This is where the fake race comes in.
Not a real race. Not a peak. Not a taper that would make your coach nervous. Just a deliberately placed, mid-month event designed to trick your brain. And gently sharpen your legs without derailing the bigger plan.
Done properly, the fake race is an art form.
Why winter needs theatre
Mid-winter is metabolically productive and psychologically brutal. The body adapts well to consistent aerobic work, but the brain adapts poorly to monotony.
Humans are goal-seeking creatures. Training without an imminent event feels abstract. “Be fitter in four months” does not hit the same as “try not to explode on that climb next Sunday.”
A fake race compresses time. It creates a near-term narrative. Suddenly your easy rides have context. Your sleep matters. Your fuelling matters. You are no longer just surviving winter. You are preparing.
The difference is subtle. The effect is not.
What counts as a fake race?
A fake race is any controlled, self-imposed event that simulates race preparation without requiring full race-level stress.
It might be a hard local chain gang you treat like a selection race. It might be a Zwift race you circle on the calendar and refuse to treat as “just training.” It might be a solo effort on a familiar 20-minute climb where you decide, calmly and deliberately, that this is the day you test yourself.
The key is intent. Not chaos.
You decide in advance that this matters. Not season-defining matters. But enough to focus you for two weeks.
The Five Lessons I Learned From Training the Whole Winter
The mini build-up
Here’s where the art lives.
You give yourself 10 to 14 days of purposeful preparation. Nothing extreme. Just subtle sharpening.
Endurance rides become slightly more precise. One threshold session becomes slightly more committed. You start fuelling workouts as if they matter, because they do. You pay attention to sleep. You stop scrolling at midnight because “Sunday is the day.”
You are not peaking. You are rehearsing. This controlled focus is often enough to nudge fitness forward. Not because the physiology changes dramatically in two weeks, but because consistency improves when attention sharpens.
And attention sharpens when something is coming.
The psychological ignition
Winter fatigue is rarely pure physiology. It is usually friction.
A fake race removes friction. It replaces “I should train” with “I’m preparing.” It reframes turbo sessions from punishment to rehearsal. It gives your mind something to bite into.
You remember how it feels to pin on a number (even if the number is imaginary).
You remember how it feels to care about pacing. To feel nervous. To visualise. To suffer with purpose.
That psychological rehearsal is not trivial. Come spring, it will feel familiar rather than shocking.
How hard is too hard?
This is where restraint matters.
The fake race is not an excuse to detonate yourself into a three-week hole. You are not tapering aggressively. You are not emptying the tank completely. You are not chasing a lifetime PB in February wind.
You are simulating race behaviour within the boundaries of your current training phase. Think of it as opening the top drawer of intensity, not pulling the entire cupboard down on yourself. If you finish feeling pleasantly ruined but operational within 48 hours, you did it right. If you need five days to feel human, you got carried away.
The after-effect
The magic of the fake race is what happens next.
Often, riders discover they are fitter than they thought. Threshold feels steadier. High-end efforts don’t sting quite as much. The numbers are reassuring. Just as often, the opposite happens. You crack earlier than expected. The legs feel wooden. The pace feels unsustainable.
Both outcomes are useful. If you fly, confidence rises and training sharpens. If you crack, you recalibrate before it matters. Either way, winter becomes feedback rather than fog.
And crucially, motivation spikes again.
Why this works
The body responds to stimulus. The brain responds to stakes.
A fake race adds stakes without adding chaos. It breaks monotony without breaking structure. It creates urgency without compromising the long-term build.
Most importantly, it reminds you that fitness is not only accumulated through months of steady miles. It is revealed in moments of focus.
Mid-winter is long. But it does not have to be flat.
Sometimes all it takes to relight the fire is a date on the calendar, a deliberate intention, and the quiet decision that for one Sunday in February, this one counts.