Mia Griffin | Absorbing big volume winter miles towards new goals

Mia Griffin sprinting in at the end of stage 1 at UAE Tour; the Irish rider off to a flying start after her Olympic debut (Photo: Luca Bettini-Sprint Cycling Agency)

Olympian, Worlds and Europeans rider for Ireland. It all sounds easy. Then you can throw in the fact she's a World Tour rider on the road this year, and the first Irish woman to secure a World Tour road race podium.

It could be considered "seamless"; a top rider going from one level to another and taking it all in her stride. But that couldn't be further from the truth.

Mia Griffin, former camogie player with Kilkenny, is now aged 26 years. She rode her first race in Europe six years ago. But despite her experience, she has explained to stickybottle how these last few months have been a lesson in absorbing training miles.

Though increased emphasis has been put on high intensity training during the winter in recent years, Griffin says recent months have all been about a new level of training load in preparation for a full season in the pro peloton.

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"The winter has been really good," she said. "I've just been really consistent mainly with training and I managed to stay away from getting sick.

"And that's one of the main struggles, really, because I think you're always able to get decent training in. But trying not to get sick is the thing that will make you stronger than doing anything mad in training.

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"I was just trying to up the volume for what's going to be ahead of me this season; and trying a few new things and just seeing how the body responds, just to doing more in general.

"Over the past few years I've built up my tolerance to being able to do longer hours . And now I think the tolerance is at a level where I'm able to recover better from more hours.

"And I think without the intensity of the track training… Because track training is super intense, you can't really do the same amount of efforts as if you are just focused on getting the road miles in.

"So I've been given a bit of a time to get really road fit over the winter and try to give it a really good bash at the start of this season. I've just gotten in a nice consistent block of training . And the main thing is there's been no gaps or injuries, no sickness. That makes for some better form than I've had ever.

"Some of it's been in the gym, but a tiny bit less gym than for the track. That's just because my legs responding to more hours were like stones," she laughed.

"So for the first period I couldn't do much gym because I was just adapting to the road. But then I started to try and sprinkle it in a bit more often.

"But I definitely see the challenge for road riders in terms of getting the gym sessions in because you're going to be more fatigued a lot of the time. The gym sessions are not going to be the best thing ever, you're not going to be a hero in the gym."