Archie Ryan had a breakthrough season this year with stage wins in Tour de Slovakia, Ronde d'Isard and 4th overall at Tour de l'Avenir. The Jumbo Visma Development rider also stepped up to his Dutch team's World Tour squad for the first time in 2022; winning on debut in Slovakia. He now talks us through his approach to the coming winter.
In this extended piece, Ryan outlines why it's so important for him to take a long break now and how he'll then ease himself into training again and then step up very quickly to much higher intensity efforts. He explains why these high intensity efforts, even early in winter, are a long term "investment". He also sets out his training volume for the remainder of the year and into early next year. Ryan also reveals his favoured climb close to his home in Co Wicklow for doing his winter efforts and which top Irish riders he trains with when getting the miles in on group rides.
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How do you approach this time of year?
Right now I'm taking four weeks off after the season, just to unwind a bit, clear the head. And I'm doing things I couldn't do during the season - go to the pub with the boys and try and relax a bit and not think about cycling too much. I was going really well at the end of the season and I wanted to keep on racing, but there just weren't any more races. So I wasn't drained or anything when the season ended. But now I think it's important to have a break. You need that so when you get out training again you really want to do it. And it can be daunting when you start training again because we're racing and training 11 months of the year. It would be easy to think to yourself in November 'I'll be on the go now until the mid-season break next year'. You need the break now so when you start again you're really keen to get back into it and so you won't feel daunted. After taking this break the motivation will be high and I'll be thinking 'right, I really want to crack on with this and get back to work'.
Do you still mind yourself over the four-week break and do you do any training at all?
I'd eat whatever I want. If I want 10 cakes, I'll have them! This few weeks is about doing whatever I want to do - getting it out of system and enjoying myself. I'll do next to no training for this four-week period. I started my break straight after Ronde de l'Isard after getting home on October 4th and I'll start back training at the start of November. I go out on the bike if I want to during this break; maybe once a week on the cyclocross bike. I head up to some mountain bike trails - Ballinastoe, Djouce - I was there only yesterday - and I'll try and get down them on my 'cross bike, just for a bit of fun. I'd love to do some cyclocross races in Ireland this winter but I'm looking to get a place in Spain to train there so I'll be away. It's also not worth the risk, unfortunately, and there's a lot of running in mud in 'cross and that's not without risk. So I'll be going to Spain later in winter for some good weather. Wicklow is an absolutely brilliant place to train, but unfortunately you can't put a roof on it.
So clearly the bike takes a back seat in the next few weeks but will you do any other training?
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I'm still doing a bit of the gym to keep up my rehab (after an ACL injury derailed 2020 and 2021). I'd like to stay injury free next year, obviously. So I'll do exercises like reverse planks, single leg med ball rollouts. I have a gym set up in the house now. It's not training and it's not rehab, it's about prehab now for me. I'm too scared to stop doing the exercises! But I've no issues at all with my knee and I really think the problems are gone for good now.
And what happens after your break is over?
I'll get back with two weeks really easy training on the bike; just getting the legs back used to the spins at a lower end of intensity. And then it's about building up really slowly during those couple of weeks; nothing too serious, maybe some cadence changes to get the legs spinning again. It'll be just steady endurance rides, getting the body used to be being back on the bike. I'll do two or three hours a day and usually have three days of training and then one day off - about 12 to 15 hours a week. But it's fairly flexible; nothing crazy. It will be still only be early to mid November so everything will still be pretty chilled. Then in late November and as December starts I'll do longer rides - a few weeks of 20 hours per week in December; 4, 5 or 5.5 hour rides. And I'll get back into efforts around about then and a bit of Vo2 max; sprints and stuff like that. Those Vo2 max efforts will be short ones and it's probably a bit different to what might be regarded as traditional winter training. I'm probably doing that earlier in the winter than traditional training methods. But I think the way we (Ryan and his team) look at it is that you always want to improve. So you start those efforts early (in winter) and you want to improve through the year. Doing these efforts is good for your long-term development. It's not just about developing your Vo2 max for next summer, but for three or four years time, you're thinking about your development in the longer term. Those efforts are pretty important and it's worked well for me in the past.
As you near the end of December, do rides get longer and more intense?
In general I'll be cracking the whip a bit more from mid December. And then we have two team camps; 12 days in January and 11 days in February. So you do more serious stuff at those camps, it's a chance to get volume done. You're back to proper training - good hours and good efforts - eat sleep and train. We'd do 20 to 25 hours a week with some intervals. We go to a certain climb and all do our efforts on our own. Or if we were working or the team sprint formation, obviously we do that together. And then when you finish those camps, you recover and absorb those efforts. When I'm at home I do a lot of my training around the Wicklow hills; Glencree, Feather Beds. And then Stocking Lane is a good place to do efforts. There are a lot of good climbs in Wicklow to do intervals on but a lot of them are very short, so you have to turn around and go again. But Stocking Lane is long and it's also well paved and a has a consistent gradient so it's good for efforts. I might do something like two blocks of intervals up there on those December rides and then a few hours afterwards at a pretty solid pace. I often train with Mark Dowling, Ruairi Byrne, Ronan O'Connor and Cian Keogh. I pretty much never use the home trainer.
How do you coordinate with Jumbo Visma during winter training in Ireland?
All our sessions are on Training Peaks. And as a rider I'd give feedback to the team while I'm training and then they give feedback to me. And then based on that we'd change the day to day training; change the plans if we needed to. The training could be too hard or maybe I couldn't finish it because of how I was feeling; the weather might be rubbish or I might not have been feeling great on the bike, that sort of thing. So I train based on power all the time and just keep an eye on heart rate as well. Heart rate can tell you when your body needs a rest. Aside from all of that, I'd so some foam rolling and also stretch alongside training on the bike in winter, but nothing crazy.
