November Rain, Part I

By Amber Pierce

Cross season is already here, and for roadies in the northern hemisphere, that means pulling out the fenders and thermal jackets. It’s a cruel reality that the coldest most miserable part of the year to train outdoors is also the time of year you should spend the longest hours on your bike.

Serious winter training requires two essential conditions to be effective.

1. Harden The F--- Up.

Winter training is hard. Accept that it ain’t gonna be pretty, and find a way to motivate yourself.

2. Don’t be stupid.

Assuming you’ve met the first condition, you are looking at many, many cold hours on the bicycle. Let’s face facts here people. No matter how much you HTFU or what a badass you think you may be, your body has physiological limits, and putting yourself at risk of hypothermia or frostbite does not make you hardcore. It makes you stupid. It puts your health at risk and jeopardizes any training gains you might otherwise make.

Admittedly, the line between hardcore and stupid is a fine one, and we’ve all had days where we fall a little too far to the stupid side and end up with, for example, agonizing cold in fingers and toes which precipitates a steady, humiliating disintegration of personal dignity. I hope these articles will help you avoid days like that.

In this first installment, I’ll address how to motivate for winter training, and in the following installment, I’ll get into nitty gritty advice on gear choices and ride planning.

HTFU and Smile Like You Mean It

The first condition comes down to discipline, and there’s more to discipline than training in the cold even though you don’t want to train in the cold. Effective discipline is about finding a reason to WANT to train in the cold. The distinction is subtle, but in my opinion, important. It’s the difference between getting out the door with enthusiasm, and trudging out the door with resignation – a difference that undeniably impacts the quality of every single training ride.

Discipline often has a negative connotation -- doing something you don’t want to do, over and over again. Doesn’t sound like a whole lot of fun, does it? Well, it’s not. You can probably talk yourself into believing that you’re tough or that you’ve got incredible willpower by forcing yourself to do something that makes you miserable, but that wellspring of motivation will run dry in a hurry. Why? Because you’re miserable and focused on the misery, a downward spiral that will sap you of whatever remnants of enthusiasm you may once have had for riding your bike.

I believe the true nature of discipline is enthusiasm. The great secret of elite athletes is not that they have an unnatural capacity for privation, but that they actually love what they do enough to subordinate their passing moods to the strength of their purpose. What appears to others to be Spartan discipline is, in fact, an unbelievably fun adventure.

Not every aspect of training toward a goal is fun, but the crux is that your desire to reach your goal is so great, and progress towards it brings you such joy, that the difficulties and sacrifices along the way pale in comparison. Cyclists discuss “suffering” a lot, mainly because we suffer a lot. But, as a former professional cyclist and good friend of mine once put it:

I hated everything about training and racing. I hated to suffer. But, those moments in races when I knew the guy next to me was suffering just incrementally more than me – those moments made everything else worthwhile.

For some it’s the competition; for others it’s the personal journey. Whatever IT is for you, IT is the fun part. IT keeps you coming back for more. IT makes you want to train through the nasty weather of winter.

Obviously, training in sub-zero temperatures is not as much fun as training in warm sunshine, but chances are, you are not riding your bike just to enjoy sunshine and get ridiculous tan lines. (Otherwise you’d just be lounging at the tanning beds in your chamois, and who does that? Actually, I don’t want know. And if you do, you shouldn’t admit to it, anyway.) The key is to focus on IT, whatever IT is for you, because IT will get you out the door far more consistently than simply resigning yourself to suffer.

Finding a reason to WANT to get on the trainer or get out the door when it’s already below freezing isn’t easy. You may think that some people are just naturally driven, or genetically predisposed to be positive, but the fact is that motivation is a matter of focus, and consequently requires effort and consistency. The challenge is to figure out – everyday – what it is that will motivate you.

You may be thinking, “What a crock. Being a hard-ass has nothing to do with fun or joy. It’s about privation and suffering.” To which I say this: Who is more of a hard-ass, one who merely endures training in bad weather, or one who trains in bad weather with a genuine smile? Moreover, who do you think is going to get more out of themselves during those training blocks? And who will have more motivation for the first spring races?

To stay motivated for months of bad weather sometimes requires a little creativity. Here are a few tricks I use to help fuel the fire.

1. Schedule rides with training partners. Looking forward to good company (not to mention personal accountability) is a great motivator for getting out the door.

2. Visualize successfully accomplishing one of your big goals in the future, and in your visualization, reflect back on how today’s workout contributed to that success.

3. Remove as many obstacles to getting out the door as possible. Do all of the next day’s pre-ride prep after you’ve completed today’s ride; it’s much easier to get these tasks done when your workout is already finished, than it is as you’re trying to motivate to get out the door (e.g., clean and lube your chain and dry your shoes and gloves after every ride; set up a pair of fenders for the duration of your winter training to avoid re-installation for every rain ride; and have your computer/SRM/Garmin/PowerTap charged and ready to go).

Do you have any personal tricks that help you motivate to train during the winter? If so, please share them! As always, let me know what other topics you’d like to see covered. Please leave your suggestions in the comments section below.

Thanks for reading,
Amber

Amber Pierce - An American expat living in Austria, Amber has made the leap across the Atlantic in pursuit of her dreams on the road. After making a name for herself as one of the top road cyclists in the US, she now faces new challenges in her life on the road in Europe.

Amber's path to full-time racing in Europe has been anything but linear. From high school valedictorian holding national swimming records, to scholarship athlete at Stanford University and researcher on the open ocean, she has found herself in countless adventures all over the globe. With 53 career victories under her belt, however, Amber appears to have found her calling on the bicycle.

Follow Amber's adventures as an American cyclist and expat in Europe and beyond, as she shares the journey through her own words on Anywhere Road.

Photos: © Amber Pierce (top - from "Solstice" on Fossilized Tree Sap; bottom - Training on the Grossglockner in Austria).

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