Category: Training

We get it. It’s hard to motivate yourself to train through cold and dark days. You have to pull on all your winter running gear for even a short run. If you’re a cyclist, you need even more gear, especially if it’s raining. But when you brave the chilly temps, you get a fitness boost and a mood boost, as well. Instead of hiding from winter, own it. Consistency is the number one, most effective pathway to running, cycling, or doing anything faster year in and year out. Humango’s training app will help you maintain this consistency by designing and managing a winter training plan that builds you up for the spring. Below, we’ve shared our favorite tips for getting the most out of winter.

Winter Running & Winter Cycling

Traditional off-season endurance training for runners and cyclists usually features slow miles and long distances. It doesn’t have to be that way. Shorter, intense workouts can generate similar adaptations — and more body heat to keep you warm. These aren’t necessarily all-out sprint workouts. Instead, they involve several multi-minute race-pace intervals spread over an hour or so. With Humango, you can plug in the number of days and hours a week you have available to train and let Hugo, your AI-powered digital coach, do the rest.

Winter is the perfect time to address your weaknesses. If you regularly slow to a walk on hills, use this time to do hill repeats to build more power. Is running downhill problematic on your knees and back? Hit the weight room and shore up your stabilizer muscles and tendons to better handle the impact. Those weight-room workouts count toward your consistency. Plug in strength days into Humango, and let it adjust your cardio workouts to account for strength work. 

Your weakness can even come from running the same routes repeatedly, so much so that your body’s been trained to run them efficiently. This approach is great for training but not for race day, where the course is unfamiliar. So, use your winter training sessions to explore new routes. 

While we all adapt to and deal with chilly weather differently, air temperature and humidity require special attention. First, cold air is usually drier air, and as such, it sucks moisture out of our bodies with every breath. So work to consciously keep yourself hydrated, even if you don’t feel cold. Second, it takes practice to pull off max efforts in sub-freezing temperatures. Here’s a good rule of thumb to follow until you figure out what works for you:

• If above freezing (32°F), max efforts are okay on a winter run or ride. 
• Between 22°- 32° F, steady-state intervals are ideal. Steady-state translates to the pace you can sustain for an hour max.
• Below 22° F, stick to a conversational pace.

Cross Training for Runners & Cyclists

Cross-training is a fantastic way to maintain your fitness consistency. Plus, it gives you a mental break from your core sport, mixes up the environment, and speeds your development by providing something new to learn. Triathletes can substitute Nordic skiing for their long weekend rides. Live near a ski hill? See if they’ll let you climb the ski hill on alpine skis or snowshoes as a substitute for hill repeats. In a snow-free region? Cyclists can sub in mountain biking to keep their cycling legs in shape while honing their bike handling skills on the trails. Runners can try swimming or cycling to give their bones and tendons a break from the pounding.

Weight training will work to correct any muscle imbalances from all those months on the bike or running with no upper-body conditioning. Free weight lifts will help all athletes strengthen their core, which will translate into being able to apply more force to a stride or pedal stroke. For cyclists, weight training will improve bone density lost from all those days on the bike.

Winter 101:
Overdressing is a common mistake for many winter outdoor athletes. If you’re going on a run, it’s best to start moderately uncomfortable in terms of clothing so you don’t end up with a sweat-soaked top that turns freezing once you stop. You’ll heat up fast once you start moving. The same goes for cyclists, although you may want to wear a jacket to start a ride. You can stuff it in a jersey pocket once you warm up. You’ll also want that jacket if your route includes long, fast downhill stretches.

When regulating your body temperature, take care of your extremities first: bundle your feet in warm socks or cycling booties, pull on gloves, and then cover your head. Still cold? Pull on a warmer top or jacket. Still feeling the chill? Time for leggings. If you start to sweat, take your gloves off before your jacket. The hands feature a massive surface area of skin criss-crossed with blood vessels (aka heat) close to the skin’s surface. Exposing your hands will help you cool off faster than taking off your jacket. 

When To Take It Inside

Let’s face it, it can be downright dangerous to train outside in the winter. A blizzard, cold driving rain, or sub-zero temps are good reasons to play it safe and train indoors. When you do, use the opportunity to do a short, sub-one-hour set of max intervals on the treadmill or indoor bike trainer. With Humango’s AI app, changing your workout on the fly is easy. Log your indoor workout data in the app, and it’ll adjust your successive workouts accordingly, scheduling the appropriate recovery time and modifications to your workouts so you don’t burn out.

In the end, the goal is to keep moving and build fitness through the winter. And when the weather plays nice and makes it possible to enjoy winter outdoors, even better.

At its absolute most basic, triathlon training breaks down into a repeated cycle of swim, bike, and run workouts, in that order, twice a week. That’s it. This simple approach works for any of the triathlon distances. You can train as little as 45 minutes a day for six days and likely finish a sprint distance triathlon. For an Olympic distance triathlon, setting aside 7-8 hours a week can do the job. Sounds easy enough, right? It is — until life gets in the way, the weather turns foul, or a last-minute business trip ruins your plan. Fortunately, some workarounds and hacks can get you back on track. We listed our eight favorites below. Use them as needed to keep your triathlon training plan on track during a hectic period or to stay in tri shape between events.

Tip #1: Consistency matters more than long workouts.

Since triathlon requires you to train in three different sports, practicing all three will yield a bigger payoff on race day. Rather than skipping three days and trying to make it up on the weekend with a long bike ride followed by a run, it’s better to spend even 30 minutes a day on one sport twice a week. If you travel and have to use a treadmill or exercise bike in the hotel gym, do it. Your goal is to train six days a week, even if some of your sessions are short.

Tip #2: Prioritize high-intensity sessions over endurance ones.

High-intensity interval training builds speed, strength, and mental toughness. It also provides a bigger fitness payoff than long rides or runs for the amount of time invested. Because of this, you want to skip your longer endurance rides and runs if you skip anything. In short, the harder the workout looks on your plan, the more critical it is to your triathlon fitness. For shorter triathlons, that means make your high intensity workouts the priority. For longer Ironman distance races, those long-distance rides and runs take precedence.  Come race day, you’ll be glad you did them.

Tip #3: Prioritize hard days on the bike over hard runs.

Biking at full throttle throughout your training — or even at race pace — will be easier on your joints than on a run. The goal is to develop your cardiovascular capacity and strength, and cycling is a perfect low-impact way to do it. Plus, the bike makes up more than 50% of a triathlon. It makes sense to prioritize cycling time and work on the bike.

Tip #4: Proficient swimming is okay.

Triathletes can spend countless hours perfecting their swimming stroke and logging hours and hours in the pool or lake to become strong, efficient swimmers. But the swim leg is only 10% of a triathlon. To save time, work to become proficient at swimming, not trying to become Olympic gold medalist Katie Ledeky. Your bike and run legs will determine how well your race goes, not the swim. So, use your swim training to find efficiency in your swim stroke. Learning how to save energy in the swim will help you start the bike leg feeling as fresh as possible. This workout will also rest your joints from the impact of your runs and to help you recover from those high-intensity bike workouts above.

Tip #5: Strength train to accelerate power gains.

A 30-minute full-body strength circuit, 1-2 times a week, targeting your back, shoulders, arms, core, glutes, and legs, will help you in all sports because resistance training fatigues your muscles faster than the pool, bike, or run. Strength training will also strengthen your core, improving stability and creating a foundation for a powerful swimming stroke, pedal stroke, and foot strike. Strength training is especially helpful at the start of a training schedule to prepare your muscles and joints for the work ahead. As you get closer to race day, you can drop the strength training and devote those workouts to your long rides and runs.

Tip #6: Use brick days to organize and practice your T2 transition.

Brick workouts, where a run workout immediately follows a bike workout, are excellent opportunities to dial in your T2 transition. Start by setting up your running gear, fluids, sports gels, bars, and other foods in advance. After finishing your ride, pull on your running gear as quickly as possible and head back out. Use these practice transitions to figure out what process works best for you. Some athletes grab a bite and down some fluids before changing. Some swap that order. Some find it better to eat and drink something in the closing minutes of their ride to set themselves up for the run. Others may find it better to eat and drink at the start of their run, taking it slow until they find their running legs. You’ll never know what works for you without practice.

Tip #7: Recover, recover, recover.

There are three keys to recovering smartly: Get plenty of good sleep. Take one day off each week with no workouts. Don’t complete two high-intensity, hard workouts in a row. Strategic recovery periods give your body time to build muscle, strengthen joints, and prepare you to work harder and longer. And the more consistently you can train harder, the stronger and faster you get.

Tip #8: Get a coach.

The ultimate hack to triathlon training is a coach. Humango’s AI coaching app was created to coach triathletes to their best performances. Whether you have four hours a week to train or 20 hours, it can design and manage a plan that fits your schedule and triathlon racing goals. Even better, it’ll schedule workouts that maximize your progress without overloading your body with more work than it can handle. Have to miss a workout or two? No problem. Humango will adjust your workouts to accommodate your life and then adjust the rest of your program to account for that missed work. When no workout is wasted, saving time is automatic. 

Periodization training has defined sports training since it was codified by the Russian Olympic coaches in the 1960s. In short, it features a progressive 2-6 week, period-by-period block of training that finishes with a rest period. An athlete repeats this schedule throughout the year, cycling through different fitness focuses (endurance, power, stamina, speed) depending on where they are in their training journey.

Figuring out what periodization plan works best for an athlete takes years, even decades of experience. And even then, the fine line between burnout or injury and falling short of one’s potential is always there. That’s where an AI-powered coach like Humango’s can step in. By leveraging sports coaching science and tracking your individual metabolism and availability, our app creates a customized training plan that propels your performance.

Periodization Training 101

Periodization works for three main reasons. First, it stops most athletes’ natural inclination to train moderately hard all the time. While that all-out approach can provide short-term boosts in fitness, speed, and power, it also leads to burnout and never allows an athlete to reach their true potential. They’re too exhausted to experience a full-power performance. And if they’re not careful, they injure their bodies from overuse since they never give themselves a chance to heal. 

A chance to heal leads to the second key benefit of periodization. It incorporates rest and recovery into each workout, training block, and training season. This time off is actually when the body adapts and grows stronger. When an athlete rests, mitochondria networks expand to move more blood through the muscles, protein synthesis goes to work to build stronger muscles, and neural pathways get a boost that translates into smoother, more efficient movement patterns.

The body needs to be “taught” what max effort or endurance feels like so it can adapt to the stress of that effort and be ready for it the next time. Because it’s prepared for it the next time, the body can then be pushed to a new max effort, which leads it to adapt to that new stress level. And so on, and so on in a progressive periodized cycle.

Third, over the course of a training program, periodization blocks will transition from longer, less intense workouts to shorter, high-intensity workouts and vice versa. For example, a marathoner might start her training with shorter, sprint-based workouts to build her speed, then transition to longer intervals that are run faster than her marathon pace. In the weeks leading up to the marathon, she’ll take that newly developed stamina to her long runs at race pace. Conversely, a runner training for a 10k race would start his training with longer, slower runs to build up a neuromuscular foundation that will be able to handle the progressively faster and shorter workouts leading up to the race.

The AI Advantage to Periodization Training

For a cyclist who wants to complete their first 100-mile century ride, a simple periodization training plan might go like this:

Week 1: Ride 4 days a week with one long ride of 50 miles. 

Week 2: Ride 4 days a week with one long ride of 55 miles. 

Week 3: Ride 4 days a week with one long ride of 60 miles. 

Week 4: Ride 2 days a week for no more than 20-30 easy miles total.

Repeat the block, but add 10% more miles to each week. 

That 10% weekly increase in mileage is safe for most athletes — but it’s also arbitrary. A 20-year-old experienced athlete could have no problem increasing their workload by 12% each week. A former smoker who picked up triathlon at age 40 may struggle to keep up with a 5% increase in workload. This variable is what makes a coach so valuable. They can spot and tweak an athlete’s plan to better accommodate their current fitness level.

Humango’s AI coach can do that, using its intelligence to notice when someone needs an extra day off or maybe one less interval than planned so they can recover, grow stronger, and keep progressing. The same goes for the athlete who’s adapting ahead of schedule. Based on fatigue, resting heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), and efficiency factor (EF), Humango can tweak a training block to ask more of the athlete because it knows they can handle it. As Humango gathers more and more training data on an individual, the smarter and more individualized the plan becomes. And the chances of pulling off a personal best increase along the way.

Triathletes come in all shapes and sizes, and so do triathlon distances. From sprint triathlons to Olympic triathlon distances up to Ironman distances, the multisport event challenges participants in ways few endurance sports do. Triathletes should be strong swimmers, relentless cyclists, and determined runners on any given day during their training. On race day, they need to be all of them.

Triathletes also need to be experts at time and energy management. If you’re training for a tri, a typical week of workouts could see you swim in the morning and bike in the afternoon multiple times a week. Those other days will be for more cycling followed by a run immediately after or later in the day. As you can imagine, a triathlete’s program will look much more complex than a cyclist’s or runner’s plan. And the more complexity you bring to a program, the higher the risk that things will go off the rails. You could burn out from over-training or struggle to find the time (and energy) to complete all the workouts after managing your job and family.

This reality makes hiring a triathlon coach a worthwhile investment, especially considering the investment in gear needed to compete. A wetsuit, access to a pool for practice, a tri-bike (and all the cycling gear that goes along with it), running shoes, and a running kit. If you’ve already spent all this money on gear, wouldn’t you want to invest in a coach to guide you to a successful finish rather than hope for the best? You can start with Humango’s AI-powered coach. The monthly cost will be less than you spend on sports gels and drinks each month. 

Benefits of Triathlon Coaching

From the start, a coach can help you see what’s possible. You may be looking to do your first triathlon and wondering if you should start with a sprint or go ahead and try an Olympic distance race. A coach can look at your fitness and endurance sports history and give you an informed recommendation on where to start. Conversely, you might be an experienced Olympic distance competitor who’s always wanted to race in an iron-distance event but never thought you had the time to train for it. A coach will show you how you can. Even Humango’s digital coach, Hugo, can do this. Plug in your goal event, and Hugo will show you your complete training schedule. If it looks like too much time to commit, simply ask it to reset your goal to a shorter distance event.

Unlike a one-size-fits-all training plan pulled from the Internet, your coach will build a program unique to your fitness and experience level. A coach will also factor in the times available to train each week. Next, a coach will address your weakest sport (Every triathlete has one, whether it’s the swim, bike, or run.) and work with you to improve your technique, form, and strength in that sport. The sport you’re best at can be used to build your overall stamina and endurance. 

The Human Coach, AI Coach Connection

Empower a triathlete coach with the automatic flexibility and adaptability of an AI coach, and you get the best of both worlds. You get a human who can easily monitor your progress in real time and use AI to help you overcome adversity and push you, likely, harder than you thought you were capable of performing. The human coach can see a missed workout or two in a given week and know that you had to care for a sick kid or travel for work, not that you were sick. And if you are ill, they can adjust your training to allow for you to recover.

Race day is when a coach — real and digital — in your corner makes a confidence-boosting difference. Thanks to your training journey and data collected with Humango, the app will inform your race-day strategy. Humango can tell you if you’re 100% ready for peak performance or short of your potential. From there, you’ll get a good sense of what you’re truly capable of, whether that’s a PR (Personal Record) or not.

In the end, the satisfaction of working with a coach is knowing that every workout will maximize your gains each day. No effort is wasted. No workout is too easy or impossible (though it may feel like it). Don’t be surprised to find yourself no longer content to simply finish the race. Instead, now you’ll find that you’re ready to compete.

For many cyclists, nothing beats the freedom of heading out the door on your own time, riding at your own pace, and enjoying some solitude after a long, hard day. For others, group rides are far more enjoyable. And while enjoyment is a powerful motivator, it’s not the only reason to ride with others. Group cycling also has the potential to unlock physical and mental benefits that elevate overall performance. 

The physical benefits of group riding

One of the main focal points of any training should be introducing enough stimuli that you can recover from. The challenge, variation, and consistency group rides offer can provide performance benefits, but be careful not to overdo it. When you strike the right balance, you should notice some gains.

Challenge

Some of us have no problem pushing our limits, whereas others prefer training at a more comfortable intensity. Either way, when we perform in front of others, we tend to put in a lot more effort.

While we shouldn’t get obsessed with the opinions of others, a little positive peer pressure can be the push we need to endure extended effort at uncomfortable intensities. If you’ve never ridden a century or struggle with periods at a threshold pace, joining a suitable group ride, like the weekend social group ride or the club weekly chain gang, could help.

Variation

It can be easy to get comfortable with the familiar and repeat the same format of ride over and over. While you might see some improvements by doing this, avoiding other intensities or training durations can limit your progress and sap your motivation. 

Joining a new group or club might be just what you need to add more variety to your training. Many clubs will have weekly training sessions, regular races, time trials, or other options for longer group rides to suit every ability.

Consistency

Consistency can be a challenge we all face from time to time. Whether from a lack of motivation or external factors, such as time limitations due to work or family commitments, we can all struggle with missing training sessions. One missed workout might not matter, but the more you miss, the easier it becomes to skip the next session. This can dramatically reduce your training, causing significantly worse performance on the bike.

Group rides can help you stay consistent because you’re far more likely to keep an appointment to ride with someone. Being part of a regular group ride will help you be intentional about setting aside that time. You can even organize your own group rides or play a role within your local group.

The mental benefits of group riding

The physical benefits of implementing group rides into your training are significant; the mental benefits are equally impressive. While it’s hard to quantify how much those benefits will improve your physical cycling performance, you might see substantial gains if you struggle with any of the following factors.

Motivation

If you can honestly say that you haven’t experienced a period of low motivation in your cycling training, please let us know — we want to know your secret! For the rest of us, motivation comes and goes, and while we can do our best to step it up and remind ourselves why we put in the hard work, sometimes a change of pace can be all it takes to get back on track.

Try replacing some indoor sessions with group rides. Not many people can face an indoor endurance ride alone, but when the weather is less appealing, being in the company of a club can aid in getting that long endurance ride done.

Variety

While variety can be good for breaking through physical barriers, it can be just as good for refreshing your mental approach to training. Being around like-minded people, enjoying their company, and letting your hair down can be exactly what your mind needs to get back on track and commit to those challenging intervals. 

Over a long season or even years of consistent training, the trainer can be dull and monotonous. Adding in an occasional group interval session or intense ride can help you hit the numbers on other days.

Socialization

Socialization is a fundamental human need. While some of us love to live alone and not be bothered by the company of others, we often see dramatic improvements in our mental health when we build a solid network of friends and family.

So, it only makes sense that you build your community around the sport you’re passionate about. General health and cycling performance improvements will come hand-in-hand, so it shouldn’t be long before you start to notice that you are a healthier, happier cyclist.

Improve Your Cycling With Group Rides

While we are not advocating for a life solely focused on group riding, we encourage you to introduce some group riding elements into your training regime. Thankfully, with the increase in popularity of immersive online training platforms and social media communication tools, we can combine almost all the elements listed above with specific structured workouts. 

Join a Humango Group

Experience all the benefits of group cycling with Humango Groups. You can join Groups that focus on training for Gran Fondos’ or create a virtual team for you and your friends. 

Coach Pav

Coach Pav is an Amazon #1 New Release Author and coach to clients who have set world records (Mark Beaumont), earned their world champion jersey (Steve Bate), and won ultra-cycling events (Matt Seward and Thomas Becker). 

Most of his clients are those riding a Gran Fondo or two, and his favorite is the Maratona dles Dolomites. 

Whether you’re getting ready to line up at your first event or you’re a seasoned veteran looking to qualify for the UCI Gran Fondo Worlds, training is the difference between feeling accomplished or feeling dejected when you cross the finish line.

Throughout this blog, I take you on a journey of self-discovery, guiding you through all the irrelevant and non-individualized training advice found on Google — or from your riding buddies — and helping you find the right pathway for your Gran Fondo preparation.

Goal setting

The first question you need to answer is, “Are you focused on completing or competing?”
The former describes someone happy enough to experience the day, take it at a comfortable pace, and focus on enjoyment and just finishing. The latter describes someone who is treating the event as a race — maybe aiming for the overall win, qualification for the UCI Gran Fondo World Championships, or even just for a personal best finishing time. 

Once you decide what kind of cyclist you are, take an honest, objective look at your current ability. To keep your ego and ambitions out of the equation, use your training data or do some field testing to gauge where you are. Some metrics, such as recent volume and load, current fitness, and thresholds, can provide great insight into your current ability.

With a clear picture of your baseline, you can start looking at events and the demands of those events. If your current longest ride is three hours, it is highly unlikely that you will finish Mallorca 312 (an incredibly challenging Gran Fondo course with a 14-hour time limit for receiving a finisher medal) with only one month to train. This stage can be tricky, but being realistic ensures you set yourself up for success.

Once you have a rough idea of what you can achieve, you can start to look over some of the available options. Factors such as travel distance and cost might come into play. If you aim to compete, you might try to find an event you can specialize in. For example, if you are a lightweight rider who climbs well, a mountainous event might be a good one for you. 

Methodology 

Knowing where your current ability is and where it needs to be, you can start putting a plan in place for getting there. Having a big picture in mind will aid this next step by helping you train consistently and see the biggest improvements. This is where you will periodize your training.

Long low-intensity and steady-state winter training is a little outdated; even the pros include some intensity year-round now. That being said, don’t write it off completely. If you’re a new cyclist, spending your off-season developing aerobic fitness by doing long (“long” being a subjective term here — an hour is a long ride for someone who has never ridden a bike) low-intensity rides might bring the most noticeable gains.

To understand what you need to do, look at your biggest limitation (what needs improving most). If you need to develop your aerobic fitness, spending a lot of time during the off-season riding in the endurance zone (zone 2) will probably be the biggest win. If you’re already capable of riding the duration but need to work on climbing speed or power, work on these specific areas. Of course, you will want to maintain your strengths, too, so it’s always a good idea to include some long, low-intensity rides.

While there are many factors to consider and countless ways to adjust this approach, it’s wise to spend the most time improving your weaknesses. Once you’re satisfied with your progress, you can start to work on improving your strengths. Training in this manner will help you raise your riding level to the point where your goals are achievable. 

Training

If you’ve completed the work in the last two sections, the work in this section is actually relatively easy. Well, deciding on what training to do is easy — not necessarily the training itself! You should know your current ability, where it needs to be, what you need to work on during the off-season, and what you will do as you get closer to the event itself. 

Even if you focus on developing your threshold power, you probably won’t spend 100% of your available time on it. Generally speaking, the less time you have available to train, the higher the percentage of time you dedicate to your main objective — in this case, developing threshold. So, if you have five hours per week, you might spend most of that developing your threshold versus someone with 15 or more hours to train, who will spend far less time as a percentage of their total but still more actual hours.

Two of the most important factors to consider are progression and consistency, which are closely linked. Slowly ramping up your training from your current ability to your desired ability will be the easiest way to ensure you don’t overload your body and mind. In turn, this gradual build will help you maintain consistency. This gentle progression can be easily accelerated if you find it too easy, but utilizing a 3:1 or 2:1 load-to-recovery cycle (three or two weeks of training and one week focused on recovery) and adjusting based on these blocks will help you pace yourself. Often, a workout at the beginning of a training block will feel completely different from the same workout at the end. If you find yourself completing the entire block with ease, that is a good sign that it’s time to increase the load.

Nutrition

“Train low and race high” describes the methodology used to help your body fuel more from its fat stores. While our fat stores provide an almost unlimited fuel source, metabolizing fats takes a long time, especially compared to how quickly our bodies metabolize carbohydrates. Having a fat-adapted body can be especially important for athletes who are riding ultra-endurance events where fuelling from fat stores is essential. For the average Gran Fondo, the risks of not fuelling workouts correctly — thus not giving your body enough chance to recover — often hinder improvements more than they help. 

Periodizing your nutrition might bring the greatest adaptation you can make as a cyclist. This approach involves eating fewer carbohydrates on easy days and more carbs on days that prioritize intensity above tempo (zone 3). The strongest way to ensure this works is to focus on getting most of your daily carbohydrate intake before, during, and after training. On low-intensity days, you should still consume carbs in this manner. Even if you have identified your “fat max” power in testing, you are still burning glucose at this intensity, so replenishing it with carbohydrates will improve recovery.

Recently, we’ve seen more professional teams focusing on fueling their athletes in races, aiming to get far higher than the old advice of intaking 60g of carbohydrates per hour and, in some cases, pushing this to 120g. While there is strong evidence to suggest this approach is achievable for everyone, it comes with the caveat that you need about 12 weeks for your gut to adapt to digest this much. Regardless of your nutritional methodology, it will be smart to start fueling around 12 weeks out to allow your system to adjust and digest the most fuel on event day. Start with 60g carbs and increase slowly every week until you get to 120g. In almost all cases, cyclists stand to lose far more by being unable to digest fuel than by carrying a little extra weight or being slightly more fat-adapted. 

Have fun

I tell all my clients that we need to have as much fun on the journey to our goals as we do in achieving them. (Of course, I also like to add that there will likely be times when they are cursing me in training!)

One of the biggest warning signs that something isn’t working is when you stop enjoying the cycling or find that it simply isn’t fun anymore. Don’t be afraid to change it up. That said, don’t avoid challenging workouts — those aren’t always fun at the moment. Instead, look back after a block of training and ask yourself if you felt engaged or were just doing it because you think you should. 

Long-term performance progression relies on your mental desire and will to do something. Too many people ignore this, focus on doing the “right” training for their Gran Fondo, and then hang the bike up for three or more months because they’re just so sick of it.

None of us started riding bicycles because we didn’t enjoy it. We started because it was fun. Let’s remember that and find ways to make sure our training journey is as fun as the outcome. 

Coach Pav

Coach Pav is an Amazon #1 New Release Author and a coach to clients who have set world records (Mark Beaumont), earned their world champion jersey (Steve Bate MBE), and won ultra-cycling events (Matt Seward and Thomas Becker). 

Mostly, his clients are those riding a Gran Fondo or two, and some are even riding his personal favorite: the Maratona dles Dolomites. 

If you’re like most folks, your New Year resolution to go to the gym three times a week, drop 10 pounds, train for a spring 10k run, or crush an early summer triathlon will crumble by Valentine’s Day. The problem is that these New Year’s resolution ideas are often vague. Consider the “New Year, New Me!” mantra as an example of the worst. Sure, we lay out the goal (an important step!), but we don’t think too hard about the plan to get there. And then, sure enough, motivation peters out, or something else comes up that detour sabotages your fitness journey. Sooner than later, you give up and shelve that resolution until next year.

But in 2024, we’re not going to let that happen. This year, we’re going to make SMART fitness goals. In this case, SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-Bound, the five elements of a successful training program. Humango’s AI coaching app will help guide us through the beginning, progression, and finish line. With SMART goal-setting, we’ll turn our resolutions into successful achievements. 

Specific

The more specific the goal, the clearer it becomes in our minds. So instead of saying, “I want to bike a 100k century this year,” say, “I want to ride the Tour de Big Bear Gran Fondo on August 3rd.” This step sets a deadline to reach the goal, defines a location where it will occur, and adds some details to the type of training required (long, sustained climbs and descents to handle the mountainous course). With Humango’s help, we can plug in the event date and the training plan needed (gran fondo), and voilá, we end up with a detailed plan starting on January 1st and ending with the race on August 3rd.

Measurable

Logging and charting our progress is crucial to sticking to any resolution. Thankfully, training for endurance sports such as running, cycling, or triathlons provides tons of measurable data. Mileage, speed, heart rate, and watts are the big ones. The more we log, the more we see the positive progression in our fitness. This visualization generates a positive feedback loop that propels us to maintain our training momentum and keep that positive data flowing. Humango’s dashboard makes it easier and more rewarding than ever to chart and see that growth.

Achievable

For the sake of the “SMART” acronym, Achievable comes third here, but it should sit second on this hierarchy. It’s one thing to define a specific resolution. It’s another to pick one with a high probability of success rather than frustrating failure. With Humango’s help, we can see what is realistically possible given the constraints of real life and our current fitness level. For example, maybe we want to ride the 150-mile Steamboat Gravel Gran Fondo on August 18th. But after entering that goal, we realize we can’t commit the training time needed to pull it off. So, we recalibrate our resolution and shoot for the shorter 70-mile Tour de Big Bear event. Of course, the opposite can be true, as well. We may think we can only pull off the 70-miler, but a quick check with Humango may show us that the 150-mile race is, in fact, very doable.

Realistic

Realistic feeds off Achievable. We want to build our New Year’s resolutions around activities we can either do already or develop quickly. For example, we may dream of finishing a full iron-distance triathlon next year, but if we have no history of doing laps in a pool, it may be a stretch to think we can swim more than two miles at the race (plus biking 112 miles and running a marathon). In this case, being realistic means being honest with ourselves about where we are on our fitness journey and adapting our resolutions accordingly. The key to success is starting where we are — not where we wish we were. 

Time-Bound

We touched on Time-Bound in our discussion of Specific. Simply, it’s assigning a defined deadline to our goals and resolutions. Once we do this, we can work backward to the present and build a training schedule and program that takes us step-by-step to our resolution’s deadline. Humango makes this step easy. All we have to do is plug in the goal date; Hugo, Humango’s AI-powered digital coach, does the rest.

Done right, this SMART approach to setting health and fitness resolutions for the New Year should make 2024 our best year yet.

At the pinnacle of sports coaching, a coach watches your every move, analyzing your form and intensity while noting split times, watts, and heart rates. A coach’s expert eye can correct your form while you practice, but you see the most athletic improvement from the progressive training program they build for you. They will tweak it on the fly, as needed, to help you overcome injury or allow for adequate recovery ahead of a goal event. This data-driven approach has been a boon to athletes at all levels, enabling coaches and athletes to create athlete-specific training programs. 

Research backs this up. A 2022 study from Finland published in Medicine and Science in Sports Exercise found that out of 40 experienced male and female runners, those who followed an individualized 15-week training program ran roughly 6% faster. Those who followed a predetermined and rigid 15-week plan ran only 3% faster. 

That difference may not seem like a big deal, but it works out to 6:18 minutes for a 3:30 marathon runner. Wouldn’t you like to run (or bike or swim) that much faster by doing nothing more than following a real-time feedback training plan unique to you? You wouldn’t work harder. You’d work smarter. 

Data Matters: Crush Plateaus & Avoid Overtraining

Utilizing data analysis to ensure a productive balance between training stress and rest is key to your success. A coach will check your stats to determine whether you recovered enough from the previous workout to tackle a hard workout next. If you recovered enough, then off you go. If not, a light session may be scheduled to keep you from spiraling down into an overtraining scenario. Conversely, you may be adapting ahead of schedule and stuck on a plateau with no improvement in speed. Seeing this data will give your coach the green light to increase your training volume, intensity, or both. 

The data you collect can reveal the difference between a plan that will work for you and one that might work. At the very least, measuring and recording heart rate and duration during workouts is a must. Speed and distance help, if only to provide a clearer picture of your fitness progress or setbacks through repeats of the same distance. Wattage, measured on a bicycle power meter, is the gold standard of intensity and strength measurements. Last is the simplest yet most telling data point: How do you feel? This is called the Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE). It may seem subjective, but studies have shown RPE is a highly accurate measure of how hard you train.

Put all those numbers together, and you have your unique fitness profile. It’s a lot of information to take in, and knowing what to do with it usually requires the means to hire a full-time human coach who can process all this data each night in preparation for the next day. If you can afford that, great. If not, then you’re effectively training in the dark. Is the next workout the best workout you could do right now, the worst, or somewhere in between? You won’t know for sure. 

This is where Humango’s AI-powered training app shines. Upload your workout data to the app and let it use real-time feedback to adjust your next workout to be more or less intense or the same as scheduled. All you have to do is show up and do the work, knowing that whatever your Humango training plan prescribes, it’s the perfect workout for you.

Common fitness goals and dreams suffer from a case of what we call “the vagues.” Shedding fat, building muscle tone, or losing 10 pounds — modern society has, unfortunately, conditioned us to equate fitness with outward appearances. The reality is this: Fitness is a feeling. You feel strong, capable, healthy, and energized when you’re fit. Odds are that if you pursue a fitness goal like this, you will end up with less fat around your gut and legs, drop weight, and develop some muscle along the way. And you might even develop a new image of yourself as an athlete.

Step 1: Adopt an Athlete’s Mindset

We all know men and women who commit to and identify with a sport. They may be an endurance athlete who swims, runs, bikes, climbs mountains, or all the above. Their approach to fitness involves training for and practicing their sport. Overall fitness is a benefit, not the sole focus, of what they do. This makes them athletes, not simple exercisers. 

Step 2: Set a Goal

Endurance athletes have specific goals with deadlines. These goals can range from running a first 10k to entering an Olympic distance triathlon or biking across a continent. And this goal-setting isn’t limited to endurance sports. It applies to strength training as well. Being able to do 10 pull-ups (or even one!) is a legit athletic goal. With a goal set, the training follows naturally with a prescribed pathway to do whatever you set out to do. Your goal may take three weeks to prepare for, or it might take three years to grow fit enough to accomplish. The key is finding a goal that motivates you.

Step 3: Find a Training Plan

Whatever your athletic goal, a training program exists to prepare you for it. A coach can help you layout your fitness journey and tailor your training to your current availability and baseline strength and endurance levels. Maybe you’re a harried new parent with little time to train. Or you could be single and self-employed with the flexibility to train like an elite athlete. A coach will develop a plan that works for you. Humango’s coaching app does the same. Plug in your goal event and date, and the app will produce a progressive plan to get you to the finish line. Along the way, you should grow stronger, leaner, and faster.

Step 4: Follow Your Training Plan

Unlike general fitness classes that repeat the same workout, a training plan builds you up step by step. A big part of its success involves recording your workout data, sharing it with a coach, or uploading it to an online AI coaching app like Humango. This data will reveal how your progression as an athlete is going. Are you struggling to finish each workout? Are you bored because the training is too easy? The coach — or coaching app — will cull the data and adjust your future workouts accordingly.

Step 5: Finish Strong & Revel In Your Fitness

Achieving the actual goal itself is the ultimate payoff for all your work. Your training plan should deliver you to the start of your event in peak fitness, full of energy, and in top physical shape. Before you launch into competition, take a moment to appreciate the strong, fit athlete you’ve turned yourself into. Then go smash whatever event you entered and relish the accomplishment. 

Step 6: Set a New Goal & Start the Process Again

The wonderful thing about being an athlete is that the pursuit never ends. There are always more goals to shoot for and more events to try. And if you grow bored with training for one sport, you can always try a different one. Exchange running for cycling, for example. Athletic seasons come and go; the athlete’s ultimate payoff is staying fit for life.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the foundation of Humango’s coaching app for runners, cyclists, swimmers, and triathletes. By drawing on AI — not an algorithm with its inherent limitations — to create and adjust individual training programs after each workout, Humango’s digital brain already ensures you, the athlete, receive the coaching that’s specific to your goals, experience, fitness, and ambition.

With Humango’s ChatGPT-powered interface, you can now tell Hugo, our AI-powered digital coach, what you want to do, how you feel, and what you want or need to change. And thanks to the powerful LLM (Large Language Model) integration, every interaction will feel more seamless and natural — and your communication will continue to improve over time. Here are a few highlights of what ChatGPT integration means for your coaching experience.

Fine-tune your training program

Let’s say you’re working with Humango to guide you to peak performance in a Gran Fondo race, but you’re curious to see if you could train for and compete in a short, local criterium race. Tell Hugo. By talking to it just like a human coach, you can let Hugo know the additional race you want to train for, and it will automatically add the goal and create a plan for accomplishing it.

Or, you can now ask Hugo for a day off during the week. It’s as simple as saying, “Hugo, I need a day off.” That’s all it takes for Hugo to clear your workouts for the day. Need to log a sickness or injury? Instead of trying to figure out how to input that info into your Humango dashboard, just tell Hugo and let it adjust the intensity or duration of your upcoming workouts.

As a Humango athlete, you can use the conversational power of ChatGPT to get the most out of your interactions with the app. Whatever information you need, it’s just a quick chat away. You can even ask Hugo where specific data fields are located, to help you navigate the app, or let it know you’re tired and ask it to adjust the next workout. 

Race days made easy

One of the benefits of working with a coach is their ability to create a race strategy based on the months of training data available. For athletes, the race plan provides a significant confidence boost; instead of guessing how they might do, they have a clear understanding of what a perfect race, a good race, or even an off-race will look like. Humango’s AI and ChatGPT integration makes asking for and receiving general race advice easier than ever. 

Humango’s AI has always been capable of handling all the tasks above. But now, the integration of ChatGPT makes it simple to access and take advantage of these features. All you have to do is ask.