Fall

You can feel it in the mornings and the evenings. The sun is rising later and setting earlier. The marine layer lingers longer and the daylight is dwindling faster. It is a time of change. the colors on trees and the headlights on the bike. Autumn. A season of change. Lance Armstrong's coach Chris Carmichael - Trainright has tips to approach the new season:

1. All the fitness, none of the pressure: Think about your fitness right now. You’re strong from a season’s worth of training and racing, you can go faster and further now than you could in March, May, or even July. But if your big goals were in the summer, it’s likely they’re behind you now. That means you’re in a sweet spot as an athlete – you have the strength and stamina for high-quality training, and you don’t have to worry about the intricacies of balancing competitions with training. As a coach, that’s why I look at this time of year as a huge opportunity. I use this time for blocks of training that are often too big to fit into the typical race-and-recovery cycle that athletes get into during the height of the summer.

2. The runway is as long as it’s going to get: To improve from year to year, you have to take time to address your weaknesses. If you wait until January, you’re addressing your weaknesses at the same time that you’re counting down the weeks until you have to be ready to race. It’s better to work on pedal stroke, climbing technique, aerobic endurance – or whatever your season review reveals as your weak link – now. Get it done in the Fall so you can focus all your pre-season energy on maximizing race-specific performance.

3. Everyone else is watching football: Everybody trains hard in January and ramps up for the season in the first few months of the year. Not everyone trains through the fall. If you want to make real progress, you can’t afford to give up 30% of your fitness and power by sitting on your couch or exercising casually through Christmas. Tired of the regimen of structured training? The athletes I coach sometimes feel that way, too. But the answer isn’t to walk away from training; my job is to utilize varied training experiences to refresh their enthusiasm for training while simultaneously keeping their fitness level high.