Sometime during the next week, many of us will feel like we’ve ate and drank too much, and trained too little. That we’ve put on a few pounds and lost all of our fitness. The fitness that we’ve been slowly building throughout the uber-weird year of 2020 – yes, that “fitness.”
We don’t know for certain when real-life racing will fully resume; but in many countries around the world, it already has. But remember, there are so many more goals to chase than disappearing races – e-Racing is and will always be there, personal challenges such as weight, mileage, and power goals; or perhaps now is the time to work on some things off the bike. That could mean prioritizing your job, spending more time with the kids, getting back in the gym (or strength training at home), or balancing training for a 5k with the riding you already do.
The holidays are the best time of year to relax and enjoy time with family, and to take a break from our normal training and nutrition routines. It’s important to not go too far overboard (i.e. have 1-2 helpings of dessert, not 5) so that you can ease back into training within the following few days.
I used to like riding a lot during the holidays, but recently, I’ve been training lightly though them instead. I’ll do an hour-long spin in the morning, or go for a three-mile run, but nothing too long or strenuous. I work out in the morning because it makes me feel good, and through experience, I’ve found that these kinds of light workouts work best for me.
I’ve also discovered the feeling of “Post-Holiday Freshness.” When I used to train hard through the holidays, it felt like nothing changed. I didn’t gain any weight or lose any fitness, but I didn’t feel any better or get any stronger. My fitness stayed the same, which isn’t bad at this time of year, but the mental toll of training hard through the holidays often caught up with me.
Now, when I skip the hard workouts, or take a day completely off, I feel 100x better when I come back. After just a couple days of rest and light workouts, I’ve come back to set Power PRs multiple times this season.
The key is to maintain your normal (or reasonably close to your normal) sleeping and recovery routines through your time off. This is when your body now has extra time to recover, compared to your normal training routine. But if you suddenly go from getting 8 hours of sleep per night to 6 during the holidays, your body is going to be playing catch-up, and your fitness will either stay the same or slightly decrease. Additionally, if you are used to stretching and using a foam roller every day during normal training, and then over the holidays you go 7 days without doing either one, your body is going to feel tight and awful when you attempt to return to training. Your back could be in knots, your quadriceps tightening up with each pedalstroke, and your calves cramping up…simply because you took too much time off and didn’t ease your way back into training.
And that’s my final point here: ease yourself back into training after a short (holiday) break. Don’t try to smash three Zwift races in a row on your first day back training. Give yourself at least one day of super easy riding, probably 1-2 hours, to ease your body back into pedaling and your body position on the bike. Cycling is an unnatural movement that takes time to become accustomed too.
In summary, give yourself a break over the holidays, try some light workouts to keep your body moving, and then ease back into training with a newfound freshness in both your mind and body.