I’m at a crossroads of sorts. I work from home so I can usually train at any time, and I’m currently close to the end of my General Build (mid volume) plan. We hadn’t originally planned to travel for the holidays, but recently found out that my grandmother may not make it much longer, so we’ve decided to go out of town to visit from the 19-29th of December.
After that, I’m home for about five days at which point I’ll be able to squeeze in some rides, but I go to Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show from January 5-11th. I won’t be able to train at all during that time–not only will I just be too busy with work, but I won’t have a bike with me.
I could, however, take my bike and trainer when I got out of town for Christmas. It would be a hassle to transport and train from a hotel room, so I guess the big question is: how much fitness might I lose if I go basically three weeks with very little training? I work my ass off for every watt I gain, so the thought of losing anything makes me feel a little sick. But at the same time, if I can get away with taking a few weeks off without a huge hit, it may be worth it to me for the simplicity of travel.
My plan is to start a Rolling Race plan as soon as I get home from Vegas, which I should be able to tackle with little to no interruptions.
Why not train when your on the road? I travel a lot for work and often have to train on a bike in the hotel gym.
As long as the bike has some kind of power measurement, it’s actually quite easy to do interval workouts. Ride your first interval at a power that seems the right RPE for the kind of workout you are targeting, and tweak up or down form there on subsequent intervals.
In the event you decide not to train, the amount of fitness you’ll lose will be highly individual, so hard to know. For me, I don’t lose fitness quickly. But on the flip side, gains in fitness are very hard to get.
A full three weeks off will have noticeable negative effects on your fitness
A week off the bike is typically not much to worry about, but with three weeks off of the bike you can typically expect to lose about three weeks of fitness. I’d recommend checking out this article from our Blog that can help to give you some ideas on how to stay fit and active while travelling.
I travel for work too. My trips are usually short. I’ve managed to complete the midvolume base plan 1, and I had to use the hotel bikes on numerous occasions. I found that I could run the TrainerRoads app and manually adjust power on the Hotel bikes. You won’t have a TSS score, so I make a note to myself in the comments so I can keep track of my training.
It’s a workable solution, although I have been in charge of my schedule. I know with conferences and annual meetings, the calendar can get crammed tight. I was fortunate to only have to miss one workout because of travel. I did have to rearrange workouts and swap off days, but I was pleased with the results. Hope this helps.
I travel with work as well, on a bad month away for 50% of the time
When away I run, it’s not exactly perfect for cycle training but does help general fitness and can be done pretty much anywhere.
If I’m lucky I can find a hill where I run some hill repeats and then finish off with maybe 20mins of lunges / pistol squats.
…I think you know where I’m going here. You can train all the time most of the year, you’ve got a couple of situations in winter that will be tough to train through - take some time off!
No time off allowed? How about cross training? Is there an exercise bike you can use in the hotel? How about weight training?
Otherwise, yes, three weeks will take some time to get back your fitness .
