Erwin Florie of D1training wrote a guest blog for us about training. Read the blog below:

Training in the winter, on to a new season!

Rain, cold, lots of wind... it's not always nice to go training in the winter! But you've already made plans for the new season and you want to be in shape in April.

How are you going to handle this now?

Make a plan and start training in time for your goal. Short workouts are also good workouts. Especially short rides in the winter period with intervals of short blocks are perfect to do. After a long day at work, a quick one-hour workout is perfect for interval! Just give your heart rate a boost, get your legs full of acidity and then cycle away. Your workout is done!?

This can also be done on the exercise bike, but I always say: training is done outside. But sometimes there is no other way during the winter period. In the weekends you can do some longer rides with a high pedalling frequency (between 90/100 revolutions). It is important to keep enough variation in your training.

With intermediate goals and a tailored training schedule, you take away the pressure of "am I doing enough" or "haven't I started training too late". This is an issue for many (touring) cyclists where a tailored schedule can definitely be the solution! So don't start training hard all at once if you've had a week of less time and want to catch up all at once, because you'll often break down more than you build up.

I also often get the question: should I drink while training in the winter?

The answer, of course, is YES! Especially in winter, we leave the water bottle in the bottle cage too much and come home and the water bottles are still almost full. Especially in winter, your body needs everything it can get to stay warm. Therefore, drink and eat enough (1 water bottle 500ml sports drink and 1 Endurance bar per hour) to make sure you replenish everything your body consumes. You notice that if you drink and eat enough during the workout, when you get home -after sitting on the couch for a while- you won't crave bad things like chips and/or chocolate. So if you get hungry on the couch, then you didn't eat and drink enough during the workout.