October 8, 2025 • 13 mins
OVERVIEW
The end of the summer cycling season is the best time to leverage a season's worth of fitness and training without the pressure of upcoming goals. It's the time when you can go have epic adventures, work on performance limiters, go hunting for Strava PRs and KOM/QOMs, complete end-of-season performance tests, and much more. Coach Adam Pulford helps you decide whether to take a break (some people need it, others don't), and how to make the most of the days when the weather is still warm and there's still abundant daylight.
TOPICS COVERED
- What to do if you still have energy and motivation
- How to tell if you need time off instead of pushing through
- Examples of late-season training challenges and adventures
ASK A QUESTION FOR A FUTURE PODCAST
RESOURCES
HOST
Adam Pulford has been a CTS Coach for nearly two decades and holds a B.S. in Exercise Physiology. He's participated in and coached hundreds of athletes for endurance events all around the world.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:06):
From the team at CTS, this is the Time Crunch
Cyclist Podcast, our showdedicated to answering your
training questions and providingactionable advice to help you
improve your performance, evenif you're strapped for time.
I'm your host, Coach AdamPulford, and I'm one of the over
50 professional coaches who makeup the team at CTS.
(00:27):
In each episode, I draw on ourteam's collective knowledge,
other coaches, and experts inthe field to provide you with
the practical ways to get themost out of your training and
ultimately become the bestcyclist that you can be.
Now, on to our show.
(00:53):
Maybe it's how to stay motivatedin the off-season or how much
one should recover before theystart the base training phase.
That's just as important as thein-season stuff.
But for now, and for all mytime-crunched athletes out there
listening, my message is this.
Keep going.
(01:13):
Keep going for like three orfour more weeks.
Why?
Because many of us have built upa ton of fitness over the
summer, and we still have a fewweeks left of good weather and
abundant daylight.
So you might as well use it.
I'm Coach Adam Pulford, and thisis the Time Crunch Cyclist
Podcast, the show where we takebigger, complicated topics and
(01:33):
all things endurance trainingand make them as simple as
possible in short, actionableepisodes.
Today I'm going to encourage youto give yourself a good fall
challenge now so you can take abreak with confidence later when
the cold and dark whispers ofwinter start creeping in.
So, what kind of challenges am Italking about?
(01:54):
What should you target?
And how do you know if youshould even keep pushing right
now?
Well, let's dive in.
First, if you're still fresh, Isay keep pushing.
I have many athletes who arestill fresh mentally and
physically, and they want theywant a bit more before they take
their break.
(02:14):
But what is fresh?
Fresh means you're motivated.
You have good energy, you haveno injuries from the season,
legs aren't feeling like woodenpegs when you pedal your bike.
Fresh is having good habits ofsleep and fueling, good clean
diet, and that has helped youhold up over the whole season.
(02:35):
Fresh also means that mentallyyour job and your family
workloads aren't crazy high andyou have bandwidth for more
training.
Fresh is also when you're ingood state of mind to take on
more training.
That's what I mean when uhasking yourself if you're fresh.
Typically, I find more successwith my time-crunched athletes
(02:55):
by aligning their off-seasonwith seasonal patterns or
holidays versus just acompetitive calendar.
This is because training andrecovery time is limited.
And keeping the volume upyear-round is the most
important.
Keeping volume up until thedaylight diminishes and cold
weather becomes a good naturaltime for this break, which is
(03:19):
normally like early uh tomid-November.
Then we get back to good habitsjust before Thanksgiving, which
is late November, and thenshorter, but normal frequency
workouts during December duringthe December holidays, that's
good so that we don't fall offthe cliff.
That's where I use a mix ofintensities in different like
virtual training platforms likeSwift or TP Virtual to keep the
(03:43):
motivation high and keep thosehabits rolling through the new
year.
Now, I do have athletes who havefinished off the season with big
A races of the season, andthey're taking a time off now.
They're taking a break rightnow.
And that's mind and body, andthat's before we ramp up into
the base season.
For all of you in that boat,stay the course.
(04:05):
You probably are higher volumeathletes or likely had just a
bigger race block and a lot moreemotion that went into it.
So you should take time off nowso you don't burn out.
No matter what the weather is,no matter how much daylight is
out there, if you're burnt, taketime off now.
Even if your time crunched andyou're listening to this and you
(04:25):
say, Wow, I had a good season,I'm just like smoked right now.
Yeah, go easy, take a break.
But coming back to where I thinkmost of you listening, where
most of you are right now andlikely experiencing is this.
I feel good, I feel motivated,I'm not that tired, and the
weather is awesome, and it'sgonna be dark by the time you
(04:48):
know work is over pretty soon.
So this advice is for you.
End of season races, fondos, ormake your own self-challenge.
These are what I encourage youto pursue when I say keep
pushing.
Find a new event that may beoutside your comfort zone.
Uh, it's more epic, maybe it'ssomething new that you haven't
(05:09):
done before, but treat it like afun day on the bike, not any
specific performance outcome.
In a previous podcast, Iinterviewed one of my local
masters athletes.
His name was Camilo, and wetalked about events like the
Moco Epic and the Grand Fondue,which are uh just they're like
that.
They're epic, they're fun localevents that uh a lot of us
(05:30):
racers jump into and uh we, youknow, we stop at aid stations.
It's a huge day, six to eighthours of riding, but we have fun
with it.
Now, other races like the bigand little sugar events are
happening uh here in a coupleweeks down in uh Bentonville,
and they're great season finalesfor a lot of the athletes that
that I coach.
(05:50):
Little Sugar is the mountainbike race, and Big Sugar is a
gravel race.
They're put on by LifetimeFitness, check them out.
That the pros are hitting it,that's the end of the Lifetime
Fitness series, and it's it's abig performance thing for them.
A lot of my amateur athletes,they go for it, and that just
caps off their season.
Now, if there's no events inyour area where you don't want
to travel to some big race andspend a bunch of money, create
(06:12):
your own.
Straba hunting.
Remember 2020 when this was likeall we had and everybody was
super into it?
Yeah, do it again, right?
Pick out a segment that you'vealways maybe wanted to do and go
get that crown.
Maybe you scout it out with acouple training rides, and then
you train for it specifically,and then you just send it.
(06:32):
That's a really good way to havea little performance target, uh,
go fast, go hard, and have agood end of season sort of cap
off as well.
You can also have a big mileageweekend.
So lots of time crunchedathletes don't have the luxury
of volume.
But if you plan ahead, you makeyour own mini camp with friends,
or you go solo or bring thefamily along and you just
communicate that this is, youknow, you're gonna spend a lot
(06:54):
of time on the bike, and youhave a long weekend of riding in
the hills, maybe you catch someof the last fall foliage in your
area, it's a perfect way to doit.
Now, the other self-challenge isperformance testing.
This is for the real data nerdthat that's out there and
honestly where the coach getsreally excited, or at least I
do.
So after a big road season, if Ihave an athlete that's not going
(07:17):
into uh cycle cross season orhave any specific, you know,
fall events or something likethat, I usually do a volume
block mid-September throughOctober.
Then I freshen up and then Itest.
The testing format that I likethat I've talked about on this
podcast before is uh testing a20-minute max effort,
five-minute max effort,one-minute max effort, and then
(07:39):
some max effort sprints.
And I do that all in the sameweek, usually three separate
days, but kind of spread outbetween uh five days.
So I have some easy days uhchunked in the middle of that.
If you want more specifics onhow to do this or any other
field test, check out episodenumber 238.
I'll link to it in my shownotes, but I talk about all
different kinds of fieldtesting, how and when to do it,
(08:02):
and doing it at the end of theseason is a is a it's a great
fit, in my opinion.
The main point here is to capoff the season properly with a
big thing or a benchmark, andyou bring contrast to the
seasons.
And I find that this sets themood right for taking some time
away from the bike in order todetrain and transition into the
(08:24):
next phase.
Finally, do you have a limiterthat you normally don't train?
Now could be a good time to workon it before you take a break or
transition into the off-season.
Limiters are weaknesses that canhold you back from a top
performance or winning a race orachieving your goal.
(08:44):
It's something that you're notgood at, and likely you don't
train a lot because you're notgood at it.
We all do it.
For example, if if you're asprinter that struggles with uh
long climbs or longer volumerides and you're you're cramping
up toward the end, uh, and thenthat's holding you back, focus
on that now.
Put in a batch of volume.
Maybe you do long rides, longhilly rides, zone three to four
(09:07):
work, and then you rattle offsome sprints at the end of that.
Maybe you try an hour of powerat maximum.
Now, this super sucks, but Ihave my athletes do that at
various times.
It's both like now, if we needto work on it, as well as um
like February, uh working onextensive threshold development
or extensive aerobic power toincrease durability and build
(09:31):
aerobic capacity.
No one really likes it, but youget really good.
On the other side of the coin,if you're a climber and maybe
you struggle with sprinting oranaerobic work, do that now.
Go ride your bike and work onwork in four to five sprints,
uh, like two to three times perweek.
I don't think you have to makeit more complicated than that.
(09:51):
Sprint, try to see maximum poweras as much as you can.
10 to 20 seconds is what I wouldsuggest.
And uh that's a good sprintworkout.
Just get good at sprinting.
And typically when I have aclimber do this for the first
time, they're like, whoa, youknow, they they're they feel
like they're all over the placeuh with coordination.
It feels strange, but work on itnow and you'll improve over
(10:14):
time.
You can also do some FRC work orincrease your anaerobic
capacity.
Uh a good workout is somethinglike five by one minute maximum
effort.
So full tilt, burn the ships,don't look back every one
minute, and you have uh fullrecovery in between usually five
to eight minutes, maybe up toten minutes if you need it, and
that's just like easy spinningin between, and you do that on a
(10:36):
90-minute ride.
That'd be a good FRC workout,which again would increase
anaerobic capacity.
If you're more of an aerobicperson, doing some of this
limiter work now is good.
Okay.
Now a good plan now, a good planworks on your limiters further
out from a competitive phase sothat they hurt you less when the
(11:00):
time comes to race or uh do yourevent.
Of course, a good plan willforecast time to take a break,
but this little window that wehave here in North America and
much of the northern hemisphereis a good time period to
experiment with differenttraining like this, working on
the limiters.
Many coaches will have you workon some limiters in the
(11:23):
offseason, but the fall can be agood time too because we don't
have A races, we don't havespecific goals, and we have uh
kind of like a you know a blankcanvas to experiment with.
I sometimes have a round of thislimiter work before hitting it
again in the base phase so thatit keeps becoming less and less
(11:43):
of a limiter.
It may never be a strength, butit will limit you less in the
long run, and this is the goal,if you keep on working at it.
So to wrap this thing up, myadvice is to do an inventory
check of yourself.
If you're fresh, keep pushingyourself.
If you're taking some downtimenow, stay the course.
(12:04):
If this is the first time you'vethought about strengthening your
limiters, do so now with verylittle downside and a lot of
upside.
And all of this push in the nextthree to four weeks can help you
keep building to be your best in2026.
That's it.
That's our show for today.
Always remember you can ask anyquestion that you may have by
(12:27):
heading over to trainwrite.combackslash podcast and click on
ask a training question.
Fill out that and send it overto me and my team, and we'll do
our best to answer it on afuture episode.
If you liked what you heardtoday, I'm stoked.
Feel free to write in and tellme about it.
Or better yet, share this uhepisode with a friend or a
training partner.
That's the best way to keepgrowing the show and ensure that
(12:50):
you keep getting podcasts likethis that helps you improve your
training, performance, andfitness.
Be sure to come back next weekfor more Time Crunch tips and
short, actionable episodes.
Thanks for listening.
Thanks for joining us on theTime Crunch Cyclist podcast.
We hope you enjoyed the show.
If you want even more actionabletraining advice, head over to
(13:12):
trainwright.com backslashnewsletter and subscribe to our
free weekly publication.
Each week you'll get in depthtraining content that goes
beyond what we cover here on thepodcast that'll help you take
your training to the next level.
That's all for now.
Until next time, train hard,train smart, train right.
From the team at CTS, this is the Time Crunch
Cyclist Podcast, our showdedicated to answering your
training questions and providingactionable advice to help you
improve your performance, evenif you're strapped for time.
I'm your host, Coach AdamPulford, and I'm one of the over
50 professional coaches who makeup the team at CTS.
(00:27):
In each episode, I draw on ourteam's collective knowledge,
other coaches, and experts inthe field to provide you with
the practical ways to get themost out of your training and
ultimately become the bestcyclist that you can be.
Now, on to our show.
(00:53):
Maybe it's how to stay motivatedin the off-season or how much
one should recover before theystart the base training phase.
That's just as important as thein-season stuff.
But for now, and for all mytime-crunched athletes out there
listening, my message is this.
Keep going.
(01:13):
Keep going for like three orfour more weeks.
Why?
Because many of us have built upa ton of fitness over the
summer, and we still have a fewweeks left of good weather and
abundant daylight.
So you might as well use it.
I'm Coach Adam Pulford, and thisis the Time Crunch Cyclist
Podcast, the show where we takebigger, complicated topics and
(01:33):
all things endurance trainingand make them as simple as
possible in short, actionableepisodes.
Today I'm going to encourage youto give yourself a good fall
challenge now so you can take abreak with confidence later when
the cold and dark whispers ofwinter start creeping in.
So, what kind of challenges am Italking about?
(01:54):
What should you target?
And how do you know if youshould even keep pushing right
now?
Well, let's dive in.
First, if you're still fresh, Isay keep pushing.
I have many athletes who arestill fresh mentally and
physically, and they want theywant a bit more before they take
their break.
(02:14):
But what is fresh?
Fresh means you're motivated.
You have good energy, you haveno injuries from the season,
legs aren't feeling like woodenpegs when you pedal your bike.
Fresh is having good habits ofsleep and fueling, good clean
diet, and that has helped youhold up over the whole season.
(02:35):
Fresh also means that mentallyyour job and your family
workloads aren't crazy high andyou have bandwidth for more
training.
Fresh is also when you're ingood state of mind to take on
more training.
That's what I mean when uhasking yourself if you're fresh.
Typically, I find more successwith my time-crunched athletes
(02:55):
by aligning their off-seasonwith seasonal patterns or
holidays versus just acompetitive calendar.
This is because training andrecovery time is limited.
And keeping the volume upyear-round is the most
important.
Keeping volume up until thedaylight diminishes and cold
weather becomes a good naturaltime for this break, which is
(03:19):
normally like early uh tomid-November.
Then we get back to good habitsjust before Thanksgiving, which
is late November, and thenshorter, but normal frequency
workouts during December duringthe December holidays, that's
good so that we don't fall offthe cliff.
That's where I use a mix ofintensities in different like
virtual training platforms likeSwift or TP Virtual to keep the
(03:43):
motivation high and keep thosehabits rolling through the new
year.
Now, I do have athletes who havefinished off the season with big
A races of the season, andthey're taking a time off now.
They're taking a break rightnow.
And that's mind and body, andthat's before we ramp up into
the base season.
For all of you in that boat,stay the course.
(04:05):
You probably are higher volumeathletes or likely had just a
bigger race block and a lot moreemotion that went into it.
So you should take time off nowso you don't burn out.
No matter what the weather is,no matter how much daylight is
out there, if you're burnt, taketime off now.
Even if your time crunched andyou're listening to this and you
(04:25):
say, Wow, I had a good season,I'm just like smoked right now.
Yeah, go easy, take a break.
But coming back to where I thinkmost of you listening, where
most of you are right now andlikely experiencing is this.
I feel good, I feel motivated,I'm not that tired, and the
weather is awesome, and it'sgonna be dark by the time you
(04:48):
know work is over pretty soon.
So this advice is for you.
End of season races, fondos, ormake your own self-challenge.
These are what I encourage youto pursue when I say keep
pushing.
Find a new event that may beoutside your comfort zone.
Uh, it's more epic, maybe it'ssomething new that you haven't
(05:09):
done before, but treat it like afun day on the bike, not any
specific performance outcome.
In a previous podcast, Iinterviewed one of my local
masters athletes.
His name was Camilo, and wetalked about events like the
Moco Epic and the Grand Fondue,which are uh just they're like
that.
They're epic, they're fun localevents that uh a lot of us
(05:30):
racers jump into and uh we, youknow, we stop at aid stations.
It's a huge day, six to eighthours of riding, but we have fun
with it.
Now, other races like the bigand little sugar events are
happening uh here in a coupleweeks down in uh Bentonville,
and they're great season finalesfor a lot of the athletes that
that I coach.
(05:50):
Little Sugar is the mountainbike race, and Big Sugar is a
gravel race.
They're put on by LifetimeFitness, check them out.
That the pros are hitting it,that's the end of the Lifetime
Fitness series, and it's it's abig performance thing for them.
A lot of my amateur athletes,they go for it, and that just
caps off their season.
Now, if there's no events inyour area where you don't want
to travel to some big race andspend a bunch of money, create
(06:12):
your own.
Straba hunting.
Remember 2020 when this was likeall we had and everybody was
super into it?
Yeah, do it again, right?
Pick out a segment that you'vealways maybe wanted to do and go
get that crown.
Maybe you scout it out with acouple training rides, and then
you train for it specifically,and then you just send it.
(06:32):
That's a really good way to havea little performance target, uh,
go fast, go hard, and have agood end of season sort of cap
off as well.
You can also have a big mileageweekend.
So lots of time crunchedathletes don't have the luxury
of volume.
But if you plan ahead, you makeyour own mini camp with friends,
or you go solo or bring thefamily along and you just
communicate that this is, youknow, you're gonna spend a lot
(06:54):
of time on the bike, and youhave a long weekend of riding in
the hills, maybe you catch someof the last fall foliage in your
area, it's a perfect way to doit.
Now, the other self-challenge isperformance testing.
This is for the real data nerdthat that's out there and
honestly where the coach getsreally excited, or at least I
do.
So after a big road season, if Ihave an athlete that's not going
(07:17):
into uh cycle cross season orhave any specific, you know,
fall events or something likethat, I usually do a volume
block mid-September throughOctober.
Then I freshen up and then Itest.
The testing format that I likethat I've talked about on this
podcast before is uh testing a20-minute max effort,
five-minute max effort,one-minute max effort, and then
(07:39):
some max effort sprints.
And I do that all in the sameweek, usually three separate
days, but kind of spread outbetween uh five days.
So I have some easy days uhchunked in the middle of that.
If you want more specifics onhow to do this or any other
field test, check out episodenumber 238.
I'll link to it in my shownotes, but I talk about all
different kinds of fieldtesting, how and when to do it,
(08:02):
and doing it at the end of theseason is a is a it's a great
fit, in my opinion.
The main point here is to capoff the season properly with a
big thing or a benchmark, andyou bring contrast to the
seasons.
And I find that this sets themood right for taking some time
away from the bike in order todetrain and transition into the
(08:24):
next phase.
Finally, do you have a limiterthat you normally don't train?
Now could be a good time to workon it before you take a break or
transition into the off-season.
Limiters are weaknesses that canhold you back from a top
performance or winning a race orachieving your goal.
(08:44):
It's something that you're notgood at, and likely you don't
train a lot because you're notgood at it.
We all do it.
For example, if if you're asprinter that struggles with uh
long climbs or longer volumerides and you're you're cramping
up toward the end, uh, and thenthat's holding you back, focus
on that now.
Put in a batch of volume.
Maybe you do long rides, longhilly rides, zone three to four
(09:07):
work, and then you rattle offsome sprints at the end of that.
Maybe you try an hour of powerat maximum.
Now, this super sucks, but Ihave my athletes do that at
various times.
It's both like now, if we needto work on it, as well as um
like February, uh working onextensive threshold development
or extensive aerobic power toincrease durability and build
(09:31):
aerobic capacity.
No one really likes it, but youget really good.
On the other side of the coin,if you're a climber and maybe
you struggle with sprinting oranaerobic work, do that now.
Go ride your bike and work onwork in four to five sprints,
uh, like two to three times perweek.
I don't think you have to makeit more complicated than that.
(09:51):
Sprint, try to see maximum poweras as much as you can.
10 to 20 seconds is what I wouldsuggest.
And uh that's a good sprintworkout.
Just get good at sprinting.
And typically when I have aclimber do this for the first
time, they're like, whoa, youknow, they they're they feel
like they're all over the placeuh with coordination.
It feels strange, but work on itnow and you'll improve over
(10:14):
time.
You can also do some FRC work orincrease your anaerobic
capacity.
Uh a good workout is somethinglike five by one minute maximum
effort.
So full tilt, burn the ships,don't look back every one
minute, and you have uh fullrecovery in between usually five
to eight minutes, maybe up toten minutes if you need it, and
that's just like easy spinningin between, and you do that on a
(10:36):
90-minute ride.
That'd be a good FRC workout,which again would increase
anaerobic capacity.
If you're more of an aerobicperson, doing some of this
limiter work now is good.
Okay.
Now a good plan now, a good planworks on your limiters further
out from a competitive phase sothat they hurt you less when the
(11:00):
time comes to race or uh do yourevent.
Of course, a good plan willforecast time to take a break,
but this little window that wehave here in North America and
much of the northern hemisphereis a good time period to
experiment with differenttraining like this, working on
the limiters.
Many coaches will have you workon some limiters in the
(11:23):
offseason, but the fall can be agood time too because we don't
have A races, we don't havespecific goals, and we have uh
kind of like a you know a blankcanvas to experiment with.
I sometimes have a round of thislimiter work before hitting it
again in the base phase so thatit keeps becoming less and less
(11:43):
of a limiter.
It may never be a strength, butit will limit you less in the
long run, and this is the goal,if you keep on working at it.
So to wrap this thing up, myadvice is to do an inventory
check of yourself.
If you're fresh, keep pushingyourself.
If you're taking some downtimenow, stay the course.
(12:04):
If this is the first time you'vethought about strengthening your
limiters, do so now with verylittle downside and a lot of
upside.
And all of this push in the nextthree to four weeks can help you
keep building to be your best in2026.
That's it.
That's our show for today.
Always remember you can ask anyquestion that you may have by
(12:27):
heading over to trainwrite.combackslash podcast and click on
ask a training question.
Fill out that and send it overto me and my team, and we'll do
our best to answer it on afuture episode.
If you liked what you heardtoday, I'm stoked.
Feel free to write in and tellme about it.
Or better yet, share this uhepisode with a friend or a
training partner.
That's the best way to keepgrowing the show and ensure that
(12:50):
you keep getting podcasts likethis that helps you improve your
training, performance, andfitness.
Be sure to come back next weekfor more Time Crunch tips and
short, actionable episodes.
Thanks for listening.
Thanks for joining us on theTime Crunch Cyclist podcast.
We hope you enjoyed the show.
If you want even more actionabletraining advice, head over to
(13:12):
trainwright.com backslashnewsletter and subscribe to our
free weekly publication.
Each week you'll get in depthtraining content that goes
beyond what we cover here on thepodcast that'll help you take
your training to the next level.
That's all for now.
Until next time, train hard,train smart, train right.
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