Autumn is quickly approaching here in the northern hemisphere and that means falling leaves and falling temperatures.\u00a0 The crisp mornings and mild days are a welcome reprieve from the oppression of the summer heat and humidity.\u00a0 But as the leaves litter the ground and the temperatures dip, motivation can wane like the length of the days.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 Fortunately, the change of seasons offers more than one way to stoke your motivation as opposed to killing it.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/media.blubrry.com\/tailwindcoachingpodcast\/p\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/motivationmondayfallfitness.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div><\/div>

Podcast: Play in new window<\/a> | Download<\/a> (Duration: 31:17 — 23.2MB)<\/p>

Subscribe: Android<\/a> | RSS<\/a><\/p>\n

Fun and Fitness in the Fall<\/h2>\n
So you've spent the spring and summer watching your power meter and ripping off interval after interval.\u00a0 You've conquered A, B, and C level events<\/a> and finished your calendar.\u00a0 Now you're getting tired and wondering what you can do to finish off the season right.\u00a0 Well, there are a couple of ways you can boost your fall fitness and have a bit of fun doing it.\u00a0 After all, that's what Motivation Monday is all about, right?<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ <\/a>Hit the trails:<\/h3>\n
A lot of cyclists enjoy jumping off their road bike and onto fat tires during the fall.\u00a0 In fact, mountain biking can be a great compliment<\/a> to road bike fitness.\u00a0 Mountain bikes offer the opportunity to ride very differently from on the road.\u00a0 Mountain bike riding is very stochastic, meaning it's tons of surges followed by tons of rest.\u00a0 Trail conditions are usually pretty rough as well, offering a completely different kind of ride.\u00a0 Bikes are heavier and require upper body and core stability work to handle at speed, giving you the perfect kind of cross training.\u00a0 As a bonus, you get off the busy roads and into the beautiful fall woods.<\/p>\n
It's some of the best interval work you can do, and it's usually hard\u00a0short duration efforts.\u00a0 You'll also build a ton of muscular endurance<\/a> due to the high pedal tension required on uphill drags.<\/p>\n
The thing to remember with a mountain bike is that it's not a simple transition from the road.\u00a0 You'll probably find your skills a little lackluster after a few months on the road, so be cautious!\u00a0 It wouldn't do to get all busted up your first ride out!<\/p>\n

Gravel grinding:<\/h3>\n
Gravel grinding<\/a> has become really popular in the past couple of years.\u00a0 It's no coincidence that organizers love to hold gravel events in the fall.\u00a0 In a lot of cases, gravel roads traverse remote, often beautiful locations.\u00a0 And after a summer of travel, a lot of gravel roads are in great condition come fall.\u00a0 That is, of course, until the inevitable chip seal or re-graveling occurs.<\/p>\n
When it comes to training, muscular endurance is the name of the game.\u00a0 You can spend tons of time with your legs under tension, especially considering how much resistance is provided by dirt roads.\u00a0 In addition, the design of many dirt roads means that VO2 max level efforts<\/a> are a necessity.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n

If you want to stay on the road:<\/h3>\n
If you're sticking to riding on the road during the fall, you have a ton of options for having fun and maintaining fitness.\u00a0 For one thing, put the Garmin device away and stop doing intervals.\u00a0 Let the road ahead of you dictate what kind of intervals you do that day.\u00a0 If the road is rolling, you can do over and under intervals<\/a> on the rollers.\u00a0 If it's climbing heavy, get some muscular endurance work and force work done.\u00a0 When the road is flat, it's the perfect opportunity to tackle some sweetspot intervals<\/a>.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
It's also a perfect time to get a jump on your endurance training for next season.\u00a0 By planning some longer rides, you'll start building up that reserve of aerobic endurance capacity and threshold endurance.\u00a0 Those long rides are really great “kitchen sink rides” too.\u00a0 By “kitchen sink” we're talking about rides that give you a little bit of everything based on the terrain you cover.\u00a0 Really, you're just doing some variety of Fartlek training<\/a> during these rides.<\/p>\n
$\"GravelGrindingInFall\"$ <\/p>\n

Register for something:<\/h3>\n
Back at the beginning of the year, I talked about the motivational aspects of registering for an event<\/a>.\u00a0 In that case, it was Monkey Knife Fight<\/a>.\u00a0 You can get the same motivational boost out of a later season goal as well.\u00a0 Never done a Fondo?\u00a0 Now's the time<\/a>.\u00a0 Been wanting to enter a cyclocross race<\/a>?\u00a0 Get your skinsuit out and give it a go.\u00a0 Want to do a long distance charity ride<\/a>?\u00a0 Get on Bikereg and find one.<\/p>\n
Having something on the calendar that you're planning on gives you a simple late-season motivational goal.\u00a0 If your fall fitness isn't up to snuff, you'll have trouble finishing your event.\u00a0 And nobody wants to fail at a goal, I can tell you that.<\/p>\n
So go ahead, register for something new and exciting.\u00a0 Get out on your mountain bike or smash some gravel roads.\u00a0 Spend a little time cruising the countryside with your Garmin set to display your ride time, and let the terrain deliver your training stimulus.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fall can be a tough time to motivate yourself to ride and train. On today’s Tailwind Coaching Podcast, we’ll explore a few ways to get your late season mojo back. From getting dirty on a mountain bike to grinding some gravel and turning off your Garmin, these tips will help you get the most out of the season of the falling leaves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13852,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64,21,209,106],"tags":[175,60,5408,183],"yst_prominent_words":[5318,410,396,5734,5744,220,218,2909,788,5740,5401,224,753,276,4990,4969,764,5664,4975,268],"wppr_data":{"cwp_meta_box_check":"No"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Fun-and-Fitness-In-the-Fall.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13848"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13848"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13878,"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13848\/revisions\/13878"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13848"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=13848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}