P L A Y A WAY

Picking an extra sport is an ideal way to spike your fitness as well as avoiding training boredom, according to Paul. “Most cycle training is unloaded, so I would suggest loading the skeleton a bit more – running and rowing are good. You have to be careful that you build it up very gradually. If you just extrapolate your cycling programme into running, your body’s not going to be conditioned for that. Pick something you’re likely to stick with, that you’ll enjoy. That sounds obvious, but cyclists can be masochistic – the attitude is: ‘I hate it, but I’m going to do it anyway’ and the satisfaction comes after. If you’re not a fan of other types of aerobic exercise, interval training can be really useful, because it’s a lot shorter. Doing intervals on the rowing machine, you can get a lot of high-intensity work done in 20 minutes, and it’s a different movement pattern that relies on a lot of the muscles used in cycling.”