Apparently, if you follow the plan perfectly, you’ll get stronger, leaner, faster, and possibly regrow your balding hair. I’m still waiting on that last one. The truth is less cinematic.
Yes, consistency works. But life doesn’t pause because you downloaded a training plan. Birthdays show up. Work detonates. Someone texts “just one drink” on a Thursday, and suddenly, it’s 1:47 a.m. You’re not in a training camp. You’re in a living room with a fan, laundry on the chair, and responsibilities staring back at you.
Yes, structure brings gains. It also brings the creeping desire to redecorate the garage Kurt Cobain style after your 47th perfectly executed interval while watching numbers move by 0.3%. Yes, if your rest days are active, your legs will thank you, but your significant other won’t.
If your goal is to duel Remco in April, commit fully. Be precise. Be relentless. Become a robot with a heart that beats once every two minutes. However, if your goal is to get stronger without letting winter training swallow your identity, moderation suddenly looks intelligent.
I trained all winter. I had goals. I hit most of them. I also missed rides, improvised sessions, and occasionally chose sleep over heroism.
So, here are the 5 things that no trainer or cycling guru will ever tell you because they earn their bread by you getting the most out of their training sessions. I don’t. And I don’t care if you can humble Jay Vine with your effort on Alpe d’Huez. I’m simply here to make sure you reach achievable, low-key goals without letting winter training obsess over your life.
Winter Riding: Why It’s a Different Sport Altogether
It’s OK to miss a ride – just don’t make it a habit
Going out for a drink is not a sin. OK, it is a sin when you do it during the Nativity Fast (shout out to all the Orthodox Christians out there), but you get the idea. Well, call me a sinner, but I do prefer to grab a beer with friends in December over pedalling alone next to the Christmas tree.
Sure, my Christmas tree is gorgeous, but once I start speaking with the decorative angels, it’s a wake-up call. So I skipped a ride (or three). And you know what happened? Nothing. The bike didn’t explode. Neither my FTP nor my results. My next session was actually better.
Consistency may be key, but sanity is the door. To be honest, I’d rather walk through the door than squeeze myself through the keyhole for a theoretical 0.7% gain. I’m only human, after all, and cycling is just a hobby.
Still, missing a ride shouldn’t become a habit. It’s fine to prioritise social events, going to the cinema, and spending quality time with your significant other every now and then. But if you want results, you still have to ride. So, it’s OK to miss a ride, just don’t make a habit out of it.
Staring at dashboards will burn you out
There’s a special kind of fatigue that doesn’t live in your legs. It lives in Excel.
Winter can quietly turn you into a lab experiment. Perfect intervals. Perfect cadence. Perfect compliance score. You start analysing your warm-up like you’re budgeting to buy a new home.
At some point, I realised I was no longer riding. I was auditing. That’s when things get weird. You begin chasing decimal points. You celebrate a 0.2% improvement as if you’d cured something. Meanwhile, you’re pedalling in front of a wall that has memorised your breathing pattern.
So I stopped treating every session like a spreadsheet inspection. I subscribed to Rouvy and started to plan my routes to mimic my training structure. It brought a dose of chaos, which was quite welcomed. You don’t get perfect intervals, but in real life, you never do. You don’t get exactly 35 seconds of rest every 5 minutes. You get 67 seconds after a 5-minute climb, then 4 minutes after a 10-minute climb, and finally 17 seconds before the next one.
This chaotic approach saved me from getting bored out of my mind and dragged me back every day for every training session.
Sure, structure will build better fitness, but obsession will build resentment, and resentment has terrible watts.
Cyclist Immunity: The Indoor Air and Sunshine Problem
Sometimes, rest days can be lazy
Not every rest day needs to look like a Scandinavian wellness documentary. Some of mine looked like pizza. Or a late film. Or dinner that turned into “one more glass”, and suddenly it’s 2 a.m., and stretching feels theoretical. I did not foam roll heroically at midnight. I slept.
Winter culture loves optimisation. Active recovery. Mobility routines. Core work. Breathing drills. At some point, your “rest day” starts looking suspiciously like training wearing civilian clothes.
Sometimes the correct recovery protocol is horizontal. I skipped the spin. I skipped the push-ups. I skipped pretending that light movement was mandatory for survival. And once again, a miracle. I didn’t stiffen up, and my body recovered anyway. There were absolutely no consequences on the next ride, except that I felt rested.
So, if you want to do a light spin – great. If you want to stretch – fine. And if you want to cuddle with your loved one while watching a film, that’s fine as well. Do rests as you see fit, not as some cycling guru tells you to.
Listen to your body, but call its bluff
On the same note, listening to your body is key… and, as we already discussed, keyholes are not the most practical entry point. So, sometimes you shouldn’t just listen, but also understand. Your body is a lazy one, and conserving energy is its main priority. So it will always tell you you’re tired and that you need to sleep.
Right around 6 p.m., when your workday ends and it’s time to hit the bike, you suddenly start to yawn. Your eyelids close. You’re exhausted. A mysterious soreness that wasn’t there at 4:30. Funny how that timing works, ain’t it. So, if you’re just listening to your body, you will have to skip every training session. But your body lies, and you need to know when it’s serious and when it’s bluffing.
Real fatigue is quiet. The legs feel hollow. The nervous system is flat. No spark. No itch to push. Fake fatigue negotiates. It suggests alternatives. It recommends the couch, the bed, and the fridge. Mild headaches will appear out of nowhere when you start changing. Anything to just sit back and relax.
You are tired, indeed, but mentally, not physically. So, physical tiring often recharges your mental energy.
So, my secret is, if my brain was loud and my legs were neutral, I rode. Ninety per cent of the time, ten minutes in, I felt fine. If the legs were heavy and the brain was calm, that was different. That’s when I stopped.
The trick isn’t “listening to your body”. That’s vague. The trick is knowing which part of it is lying.
You never not miss riding outside
Nowadays, you can simulate almost everything at home. Elevation profiles. Drafting effects. Even races against strangers who live in time zones you’ll never visit. The platforms are impressive. The workouts are effective. The numbers move exactly the way they’re supposed to. But none of it smells like cold air.
The trainer makes you efficient. It doesn’t make you alive. There’s no badly judged corner to punish you. No crosswind to test your line. No descent where you briefly forget your own name because gravity is doing unspeakable things to your confidence.
By February, my data looked better. Cadence smoother. Intervals cleaner. I was objectively stronger. And still, I’d catch myself staring out the window like a dog who knows the park exists but isn’t allowed to go.
You can build fitness in a room, but you can never, ever not miss riding outside. So, if you have the chance to stumble upon a weekend day when the weather is not openly trying to kill you, take it. For the love of everything rolling and muddy, take it.
Be disciplined, not delusional
The moral of this story is that winter rewards discipline, not obsession. There’s a thin line between commitment and turning your hobby into a Saw scenario. I trained hard. I followed the structure. I showed up almost every time… almost. That’s the word that makes all the difference.
I skipped sessions when life made more sense than a blue bar on a screen. I chose sleep over half-hearted (and half-drunk) efforts. And guess what? I’m still stronger. I increased my FTP by 0.8 W/kg in just 3 months.
Delusion sounds impressive. Never miss. Never bend. Never compromise. It looks serious. It also burns people out by March.
Discipline is quieter. It allows flexibility without collapsing into laziness. It understands that cycling is part of life, not a replacement for it.