By now it is inevitable. They days are getting shorter, the hour has changed and the sun often disappears with the light. Foggy, cold and gray weather makes us sad and and allows us to become lazier. Soon winter comes with ice and snow and freezing temperatures make us store our bike away because we don’t want to ride outside anymore.

Reducing the kilometers on the bike in winter is part of the training for a triathlete, it’s part of our seasonal activity. We did a lot during the year, the competition season was long and sometimes we need to let our motor cool down, recharge physically and mentally and cleanse our palettes from the summer training.

Nevertheless, as with each winter, time flies by and we will quickly find ourselves in another training program. Again we will start to look at our calendar to plan races and runs. We will throw ourselves into new challenges and new objectives.

If it is true that cycling is associated with freedom, nature, fresh wind in your face, and time spent with friends, then it is also true that you must be prepared for the spring season.

The first solution can be found in the world of indoor cycling. It certainly helps to maximize every minute spent on the bike and also to schedule bike training even when going outside is less than tempting.

Where to start? Easy! Buy a bike roller or borrow one from a friend. Assemble it at home, in the garage, garden or whoever you like. Then in the evening, early morning, lunch break or whenever you prefer jump on the bike and start pedaling. In road biking you must pace yourself during your ride, you must select your route based on the terrain, and also keep in mind how long it will take. This is not the case with the bike roller; short, intense, and fast it was designed for this specific purpose. While we might never become passionate about the bike roller, if done correctly indoor cycling can be the perfect compliment to the training we do on the road.

Triathletes use bike rollers to train during winter or to recover their legs after a tough run workout. Thanks to it’s practicality due to the ease of moving it wherever you want, the bike roller becomes a precious device that can be used in combined training sessions (swim-bike and bike-run).

Placed on the edge of the pool or directly in the pool, bike rollers are perfect to simulate transitioning between swimming and cycling. They are also useful to train and challenge your legs after a swim, which is what you are looking for during a sprint or olympic distance race to try and immediately get away after the first transition.

Bike rollers are great in winter and for combined training sessions like bike-run-bike. We bring then along on the train, put the together there and alternate between biking and running.

You rarely hop on the bike roller just to recover your legs. Normally you will have a specific objective which take into account variation, strength, cadence, technique, etc. With a varied program that has precise and detailed targets time magically flies by, muscle tension increases, and the training becomes enjoyable and we almost feel like we the leader in a big race.

In the next articles we will provide information on how to maximize your training on the bike roller and we will give you details about indoor training in which you can concentrate all your energies for winter biking.