Spring is a planning problem, not an effort problem

Ask most endurance athletes what their spring plan is and you'll get an answer about
effort. Train harder. Get the miles in. Get serious again.

Almost nobody answers with a date.

That's the real spring problem in the southern hemisphere. Not a lack of motivation - spring supplies plenty of that - but a lack of sequence. Three things change at once
over September and October, and they change fast: the daylight, the temperature, and how much you're able to train. Handle them in the wrong order and you'll arrive at your summer target either undercooked or already unravelling.

Start with the date, not the session

Before anything else, name your key event and count backwards.

Not a list of six events you might do. One, or at most two, that actually matter to you.
Then count the weeks between now and then. That number is your plan, and it changes everything about what this week should look like.

Twenty weeks out is a completely different proposition from ten. If you have 20, you can afford to build patiently and you should. If you have ten, you need to be honest that you're not building a new engine - you're sharpening the one you've got and protecting it.

Most spring training goes wrong because the athlete is doing ten-weeks-out training with 20 weeks to go. All the urgency, none of the runway.

Write the date somewhere you'll see it. Every decision about a session gets easier once you know how many weeks are left.

Change one variable at a time

Here's the trap that's specific to spring in New Zealand. Over the same
handful of weeks, you'll typically be adding training volume, moving sessions back
outdoors, and dealing with temperatures climbing steadily. Each of those is a stress your body has to absorb. Stack all three in the same fortnight and you'll feel it - usually as a niggle, a flat patch, or a bug you can't shake.

So sequence them. Build volume while it's still cool. Move sessions outdoors and let your body adjust to the terrain and the wind before you start adding hours to them. Introduce the warmest sessions last, once the volume has settled.

It's the same total workload either way. It's the ordering that determines whether you
absorb it or pay for it.

Volume: mind the rate, not the number

Spring is when injury rates climb for endurance athletes, and it's rarely because of one brutal session. It's the accumulation - a good week followed by a better week followed by an ambitious week, with nothing pulled back in between.

Two habits worth adopting now:

1. Increase gradually and in steps rather than continuously, and hold each new level for at least a fortnight before adding again. If a week goes badly, repeat it rather than pushing on to the next one.
2. Plan the easier weeks in advance. An easier week you scheduled is training. An easier week forced on you by a niggle is lost time.

Heat is training load

This is the piece northern hemisphere training plans simply don't account for, and it's
worth understanding before it becomes relevant rather than after.

Working in rising heat costs you more for the same output. Your heart rate runs higher at a given pace or power, perceived effort rises, and your fluid and sodium losses go up significantly. None of that means you're losing fitness. It means the conditions have changed and the numbers need reading differently.

Two practical actions:

1. Establish your sweat rate now. Weigh yourself before and after two or three longer sessions, account for what you drank, and you'll have a figure you can actually plan around. Do this in cool conditions and again as it warms, because the difference will surprise you.
2. Time your sessions deliberately. Early mornings for the longest work as the season progresses. If you specifically want to prepare for racing in heat, treat that as its own block with its own recovery cost - not as something you tack onto an existing hard week.

Deal with the rust

A few things go stale over winter that have nothing to do with fitness, and spring is
cheap time to fix them:

• Bike handling and group riding skills, if you've spent months indoors
• Your kit and your bike, before it becomes a mid-season problem
• Race fuelling. Practise it now, in warm conditions, at the intensity you'll actually
  race at. A gel strategy that worked in June doesn't automatically work in December
• Sleep. Lighter evenings quietly push bedtimes later for a lot of people, which is a training problem disguised as a lifestyle one
• Allergies, if spring pollen affects you. Sort it before it collides with your biggest
  volume weeks (hint: CurraNZ can play a supporting role here).

Your first four weeks

1. Name your key event and count the weeks. Write both down.
2. Build volume gradually while conditions are still cool, holding each step for a
   fortnight.
3. Establish your sweat rate, and schedule your longest sessions earlier in the day as temperatures climb.
4. Plan your first easier week now, before you need it.

Spring rewards the athlete who knows what they're building towards. Sequence it properly and summer takes care of itself.

Related reading: For how to structure the sessions within that plan, see Togo Keynes
on the training mistake 90% of endurance athletes still make, and his upcoming piece on mastering Zone 2, coming soon.