Over on The Consummate Athlete Podcast, we get asked about challenges a lot. There are things like running every day, or streaks or even Peter’s challenge to NOT ride indoors in November. One challenge that seems to have stuck around is the Festive 500. In this post we will provide some details on the different ways to do a holiday challenge and, of course, our suggested way to take on the holidays by embracing your local weather and multiple sports!
Training More on the Holiday Break
The idea of doing more training over the holiday break makes sense for some people. Those who have a lot of free time and flexible family schedules, or those who don’t celebrate the holidays are good candidates to push their training load. Even for these athletes we are hesitant to suggest focusing on distance rather then increasing hours or other elements of training that might align with your goals. The concern with focusing on one metric is you might elect to only ride flat terrain (or indoors) rather then climbing, riding technical terrain, fat biking or riding with friends. So our recommendation is to elevate your training in ways that move you towards your goals and embrace the seasons!
What is the Festive 500?
The Festive 500 is a cycling challenge, popularized by Rapha where you ride your bike 500 kilometers during the 8 day holiday period between Christmas and New Years. While most websites stop short of suggesting the challenge is 500 OUTDOOR kilometers, that is the original idea. This outdoor element is still embodied in the details on the Rapha site with mentions of ‘rain in shoes’ and ‘winter riding guide’ and ‘foul weather’.
So given that the challenge is an outdoor 500 kilometer challenge, our usual suggestion is to find a different target metric for your holiday training if you can not ride outside or if the type of riding you do in the winter is slower (e.g. fat bike). Choosing something like riding more hours might make more sense (e.g. Festive 15 hour?) to guide your training and might allow for more fun and varied training.
Indoor Festive 500
There are indoor variations and solutions to the Festive 500 from Strava and Zwift (and others) so you could consider riding a virtual 500 kilometer. There are pace groups you can jump into to help expedite and motivate the 500 kilometers and for some people this is a great challenge and will ultimately boost your training time. For some athletes these virtually flat and fast ‘kilometers’ can be a great first big stimulus ahead of higher intensity training.
Of course you want to be careful that you aren’t excluding training that might align with your goals, like strength training, cross-training, or shorter high intensity interval sessions that might make up a good training week. For these athletes the allure of staying inside to speed up the distance, rather then venturing outside over the holiday week is something to reflect on.
Is this metric you are chasing in line with your goals and does it pull you in the direction you want to go?
The Consummate Athlete Festive Challenge
In the past we have challenged athletes to consider if distance makes sense as a challenge or goal. For many this is a ‘1 metric to rule them all‘ scenario pulls them away from training modalities that are benefitial, aligned with their goals, and fun.
What if you followed your plan and do a great job on your usual training over the holiday?
The holiday week can be a great week to do an extra good job on your training preparation, fueling, locations, focus and effort. This might mean the same hours but with more room to adapt since you aren’t running between as many work and family things.
500 minutes of MOVEMENT.
For those who do want to chase a number, we often suggest a challenge that encourages variety in the type, intensity and duration of your training. One that lets you adapt to the conditions, location and who is around. Something that is open-ended so that a walk with your mom, a pick-up hockey game with your cousin, or an aerial yoga class with your sister were just as noteworthy as a 100KM bike ride or 15KM run.
This could be a family walk/hike, Yoga with a friend, your workout of the day, strength or getting out cross-country skiing. That averages to around 63 minutes for each day over the 8-day holiday week (December 24 – Dec 31s).
Once you take a few days off for holiday events, travel and everything else this can actually be tough for this particular week!
