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Motivation for the end of a never-ending winter

I am looking out my window and again there is snow, only flurries mind you, drifting by. Isn’t the daytime average in Toronto supposed to be somewhere around 5 C at this time of year? This is definitely the winter that will never end. And it is starting to take its toll, particularly on the motivation to keep up the trainer sessions. With temperatures of -6 C, feeling like -13 C with the windchill, this has been a tough winter and start of spring for getting outdoors. I can count the number of times on one hand that I’ve ridden on pavement in the last four months.

With a cold weather forecast for another week, we can’t give up on the trainer sessions. Keep that motivation going. It may seem like spring will never come but it can’t stay cold much longer. And when it does get warm, you’ll want to have kept up your riding so that you can get out with the group and enjoy that long-awaited four-hour ride, on pavement, in the sun, with the wind on your face.

These days I find some motivation in watching the Spring Classics that have truly kicked off the European racing season. You can find all kinds of racing videos on YouTube, many of them complete race coverage. During the winter, I passed the time watching old Tour de France footage that wasn’t available at the time: Riis unseating Indurain in 1996 or 1988 when Delgado won, Bauer wore the yellow jersey and finished fourth, and the leaders would finish the mountain stages riding at 60 r.p.m. and minutes apart. Interesting stuff. And now the 2014 Spring Classics are keeping me interested. There is lots to learn from watching the racing. Tactics are a good one, or what happens to the field in a strong crosswind. You could see this beautifully in the 2013 E3 Harelbeke when they came over one of the small cobbled climbs and immediately the peloton formed into five or more echelons. You know that anyone in that last echelon was hoping the road would turn left into the headwind!

All this to say that while this winter is taxing the motivation, the cold isn’t going to last forever. Find your own way of keeping up the motivation but don’t give up on your training. You’ve most likely put in lots of work during the winter. Don’t let the fitness slide now just when the goal you have been training for—spring fitness—is about to be realized.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toAOYM4DJlY