiful locations. And after a summer of travel, a lot of gravel roads are in great condition come fall. That is, of course, until the inevitable chip seal or re-graveling occurs.
When it comes to training, muscular endurance is the name of the game. You can spend tons of time with your legs under tension, especially considering how much resistance is provided by dirt roads. In addition, the design of many dirt roads means that VO2 max level efforts are a necessity.
Whether you have a dedicated gravel bike or you pull out your road machine, it's as simple as turning down the next unpaved path you see.
If you want to stay on the road:
If you're sticking to riding on the road during the fall, you have a ton of options for having fun and maintaining fitness. For one thing, put the Garmin device away and stop doing intervals. Let the road ahead of you dictate what kind of intervals you do that day. If the road is rolling, you can do over and under intervals on the rollers. If it's climbing heavy, get some muscular endurance work and force work done. When the road is flat, it's the perfect opportunity to tackle some sweetspot intervals.
Whatever intervals you do, make sure you only keep something simple like time or distance up on the Garmin screen and let the road be your guide.
It's also a perfect time to get a jump on your endurance training for next season. By planning some longer rides, you'll start building up that reserve of aerobic endurance capacity and threshold endurance. Those long rides are really great “kitchen sink rides” too. By “kitchen sink” we're talking about rides that give you a little bit of everything based on the terrain you cover. Really, you're just doing some variety of Fartlek training during these rides.
Register for something:
Back at the beginning of the year, I talked about the motivational aspects of registering for an event. In that case, it was Monkey Knife Fight. You can get the same motivational boost out of a later season goal as well. Never done a Fondo? Now's the time. Been wanting to enter a cyclocross race? Get your skinsuit out and give it a go. Want to do a long distance charity ride? Get on Bikereg and find one.
Having something on the calendar that you're planning on gives you a simple late-season motivational goal. If your fall fitness isn't up to snuff, you'll have trouble finishing your event. And nobody wants to fail at a goal, I can tell you that.
So go ahead, register for something new and exciting. Get out on your mountain bike or smash some gravel roads. Spend a little time cruising the countryside with your Garmin set to display your ride time, and let the terrain deliver your training stimulus. No matter what you choose, you'll find a breath of fresh air can motivate you to get on the saddle when you've been feeling a bit of burn out.
