Dillon Corkery (23), from Cork, is going into his second season with French DN1 team CC Etupes, one of the strongest elite teams in France. He enjoyed a very strong 2022 season - 5th at Paris-Troyes and a top 10 overall at the Tour du Pays du Montbeliard (2.2) while also finishing 2nd overall in the five-day Tour de la Manche, just two seconds behind new World Tour pro Ewen Costiou. Under the watchful eye of Cycling Ireland head coach Neill Delahaye, Corkery says he will leave no stone unturned in his bid to step up a level or two in 2023
In this piece the Irish international road rider outlines his heavy winter training load to date and his plans for the weeks ahead - including "very hard" team training camps, with double session days, and up to six hour "big gear" rides. However, he also says the days of riding for hours and hours - without specific goals for each day - are over. There's plenty hours training in Zone 2, as well as some cyclocross to get intensity into his body at this time of year, at times riding three hours to the cyclocross venues before racing. Even before he gets into his team camps, he's already frequently been doing double session days this winter.
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First things first, Dillon, what did you do after the end of the 2022 season?
I took three weeks off the bike. I planned a trip away with my missus and I just hung up the bike in the shed for three weeks. I didn´t look at it. I went away on holidays, had a good time and then met up with a couple of my friends when I came home from holidays. I didn´t do any real training; no running or cycling or anything like that. I just took my time off because I felt I needed it.
When did you start training again and how do you start off?
I started at the beginning of November. I took my break in early October so I started up again in the second week of November. I started off with some light stuff, just two or three hour spins and a bit of running and stuff like that, some swimming, different things like that.
How did you approach Christmas? Did you increase the distance and/or intensity?
I've been doing a bit of cyclocross so I've had that bit of intensity thrown in from the very beginning (of winter) which has been very beneficial to me. But it's around this time of year that I start to ramp up the intensity. I've still been doing long hours the last couple of weeks. After that I started to bring in the hours again which was good because I felt I was recovering faster from my spins so I didn't need super, super recovery days. I felt quite good after my three weeks off, so this time of year I start to ramp it up. In the next couple of weeks I have a training camp with the team in Saint Tropez and I have three weeks then to the first Coupe de France race, so it's around this time I start to ramp it up. Similar hours, 20-hour weeks, but the intensity will come up a nice bit.
How much training do you do indoors versus outdoors in winter?
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I normally do two days indoors. I do a small bit of work on the side while I'm at home. Especially with the bad weather there over the last few weeks, with the ice; I was doing my spins indoors, which was a bit of a balls really. But two days indoors and a fair chunk of work in the gym - two or three days a week - and then everything else is outdoors. The days I do indoors are normally double days, so I would have the gym as well. Maybe 2 to 2½ hours on the turbo (in the morning) and then an hour in the gym in the evening. The outdoors then is four to five days a week.
Can you talk about how you balance miles and quality efforts?
At the minute I am doing a heap of Zone 2 stuff. As I said, I haven't been doing a whole lot of intensity up until now, but I´ll ramp that up soon enough. I felt I was getting enough (intensity) through the cyclocross over the last couple of weeks. The best way of describing it is riding to and from some of the cyclocross races. If they were 70k or 80k away I would ride to the race, do the race and that would be enough for the day. I wouldn’t need to ride home. But if it was a bit closer I’d ride home. That's what I´ve been doing in terms of balancing it out and it's worked quite well for me. I still get in a three-hour spin before I get to the cyclocross race, then do the race at 195-200 BPM. So that's how I balance it out.
What's your main goal during winter?
Neill is probably the best I´ve ever dealt with, he´s exceptional with what he does. We set some targets to reach during the winter and during the season and the start of the season; the Coupe de France being the first goal. But the cyclocross nationals would be a bit of a hit-out. That´s a small goal, but the main goal is to build on the Zone 2 and progress from there.
How is January and February looking?
I won´t be doing a whole lot of work in January and February with Neill, it will be more team work. I have two camps in January and February and both of them are two weeks long so that's a month there of high-intensity camps. They are very hard. One of them is a race camp which includes that first French Cup and the other is just a training camp. They are very, very difficult,. There are double days with the shorter stuff, the high-intensity stuff and the longer stuff with 5-6 hours, big gear stuff. The days of going out and riding for miles are gone. There´s a reason for every training spin now and the spin you did yesterday is to help you with the spin you might do in four or five days time. I see it a lot now in the training camps with the team because I´ve been with the same DS over the last three years. Things have changed a lot. We´re going out doing spins to certain power and different things which we never really did at the start when I first moved to France. But it's good to see, I enjoy it. I think you need to find a happy medium too with training and Neill does that quite well. He knows the power side of things, he knows the science behind it but he also knows when to draw the line on how far you need to go with power, and when you should put the head unit in the pocket and just ride for fun and meet up with a couple of friends and go for a coffee.
How often would you do an FTP test?
I did one at the end of the season, my last training spin of the 2022 season. I haven't done one since. I don´t think there's any need to do one at the minute. I´m not super, super fit, I'll be doing my first one around the time of the training camp, so it's not something I do too often. Testing is not something I am big into. I know when I am starting to go well. I don't need numbers to show that, I know my body and I think it's something me and Neill have spoken about. I´ve done a few ramp tests, last year, they are not something I'd be doing every month.
