IN OR OUT?
With the digital age firmly upon us, we take a look at the pros and cons of modern indoor winter training methods and ask whether we even need to go outside during the dark, cold months any more…
With the rise of indoor games like Zwift, is there still a place for ‘old school’ winter miles on the road?
Training indoors has never been so entertaining. You can take your pick from a Sufferfest session, a Trainerroad workout or a virtual ride around Zwift’s land of Watopia, without cold freezing your fingers or dirt sullying your bike. And with smart trainers becoming more affordable, more cyclists stand to benefit from tailored winter workouts and precise measurement of their training efforts. Gone are the days of sitting on a turbo trainer in boredom, numbly pushing the pedals as you stare at the wall.
Does that mean, though, that gone with it is the incentive to get out and ride? Can summer smiles now be achieved without winter miles, or is there still some logic in the ‘old-time religion’ of the outdoors approach to winter training?
ZWIFT RISE
Launched in 2014, online training game Zwift now boasts 900,000 users, with around 75 per cent of them running the game through smart trainers. Zwift’s virtual world offers riders several landscapes to explore, where they can ‘climb’ Alpe d’Huez, test themselves on the Richmond or Innsbruck World Championship courses, or ride the streets of London and New York. There are also virtual races against other, real, online riders, as well as structured training sessions. And Zwift has recently launched a training programme to prepare participants for the 2019 Etape du Tour.
The game received a nice bit of free publicity when Mitchelton-Scott rider Mat Hayman scored an unexpected victory at Paris-Roubaix in 2016. As he recovered from injury, he revealed that he honed his form riding on Zwift in the weeks leading up to the race.
Zwift is also changing the way riders are recruited to the sport’s top ranks by running the Zwift Academy in conjunction with professional teams Dimension Data and Canyon// SRAM. 35,000 men and women took part in the 2018 Zwift Academy, and the top three men and women were flown out for training camps and road trials with the teams, with the winners joining the squads in October and November. Slovenia’s 19-year-old Martin Lavric won the men’s Zwift Academy title and will join Dimension Data’s Continental-level development team for the 2019 season. The women’s winner had yet to be decided at the time of going to press.
“I think Zwift has already made a huge impact on the way riders train,” says Dimension Data’s development team coach Elliot Lipski. “We’ve already started to utilise Zwift in the real world. At this year’s Tour de France and Vuelta a España, each rider’s time trial warm-ups were loaded and completed on Zwift. For the riders, it’s a way of simplifying the pre-race routine – jump on the trainer and run through the warm-up they’ve practised and perfected, knowing that the timings are spot-on.
“The introduction of the World Championship courses has seen a huge jump in the uptake of professional riders [around 300 World Tour pros use the game], and it gives them an opportunity to recon the route ahead of travelling to the venue, which is typically only a week before the race.”
VIRTUAL REALITY, REAL SUFFERING
The addition of virtual reality to indoor riding has advantages for amateur riders too, beyond taking the edge off an otherwise tedious way of staying in shape over winter. “It provides a much more controlled environment,” says cycling coach Ruth Eyles. And she should know: as a former national 50- and 100mile time-trial champion, she spent hours each week before and after work on the turbo trainer. “You can decide what you’re going to do, and then go and do it to the very pedal stroke, to the watt, to the minute, with the effort that you choose,” she says. “Whereas if you go out on the road, the first thing you come to is a junction where you have to stop.” And for many people, there’s no chance to get out on the roads in daylight hours during the week.
“YOU CAN DECIDE WHAT YOU’RE GOING TO DO, AND THEN GO AND DO IT TO THE VERY PEDAL STROKE, TO THE WATT, TO THE MINUTE, WITH THE EFFORT THAT YOU CHOOSE”
Eyles says new technology and online training platforms are useful additions to indoor training, but it’s not as simple as just picking whichever session you feel like, and thinking you’ll make the best progress. “It’s up to the individual to determine what works for them and what suits them. But I think you have to be smarter about how you use these tools. You’ve got to think about what your cycling goals are and where you are in your training towards them.”
So an intensive, stop-start virtual race in November might not be what you need if your first event isn’t until April. “Maybe that wears you out too much and makes you too tired to train again, when really you need to be building up your endurance and your stamina,” Eyles says. “You have to trade off the intensity with the volume. But if you want to use these things to make indoor training more interesting, absolutely.”
GET REAL
Does this mean long, cold winter rides are a thing of the past? Cycling coach Ric Stern at RST Personal Training Systems agrees there are distinct benefits to indoor training – not least avoiding the winter dangers of ice and darkness – and he is a fan of the advances Zwift has brought to turbo trainers. But when it comes to serious training, he says there’s no substitute for the road.
“On the road you’ve got to deal with a wider range of power output because of the lie of the land, or you have headwinds, or whatever, so you have to learn to connect with those things,” Stern says. “There’s no way that just riding the turbo is better. In terms of endurance, it’s important at least once a month that you go out and do a long ride. That could be three hours, if you’re fairly new, or it could be six hours for a racer. It’s a question of having both systems, and together I think that’s the best of both worlds.”
And it’s not just about you and the machine against the terrain and the elements. If you want to race, Eyles says, “you have to have learnt the skills and the craft of riding in a bunch, and riding at speed, and how to behave – the etiquette and good manners and appropriate riding.”
Of course, it all depends on where your ambitions lie. We’re not all elite riders with professional aspirations, and both coaches stress the importance of finding a winter routine that works for you.
GET ’CROSS
Road cyclists have always had a range of alternatives to riding on the turbo trainer through the winter. Pouring rain and plummeting temperatures might send some of us reaching for the snooze button instead of the shoe covers and rain jacket, but for others it’s an invitation to switch the slicks
“ON THE ROAD YOU’VE GOT TO DEAL WITH A WIDER RANGE OF POWER OUTPUT BECAUSE OF THE LIE OF THE LAND, OR YOU HAVE HEADWINDS, OR WHATEVER”