Fitness revelations: off-season conditioning

This past year I vowed that we would not lapse into inactivity over the winter months. Though our favored form of fitness activity - cycling - would be ruled out due to cold and bad road conditions, we could nonetheless maintain at least some level of - even if only a minimal one - conditioning by using exercise bikes indoors. I have to say I'm a bit shocked at what I've learned from this experience.

Before continuing on that theme, let me explain a bit about last season. We really had done very little cycling over the years leading up to last year's season. Summer of '07 we did very little, though we did manage to get out a bit in summer of '06. '04 and '05 we did a bit as well, though we did not put in any very long days (i.e., not more than 35 miles). So, when my high blood pressure started to become a significant issue in spring of '08, motivating me to establish and stick to an exercise regime, we were fairly out of shape.

Those first few rides late last spring and early summer were trying. I remember how tired I was after the first 25 mile day (please bear in mind that I tend to push myself pretty hard on the bike). I felt similarly drained after the first 35 and first 50 mile days of the year. In other words, I was sore for several days afterward, and the thought of doing any strenuous activity was not at all foremost in my mind. We managed to put in even a 65-70 mile day last year, and the after-effects were similar. Of course, having done quite a lot of cycling and training in my younger years, I had come to expect this sort of "plateauing" effect: each increase in mileage during the course of a season requires an adjustment for your body, and the second 35 mile day of the season is not nearly as hard on your body as the first.

I should also mention as a part of this aside that, even in my younger years when I was racing bicycles, I wasn't terribly disciplined about training. I wouldn't stick to much of a regular training schedule during racing season, but would rather just try and spend time on the bike several times a week: the main goal was to get a certain total mileage under my belt per week (say, a minimum of 150 miles). In the off-season, I was even more undisciplined. During a couple of seasons I did some riding indoors using rollers. But again I didn't have a regular schedule and was very sporadic about it: if I was more liable to train indoors, it would be more likely to be at the very end of the season (say in Nov. or Dec.). The upshot is that I didn't really take off-season training very seriously.

Fast forward to this year. I can therefore honestly say that this year, when we were pretty regular about riding the exercise bikes 4 times a week over the whole off-season, is the first year I ever actually trained with any discipline over the course of the off-season. I also want to stress another important factor: our off-season training consisted in spending mostly about 1/2 hour on the exercise bikes. We started off doing 45 minutes last fall, but reduced that to 1/2 hour since around Christmas time.

Now, this training indoors was not simply a leisurely session on the exercise bike - I should point out that. It wasn't especially strenuous, no, but I'd try to keep my rpm's up around 90 or more and sustain the heart rate at probably 130-140. So, a short but vigorous aerobic workout, one without serious strain on the leg muscles.

So, what are the effects of this, essentially minimalistic - though regular - training in the off-season? It can be best characterized with the following single word: dramatic. In our first on-road session this year we went about 17 miles. We both felt great. We went up the hills we struggled to get up all last season (try riding hills on a recumbent tandem sometime) in the same gear we were riding up them at the end of last season. It was almost as if we never got off the bike at season's end, actually. And perhaps most impressively, I hardly felt any soreness the next day. Perhaps a bit of stiffness in the backs of my legs for a day or two, but that's it. This was nothing like the "plateauing effect" I knew from training in my younger days, where each significant increase in mileage carried a new level of trauma to which the body needed to acclimate. I can honestly say that I didn't feel anything like that at all.

And last weekend we did 35 miles, and a lot of that going at a pretty good clip. I felt almost no soreness at all from that ride the next day. So, I have to say that I'm truly impressed. It really looks as though, by riding for only about a half hour four days a week over the winter, we've essentially preserved all the conditioning we gained by putting in all the miles we did last summer. Excuse me for getting excited about the obvious, but this is a real revelation. Why couldn't I do even this paltry amount of off-season training years ago, when I was racing? What a difference it would have made! I might have won the tour de France! (ha ha) Ah, the foolishness of youth.

Anyway, this subject seemed important enough to warrant a blog entry. It sure has made an impression on me. But it's also got me wanting to experiment: what's the minimal amount of off-season training we'll have to do to preserve some semblance of fitness from last season? Mind you, I don't pose this question out of laziness: rather, I'm trying to be careful that we don't get burnt out by overdoing it. We will need to take breaks, and sometimes to take it easy, for that reason.

Already I'm scheming up a new plan to test: next winter, we'll cut down to 15 minute sessions 4 times per week on the exercise bikes during deep winter (say, from Christmas to the end of Feb.). We'll pare down to that from 1/2 hour sessions in the fall and increase from 15 minutes to 1/2 hour in early spring.

I'll let you know the results then.