Today winter groupsession #4 was on! Traditionally the end of January is signed with OR cold, OR snow OR icey roads. Traditionally that didn’t hold back our athletes to get the #4 groupsession in today!

Let’s say it was cold and we started the day at -8°C but ended the session at +2°C, the advantage was that +2°C felt like it was tropical!  Today’s purpose was strength and endurance, I must say after the ride today our athletes will be ready in already the first races they’ll enter. No interference with woulda shoulda coulda within a few months. They will, shall and can…that’s simple as hell. But how else could it be, our athletes are there in the races from january 1st till December 31 year by year…because of training smart and racing with their heart!

But unlikely to our Canadian athletes our athletes in Europe, even in bad weather, can make the choice to go out or not. Our Canadian monsters are riding INDOORS all winter long. But this will not make them perform worse, we saw last year…we’ll see upcoming year. As it is winter now overthere, they work in silence…and will hammer when they’ll need to hammer. I am very confident about that. Training indoors is efficient, and you can easily hydrate the body if you have knowledge into this matter. If not, don’t overdo it.

In Belgium cyclotourists or cyclotourist-advisors often share a common saying ‘If you train on the ‘rollekes’ you can do half of the time on it…’ Well that’s the cheapest bullshit a man can tell you. There’s no midway to success. A lot of top cyclists and professional triathletes train hell of a time indoors. The World record Ironman has been beaten in ’16 by Lionel Sanders who claims to be training a lot on the turbo!

We have quite some athletes who are (or even are NOT) obliged to train 100% indoors during winter. Because of weather or early darkness outside. These athletes performed great last years, with lots of victories as a result. Among them even an overall IM-winner and multiple AG IM-top3 results. For example this is today’s session of Allan Mc Kenzie (Canada).

It was Tom and Anil who got the most of the cold because of starting the day a bit earlier. For the other athletes it was 1hour of cold and then the Flanders hills warmed up. We rode the nice roads of professional cyclingraces such as GP Jef Scherens, Druivenkoers Overijse, Brabantse Pijl, Brussels Cyclingclassics,…the roads are signified by up and down…of course we chose not to go flat today…(unless for 4*500m).

The session today was a good test and we rode out together, uphill it was the purpose never to go into the red. If that was the case u fell back on your own pace and cutted short the road to pick in again. That’s how today’s session works. We work together, to perform together later this year. We also got company by a Belgian Ironman Pro, who’s a great fan of all of our athletes, which is nice of course.

Today’s hilly course  with no flats. Also in a groupride you can work hilly but you need 1)wise and co-operating athletes 2) Team-Spirit 3) A bike and 4) a secret

4h went by easily and it seemed some of our athletes are very keen to start racing within 4weeks…so on 1hill they took off and had a 10min freeride. The way everybody survived this after 4h showed what will happen the next months.

As asked our athletes stayed away from the red zone, zone 5 wasn’t used today. Because there’s already enough power in Zone 1 😉 With NP between 220-240NP today was nice aerobic ride on the hills.

Our drinks were frozen, but our legs not. Getting back home and warming up never felt as good as today.

I also want to say congratulations to Hannah who came back to the starting point with 99K on her Garmin, she took back off and rode 1K around the parking to end up with 100K!

Well, that’s the spirit our athletes have and need to perform upcoming season.
Nobody told her she was crazy, they told her ‘well done’…being positive is always being 1 step ahead!

Train Smart, Perform better!

Ciao

Jesse