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Quick Tips For Maintaining Cycling Motivation

How do you maintain cycling motivation through a season?  What about those people who seem to race season after season and still have the drive to compete?  It seems like some people are able to keep going out and riding for years on end.  Those cyclists never get tired of training and they always have an infectious enthusiasm about the sport.  Riders like that have a unique kind of cycling motivation that we all envy a little bit.

How do you grow that kind of cycling motivation?  How do you keep climbing on your bike every week and have enthusiasm about flogging yourself for a couple of hours of training?  Wouldn't it be nice to wake up every morning and be excited about the day's workout?

Just like you, I struggle with motivation sometimes.  When the mercury hits triple digits or it's drizzling outside, it's easy to sit in front of the TV with a coffee and watch racing on TV.  But if you want to become a beast, you have to train like one.  That means having the motivation to get off your sofa and onto your saddle.

Here are a few tips to help you keep your motivation levels up.

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Using Quadrant Analysis to Improve Your Bike Training

Quadrant analysis is a tool that can be found in many power analysis software packages.  Programs like Golden Cheetah, Training Peaks and WKO+ offer quadrant analysis features.  Learning how to read a quadrant analysis plot can teach you a lot about your training, racing and riding.  Above and beyond functional threshold power, watts per kilogram and training stress score, the quadrant analysis is probably one of the most valuable charts you can find.

It allows you to see a snapshot of what kinds of efforts went into your performance.  Then you can look at your training data and see if it matches up with your goal races and performance data.  It doesn't come easy though: it takes some time to understand the QA plot and how to use it.  Once you get it, it becomes a powerful tool in the arsenal of helping you understand your fitness.

Check out these tips to help you get the most out of your quadrant analysis plot and make your training more effective.

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5 Things The Best Cyclists Do At The End Of The Cycling Season

The end of the cycling season is a tough time for many cyclists.  The weather turns cold and the days shorten. Cyclists everywhere are forced inside to trainers and rollers for winter training.  But the fall cycling season is the perfect time to get your house in order for the coming off-season.

Since you should be tapering into your off-season, you have more time to think about your next season objectives.  Set your goals and objectives for the next season.  Sit down and evaluate the past season and see where you can make improvements in your preparation and fitness.  You are on the bike less, so you can do all these things that you have been neglecting in favor of putting in training miles!

To help you strengthen your off-season preparation, I'm going to give you a couple of tips to get you started.  Click through the break to find these 5 things the best cyclists do at the end of the cycling season and learn how to turn autumn gloom into spring success:

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The Ultimate Guide To Off Season Bike Training

If you're a cyclist looking to improve your performance, winter is the perfect time to adjust your bike training routine for the coming season.  You can get your plan for next season down and start attacking your goals and objectives early.  And by starting early, you can ensure you don't panic as you get closer to your season targets.

The thing to remember is that your offseason isn't a mashup of cross training, strength training and riding.  All of your training should be carefully evaluated and scheduled to maximize the effectiveness of each workout.  In order to do that, you need to get your off-season preparation started NOW.

Click through the break and I'll show you how to get started on building your most effective off-season bike training program ever!

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Cycling Coaching Questions and Answers #3

As an online cycling coach, I get a lot of questions emailed to me.  Every so often, I take a sampling of those questions and answer them for the benefit of everyone who listens to the Tailwind Coaching Podcast.

In this Q&A episode, I'll tackle plenty of training and fitness questions.  If you've ever been dropped on a group ride, you'll want to check out what I have to say.  Some others have been confused as to the best way to test functional threshold power or evaluate their performance improvements.  Folks from the southern hemisphere will be pleased to learn about training in the heat.  Beginners get some love with some questions about riding harder vs riding longer and Gran Fondo and long distance racers get some attention with a discussion about long distance training.  Finally, check out a basic power meter setup with a question about the bare minimum you need to start training with power.

Without further ado…

Coaching Questions and Answers

Below you'll find some links and information to expand on what I've covered in this podcast. 464yepvn (more…)

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